//Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) journalism lecturer Grace Leung Lai-kuen argued the matter of self-regulation opened up another can of worms. “Which press body should be deemed as representative of the industry. How does it get chosen?”

The scholar feared regulation would be yet another blow to local media, which she said was already hamstrung by the government’s recent move to tighten requirements for accessing public registers on vehicles, businesses and land.

Leung’s colleague Francis Lee Lap-fung, who heads CUHK’s school of journalism and communications, said whether through a model of self-regulation or direct enforcement, the same question lingered – who was the arbiter of what constituted the truth?

“I would just say that as long as the problem of ‘fake news’ is not extreme, self-regulation remains the much better option,” Francis Lee said. He added the government should step up education on media literacy, a practice that includes the ability to critically evaluate information, while also calling on officials to fund groups in a position to offer fact-checking.//