This is

CVS, I on the world. I'm John Bachelor.

Gordon Chang at Gordon G Chang joins me as my colleague and co-host and friend, and we celebrate World Press Freedom

Day with a caveat.

The caveat is Hong Kong, and we welcome Mark Simon, long time deputy and director at the now closed Apple Daily,

deputy to Jimmy Lye, who remains incarcerated for the boldness of practicing press freedom, among other obvious

talents. Mark, a very good day to you. Thank you to this. It is world press freedom and we'll start with the irony that there was very there's very little freedom in Hong Kong whatsoever. You are safely away so you can comment on this. However, the Washington Post is featuring a turn of the

table saying that the government officials in Hong Kong that would be the bully boys from the mainland

have decided not to introduce a fake news law. How to interpret this?

Did they need it given the level of interpretation?

Why are they suddenly backing away from what is textbook brutality?

Good evening to you.

Good evening. Well, the main reason that they are backing away from it is they don't need it and they don't need the

or press that goes along with it.

Hong Kong still remains the financial center.

And the problem with that law was, say for example,

you're a major financial company or your Bloomberg

or somebody like that, and you put out a story and

then you're going to be challenged that it's fake news.

So in other words, it was incredibly poorly crafted legislation.

I don't think they had the sign off from Beijing on it. That's pretty obvious.

It was somebody freelancing and Beijing said, look, we've got the national security

...