Hong Kong
Five years after the National Security Law (NSL) took effect, Hong Kong’s press freedom remains under strain, as reflected in high-profile prosecutions of media figures such as pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai. In addition to the law, local journalists face a widening range of intimidation, including tax investigations. Meanwhile, declining advertising revenue has deepened the financial crisis of local media.
Enacted in response to Hong Kong’s 2019 protests, the NSL continues to reshape the city’s media landscape, with journalists treading carefully to avoid crossing vaguely defined legal red lines and, as a result, practising more self-censorship. In the latest development, Jimmy Lai, founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and one of the most high-profile figures arrested under the NSL, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down under the law so far. Lai was convicted of conspiring with others to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security and of conspiracy to publish seditious articles. His co-defendants, including six former editors of Apple Daily, all pleaded guilty and received prison terms ranging from six years and three months to ten years.
Journalists confront an expanding range of legal pressures. According to the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), at least seven independent media and 20 individuals were targeted by tax audits, with the targeted media and individuals reportedly receiving tax bills totalling around HKD 1,700,000 (approx. US$217,500). In some cases, tax investigations have extended to the personal tax affairs of journalists’ family members. The HKJA argued that many audits involved questionable demands, including inflated income calculations, tax assessments for periods predating the establishment of media outlets, and claims involving companies the journalists did not manage. The Inland Revenue Department, however, maintained that a taxpayer’s industry or background had no bearing on tax reviews.1 Amid these pressures, the HKJA stopped publicly listing the names of its executive committee members.
Pressures have extended to foreign media. In November 2025, a fire at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Tai Po killed 168 people and drew extensive international media coverage. The reporting prompted Beijing’s national security office in Hong Kong to summon representatives from foreign media and warn them not to cause trouble through their coverage of the fire.
The business environment for Hong Kong’s media has become increasingly challenging. Mainstream outlets such as Ming Pao and Hong Kong Economic Times have recorded substantial losses,2 reflecting both the broader decline in advertising revenue and higher cost bases that make legacy media vulnerable to shifting media conditions. Nonetheless, some media organisations have bucked the trend. TVB, Hong Kong’s largest TV broadcaster, is expected to post an annual profit of more than HKD 50m (approx. US$6.5m), ending years of losses. This turnaround was partly driven by growth in its mainland China business. Although Hong Kong news content cannot be distributed in mainland China, TVB’s dramas streamed on major mainland platforms such as Youku have performed strongly,3 suggesting that expansion into the mainland may offer a path forward for local media organisations with business lines beyond news.
While most legacy outlets struggle to stay afloat, some independent digital-based outlets have rapidly expanded their influence by leveraging the internet’s low-cost, high-reach potential with lean operational setups. These include The Witness, which focuses on court reporting; The Collective, which specialises in in-depth reporting; and Initium Media and Pulse HK, which have relocated overseas in response to the NSL. Together, they provide local readers with a broader range of perspectives than those in mainstream media coverage and have filled part of the gap left by the closure of Apple Daily. Meanwhile, the pro-government camp has also actively strengthened its media presence. Outlets such as Speak Out HK, Dot Dot News, and Orange News have gained considerable online influence, aided by their comparatively stronger resources. Overall, these developments have made Hong Kong’s media market more fragmented than before.
Hong Kong media are also learning to use AI. Mainstream outlets like HK01 and am730 have reported using AI to produce short videos, voiceovers for AI presenters, and infographics. Some of these AI-generated voices have been criticised for sounding too similar to real news anchors, giving rise to disputes.
Alex Zhi-Xiong Koo, Francis Lee, and Hsuan-Ting Chen
Chinese University of Hong Kong
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Changing media
News consumption habits in Hong Kong have remained stable for the past five years. Most respondents consume news online (87%), while 65% rely on television and 24% on print. The use of social media for news is increasing steadily.
Pay for online news
18%
(-4)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
28%
(+2)
Trust in news overall
52%
(-)
Global average: 37%
Although press freedom remains strained, most local outlets are trusted by over half of respondents. Well-known electronic media enjoy relatively higher trust, with NowTV News, i-Cable News, and RTHK among the most trusted. Less widely known digital-only outlets tend to score lower, though Yahoo! News, likely benefiting from the public recognition of its platform, scores highly in trust terms.
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
140/180
Score 39.49
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
