On March 13, the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong (香港報業公會) — founded in 1954 by the city’s four largest newspapers at the time, including Sing Tao Daily and the English-language South China Morning Post — announced the winners of its 2025 Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards (香港最佳新聞獎). The Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group (香港大公文匯傳媒集團), run by the PRC government’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong, took home 29 prizes. It was record for the group and the largest haul for any media outlet in this year’s competition. Twelve media outlets reportedly participated, submitting 636 entries across 78 award categories. The result, offering plaudits to a state-run outlet that has been on the front lines in attacks on independent journalists and institutions (including the Hong Kong Journalists Association), would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
As recently as 2016, the awards were made across a relatively diverse field. Ming Pao (明報) took Best News Reporting for its Panama Papers coverage, reporting that would be almost unthinkable in Hong Kong today. Sing Tao Daily (星島日報) won Best Scoop and Best News Photography. The South China Morning Post (南華早報) swept both English-language writing categories. And the Hong Kong Economic Journal (信報財經新聞) won Best Business News Writing. Sure, media like the government-run China Daily and Ta Kung Pao did win a smattering of awards. But never were state media so dominant as seen this month.
This year, participation has narrowed sharply, with entries concentrated among pro-establishment media — those aligned with the Chinese government. Meanwhile, Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai serves a 20-year prison sentence handed down last month under the territory’s National Security Law, .
That transformation makes the Ta Kung Wen Wei Group’s dominance worth scrutinizing. Established in January 2016 through the merger of Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, the group is the key voice of the Chinese government in Hong Kong. The group’s chairman and editor-in-chief, Li Dahong (李大宏), is simultaneously a delegate to the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the CCP-led political advisory body. The group’s own materials state that its newspapers are delivered directly to the central organs of the party, government and military every day — and that the group has ranked first in total awards at the Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards every year since 2019, a streak that hardly seems a coincidence given the political changes in Hong Kong since widespread protests that year.
Far from acting as a professional press organization, the group has been at the forefront of attacks on Hong Kong’s independent journalism community. The charge to smear and discredit the Hong Kong Journalists Association, a longstanding institution representing real news professionals, has been led by the Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, which have consistently attacked the association and its leadership. Writing in Wen Wei Po back in April, a pro-Beijing lawmaker called the HKJA “a suspected anti-China organization that disrupts Hong Kong,” while Ta Kung Pao published an opinion article titled “dissolution is the only solution for the HKJA.”
The 2025 Hong Kong Best Journalism Awards send a clear message about what type of journalism the Hong Kong government and Liaison Office of China’s central government intend to reward.
