His explosive comments are from a transcript provided by the Freedom Forum. This is an edited version of his comments in January 1998 in London. (4)
John Owen (Director of the Freedom Forum): Jonathan, as you pointed out at the Forum in Hong Kong last June, your own newspaper halted its coverage of China and Hong Kong, for whatever reason. What has happened to the Times' coverage?
Jonathan Mirsky: If any well-known Hong Kong paper, including the South China Morning Post or the Hong Kong Standard, had made the kind of decision that Rupert Murdoch and the Times made in the middle of May of last year and changed their coverage of China and Hong Kong as dramatically as the Times has. I'm afraid that when I gave that speech, I said it was business as usual.
It is really not true. From four days after the handover until the end of September, the readers of the Times would have thought that Hong Kong had been airlifted up to Pluto, that, it had simply vanished.
There was not a single story about Hong Kong, and there is still very little. We'are now completely uncovered in Hong Kong.
They have known for a year that I was leaving Hong Kong, but we have no correspondent there, and there is no plan even for a stringer.
They were reduced to the indignity this morning of ringing me up to ask if I could do something about the story in the Independent about the 1 million ponds (US$2.7 million) given to the Tories (by a Hong Kong Family with drug-trafficking links). But if had been out there, if they could possibly have avoided this story, they would have.
The Times has simply decided, because of Murdoch's interests, not to cover china in a serious way. This is really very serious. We have here what is arguably the traditionally most famous newspaper in the world, and it has just decided - it has taken not an executive decision, but an owner's position - to leave China and Hong Kong alone.
We haven't had a leader on China or Hong Kong since May, and on the day that Wei Jingshong was released.
l rang up the paper and said: "Wouldn't you like me to write a piece of analysis about why the Chinese have released Mr. Wei?"
As it happens, I knew quite a lot about the deal and I told them what I know. I was immediately told by the op-ed man, who know me very well and knows the editor very well: Jonathan, don't, bother. But I was told by the editor to tell you that he knows that Wei Jingsheng is a very important person."
