the communist party has been amassing influence in hong kong through its ownership of newspapers and publishing houses via its liaison office in the cityno plans for an ownership changein an internal scmp memo to staff on tuesday seen by bloomberg news chief executive officer gary liu dismissed reports of alibaba coming under pressure to sell its media assets be assured that alibabas commitment to scmp remains unchanged and continues to support our mission and business goals he wrote in the memo a later message sent on the same day by liu reiterated that there are no plans for an ownership changescmp remains committed to serving our global readers with independent journalism and indepth analysis as we have for over 117 years a spokesperson for the newspaper said by emailsince the national security law came into force last year media outlets have started to tread carefully out of fear of breaching vaguely defined provisions on subversion and secessions the government this month appointed a career bureaucrat with no media experience as director of public broadcaster radio television hong kong which has seen programs that were critical of the government censored or pulledon january 6 the same day the 55 democracy activists and former lawmakers were arrested the national security department requested documents from apple daily stand news and inmedia the hong kong government didnt respond to a request for comment but has repeatedly said that press freedom remains intact despite the security lawill be arrestedim prepared that ill be arrested said ronson chan deputy assignment editor of stand news i am not prepared to leave hong kong nor stand news hong kong needs us hong kongers that still believe in the values of press freedom especially in the wake of a growing mainland chinese takeoverthe hong kong free press a nonprofit digital news outlet that describes itself as impartial has also come under attack this month a magazine owned by sing tao news corp which last month came under the control of the daughter of a chinese tycoon devoted a fourpage spread to insinuating that hkfp may have violated the national security lawthe worsening environment has prompted the news organization to only use encrypted devices check in with staff regularly and literally chain computers to the desks according to tom grundy founder and editorinchief of hkfpwe expect to be forced to navigate increased bureaucratic and legal scrutiny he said though our current policy is to hope for the best prepare for the worst and keep calm and carry on