Alibaba to ensure 'objective coverage' after acquiring daily

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba which has acquired Hong Kong's famous English daily South China Morning Post on Saturday said it will strive to ensure "objective coverage" of the communist country in contrast to the "tainted" coverage by the western media.

"At the core of a news property, we have to have the readers' trust. That will depend on reporting that is objective, balanced and fair," Joseph Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group that has become the first Chinese company to own an independent media, told the Post.

Outlining how the multi-billion dollar firm owned by tycoon Jack Ma will handle the 112-year-old newspaper known in the past for critical coverage of China, Tsai said: "If we don't have that trust, we cannot build up our readership.

"Even though we are the corporate owner, we will let the editors decide the editorial policy and direction of coverage for any story. That's our basic principle." The Post group has been bought over by Alibaba for an undisclosed amount.

Asked how Alibaba founder Ma, who is well connected to officials in China and the company which is based in Chinese mainland, will avoid conflict between editorial independence and the business interests of the group, Tsai said: "there are going to be situations when sensitive topics are being covered". "But we think coverage should be objective, balanced and fair."

"Our perspective is this: China is important, China is a rising economy. It is the second-largest economy in the world.

People should learn more about China. The coverage about China should be balanced and fair," he said.

"Today when I see mainstream western news organisations cover China, they cover it through a very particular lens. It is through the lens that China is a communist state and everything kind of follows from that," Tsai said, adding that a lot of journalists working with these western media organisations "may not agree with the system of governance in China and that taints their view of coverage".

"We see things differently, we believe things should be presented as they are. Present facts, tell the truth, and that is the principle that we are going to operate on," he said.

This is the first time a Chinese group has acquired a daily newspaper group, raising speculation about how it will handle critical coverage relating to China, where the entire media is more or less state-owned.

Analysts say 51-year-old Ma, who rose from an English language translator to one of China's biggest tycoons, may have to do a lot of tight-rope walking considering ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) sensitivities to semblance of critical reporting in the local media.

Though Hong Kong has an autonomous administrative structure, it is governed by China with increasingly tighter control under the one country two systems.

The Post is not widely circulated in China, but provided a wider coverage of the Communist country as compared to the stereotyped reporting of the official media.