Updated on Sept 29, 8:30 AM Hong Kong time:

After we published our article which was widely reposted, Wall Street Jounal Chinese posted its first news covering the actual protest, dated September 29 at 7:54AM Hong Kong time. Because WSJ Chinese published the "news" about 24 hours* after the start of the protest and its first English language report, we believe that WSJ Chinese is trying to save its image after being publicly called out for self-censorship. Still, we welcome the change. At least WSJ Chinese readers now know about the protest in Hong Kong - better late than never.  In comparison, Reuters Chinese has not posted any news covering the protest even now. 

*SCMP started to live report the protest on September 28 at 8AM. WSJ's report in English was dated September 28 at 6:08AM. (Hong Kong time).

-----

Reuters Chinese and WSJ Chinese are not reporting anything related to the Hong Kong protests. Reuters U.S. and WSJ U.S. both feature the protest as headline items. Both media organizations have their servers in the U.S. (for both Chinese and English language sites) and are not required to follow the censorship instructions of the Chinese authorities.

In November 2013, China blocked WSJ Chinese and Reuters Chinese for a few days. The act was meant to intimidate both companies and to warn them that they have to keep their content in line with Beijing. WSJ Chinese was subsequently blocked for good in June 2014 after the site posted multiple news items related to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests on the website’s front page. Reuters Chinese did not post anything related to the June anniversary and remained unblocked.

It would appear that WSJ Chinese is trying to “remedy” its defiance of Chinese censorship while Reuters Chinese continues to cooperate with Chinese censorship directives wholeheartedly.

In recent years, we have seen an increase in the number of foreign companies that willingly comply with Chinese censorship. In February of this year, we reported that Bing was practicing Chinese censorship globally. In June of this year, Linkedin censored posts related to Tiananmen protest globally, taking measures that lie beyond Beijing's strict web censorship rules.

Here are some screenshots taken at approximately the same time today, Sunday, September 28th, 2014.

Reuters Chinese (cn.reuters.com) features U.S. and Russian statements on ISIS but does not mention anything related to Hong Kong in its newest five headlines on the front page. In fact, Reuters Chinese does not mention the protests on September 28th anywhere on its website.

 

ReutersCN.png

In contrast, Reuters U.S (reuters.com) features the Hong Kong protests as its front page headline.

reutersU.S.png

The Wall Street Journal Chinese (cn.wsj.com) front page features stories about China-India relations and Chinese economic growth, but has nothing related to the Hong Kong democracy protest.

WSJCN.png

The Wall Street Journal U.S features the very same protest as its headline.

WSJU.S.png

Meanwhile, New York Times Chinese, BBC Chinese, SCMP Chinese and Financial Times Chinese all featured multiple posts on the Hong Kong democracy protest as their headlines respectively. New York Times Chinese and BBC Chinese have been blocked for years. SCMP Chinese had been blocked since December 2013 and was unblocked last month when the newspaper’s owners met Xi Jinping in Beijing. Articles related to the protest on SCMP Chinese were blocked while the main website remains accessible. Financial Times Chinese was never blocked but articles related to the protest and other political topics were blocked.

We have asked Reuters and WSJ for their comments. If they answer, we will update this post.