"WHETHER it was youthful naïveté or just ignorance, Mr. Snowden’s positive view of Hong Kong no longer matches the reality. Shortly before his arrival, the international organization Freedom House ranked Hong Kong 71st in the world in protection of political rights and civil liberties. Reporters Without Borders has dropped Hong Kong on its ranking of press freedom to No. 58, from No. 18 in 2002.

Mr. Snowden’s initial choice of Hong Kong as a place of refuge may not have been entirely illogical. Here, he met with two journalists from The Guardian and a documentary filmmaker. Hong Kong remains a hub of the global media, not least because of its proximity to the economic boom in southern China and the ease of access to many other Asian cities. The publicity could complicate efforts by the United States to charge Mr. Snowden and have him deported. 

But the local coverage of Mr. Snowden’s case, which has largely ranged from bemused to unsympathetic, helps underscore the erosion of press freedom since 1997. A poll conducted last month by the Public Opinion Program of the University of Hong Kong found that nearly half (48 percent) of respondents believed that the local news media practiced self-censorship. These readers are on to something. More than one-third (36 percent) of media employees responding to a survey by the Hong Kong Journalists Association in April and May 2012 said that they or their supervisors had practiced self-censorship in the past 12 months."

(NYT column, more here)