China journalist calls for Bloomberg CEO to resign from CPJ freedom award

A prominent Hong Kong-based journalist has called on Daniel Doctoroff, chief executive officer of Bloomberg L.P., to step down from his role as chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual International Press Freedom Awards dinner on Tuesday.

Emily Brill of ChinaFile.com writes, “Ying Chan, who was an honoree at the same dinner fifteen years ago, called on Doctoroff to relinquish CPJ’s podium in the wake of the suspension of Hong Kong-based Bloomberg reporter Michael Forsythe on November 13. Forsythe was a leading member of the company’s respected China news team. Bloomberg employees told The New York Times that Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler said the company would not publish the China team’s latest long-term investigations on the financial ties of China’s top leaders to powerful buinsess interests. The employees characterized Winkler’s moves as self-censorship to protect the company’s interests in China, the world’s second-largest economy, which lacks a free press.

“Winkler and Michael Bloomberg, the outgoing New York City Mayor who owns the company, have aggressively denied the self-censorship allegations, saying instead that the contested stories are not ready for publication.

“‘As a former recipient of the [CPJ’s] Press Freedom Award, I think Doctoroff should withdraw from the dinner or he should be disinvited,’ Chan, now a Professor of Journalism at Hong Kong University and the founder of its Journalism and Media Studies Center, said in an email.

“The CPJ Awards dinner on Tuesday is set to honor four journalists from Ecuador, Egypt, Turkey, and Vietnam who, the New York-based organization’s website says, ‘face imprisonment or other persecution for exposing realities.’ The CPJ 2013 International Press Freedom Awards, is, the site says, ‘an annual recognition of the courageous reporting that defines free media.'”