"It was a ghost town," Weisenhaus said, referring to the streets of Hong Kong, "you couldn't go anywhere."
The failure of the local media to inform its citizens of the potential danger of SARS left many wondering if the Hong Kong's media could function adequately under the new system, but Weisenhaus says the media has become more sophisticated in tackling sensitive issues, such as their coverage of Hong Kong's controversial Article 23. The proposed law would prohibit acts of subversion against the Chinese government or theft of state secrets. It would also ban political organizations in Hong Kong from having contact with similar groups abroad. Critics said it would silence political opponents and muzzle the press.
This proposed law led to the large protests in Hong Kong in 2003, and was the other reason Weisenhaus remained in Hong Kong.
To her, it was an opportunity to modernize and liberalize Hong Kong's notoriously secretive security laws - a holdover from its colonial past. Instead, the laws became harsher.
"That galvanized Hong Kong in so many ways and so you start to see incredible stories in papers - [Hong Kong-run] Apple Daily (蘋果日報) as well as Mingpao (明報)- trying to explain legal concepts to people and doing a very good job of it … because they felt it was necessary. It was important, to explain these concepts. When July 1, 2003 came around, nobody expected 500,000 people to join in the protests," she said.
Weisenhaus says that Hong Kong's media was instrumental in galvanizing citizens to take to the street to protest against the law, with Jimmy Lai's (黎智英) Apple Daily going so far as to print large posters that protesters could carry during the march.
Weisenhaus recognizes that Lai's brand of reporting gossip often veers away from responsible media coverage, but on the other hand, "If you are not reporting what is important to the citizenry in a general sense," she said, "you are isolating your readership, which is bad for business."
She added that even a liberal publication like the New York Times tries "to have at least one or two conservative columnists." In light of that, Weisenhaus suggests that Taiwan's newspapers can expect a continued decline in readership if they proceed along partisan lines.
"In the end, you need to serve your community and if your community is a young democracy, or trying to be a democracy, or an aging democracy like the US," she said, "it really is the duty of the media to respond to that, but at the same time find some kind of financial success."
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