Anger as ax falls on i-Cable journalists

Television company i-Cable News laid off 40 staff members, including all the reporters of the investigative program News Lancet, prompting at least eight veteran editors to resign yesterday.

The 40 shock dismissals cut across all major departments, including local, China and financial news sections.

I-Cable said that a total of 100 staff out of 1,300 were made redundant or reassigned to other positions, blaming the pandemic for putting industries in dire situations.

The layoffs were announced during an editorial meeting yesterday morning, after which those sacked had to leave their Tsuen Wan office immediately.

All three reporters of the award-winning News Lancet were reportedly shown the door, while a chief reporter and a senior reporter on local news were also fired.

Most of the newsroom teams saw their numbers cut, including the anchor team, film crew, arts department and video editing team.

A cameraman was still working in the Legislative Council Complex when he was notified he had been made redundant.

He left the TV station's camera unmanned and running as he waved goodbye to reporters and fellow cameramen, saying: "What's coming will come one day."

Remaining staff surrounded senior management, demanding an explanation of why the human resources department decided on the sackings without consulting editors.

Team leaders also said senior management was trying to shift the responsibility by saying that it was the human resources department's decision.

"We will have insufficient manpower to operate our team after the layoffs," they told management. "Are the four of you going to come out of your rooms and help with writing scripts?"

Edna Tse, head of i-Cable News, said her subordinates are confronting the top management in public with so many cameras in their faces.

"You guys are bargaining like triad members," the controller of the newsroom, Anderson Chan Hing-cheong, said.

Hours later, Szeto Yuen, the head of the i-Cable News China team, led his 10 remaining reporters to resign en masse in protest over the sacking of Wong Lai-ping, the assistant China news editor, who had been with the team for more than 10 years.

Wong said she was furious and disappointed at the company's decision.

"Senior management did not consult any team heads before reaching the decision to sack employees, which is intimidation," she said.

"Our salaries are already low enough but we still decided to stay, and we still went to dangerous areas to do reporting amid the pandemic, and worked harder than others."

But she said the company "ignored all of this, kept exploiting us and turned a blind eye to our sacrifices made in hopes of keeping the team alive and operating. After the dismissals, the team will have insufficient manpower to sustain its operation."

Several news editors also joined in, including two responsible for local news, as well as the heads of the finance and editing teams, saying the sackings were not based on performance of individuals.

All five local news editors resigned along with 11 of their 16 reporters - leaving only five reporters, without an editor.

In a joint statement, those who resigned said the company fired veteran and outstanding employees who had worked for the news department for years, and the senior management was being extremely disrespectful in refusing to give them an explanation, and even described colleagues as "triad members."

"We express our deepest regret in the senior management ruining i-Cable News, and we are resigning to express our discontent," it wrote.

A veteran reporter said: "We decided to resign together to let the public know i-Cable News has already deteriorated. There is no longer anything worthwhile for us to stay for, and the newsroom was very close to ceasing operations."

The Hong Kong Journalists Association said it is highly concerned about the redundancies.

"All three reporters responsible for News Lancet were fired after the team published reports related to the police and the regime in the past year, which makes people think that the company is trying to reduce or even cut sensitive reports under the name of cutting costs," it said.

"Redundancies not only hamper the morale of employees but would also jeopardize the editorial quality. Therefore media operators should think twice and refrain from implementing dismissals or pay cuts if possible."

This was the second round of redundancies by i-Cable's news department in four months after three veterans from the engineering department were terminated in August, weeks after a major reshuffle in the senior management of the newsroom.

The August sackings prompted a petition within the company urging it to explain the sackings and better communicate with management.

Yesterday's dismissals had been brewing for months, as the TV station recorded a loss of HK$176 million in the first half of this year.

The cost-cutting might also see revenue drop.

Netizens took to social media to share ways to cease their subscriptions with i-Cable without paying for the remaining time of their contracts.

"I told the customer service personnel that it is i-Cable who is breaching the contract, as there is a major change in i-Cable News, which severely affected the broadcasting service provided to me but I was not notified by the TV station," netizen Fung Ka-keung posted.

michael.shum@singtaonewscorp.com

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