When Australian journalist Alan Knight started thinking about the impending changes in Hong Kong, he saw a job to be done documenting the attitudes of local and foreign journalists in the soon-to-be former colony. Knight moved to Hong Kong in early 1997 and began producing Dateline: Hong Kong, a Web site devoted to press and freedom-of-information issues arising out of the handover.
Knight has collected the spectrum of opinion on the state of the press in Hong Kong and its prospects for the future, ranging from press freedom activists allied with the Hong Kong Journalists Association to pro-Beijing editors. And he has posted interviews with many of the better-known local editors and journalists as well as several senior foreign correspondents. The site also contains transcripts of speeches and documents such as Hong Kong’s Basic Law and mainland China’s press restrictions.
A reporter for 20 years, Knight was formerly an executive producer with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His work on Dateline: Hong Kong is supported by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and his own part-time work as an editor in Hong Kong.
Dateline: Hong Kong can be accessed at www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2365.