Those laid off include the head of the China desk and the entire team of the award-winning News Lancet program.
The broadcaster cited financial reasons for the layoff, a claim the newsroom staff rebukes.
The entire China desk, a total of 12 people, has since resigned in protest, along with the heads of the international and finance desks and the newsroom's chief assignment editor.
The layoffs were sudden and took immediate effect — those who were sacked were told to leave the office on the same day.
In shock, members of staff gathered outside the room of the news director demanding an explanation.
Among those laid off is Wong Lai-ping, former deputy news editor at the China desk.
On a radio interview aired on December 2, she rebuked the management's claim that the decision was made out of financial difficulties, remarking that in August, the management fired the then-executive director Fung Tak-hung and replaced him with four new managers.
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Wong said that the new management often made editorial requests, such as live broadcasts of China's foreign minister's regular press conference, or modifying headlines.
According to Wong, the newsroom staff refused to comply with such requests.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association commented on the layoffs, “Given the [New Lancet] team’s coverage of the police and administration, it’s difficult not to see this as minimizing sensitive reporting in the name of cost-cutting”.
(Source: Lam, Oiwan. 2020. “Journalists at Hong Kong TV station resign en masse after 40 colleagues fired”. Global Voices. Accessed and adapted on 5 December 2020. https://globalvoices.org/2020/12/02/journalists-at-hong-kong-tv-station-resign-en-masse-after-40-colleagues-fired/)