Reporting on Hong Kong's Tai Po tower fires: Laura Westbrook and Elaine Lai
Fri Dec 05 2025
Laura Westbrook and Elaine Lai are journalists both born and raised in Hong Kong and both were reporting on the Tai Po tower fires for foreign news organisations.
In many ways they experienced this news event very differently from both local and overseas born journalists covering this disaster.
Laura Westbrook works for broadcast media channels all over the world, covering news all over south east Asia, but has been most recently - and most prominently - been reporting for the Al Jazeera channel, while Elaine Lai is a fourth year journalism student at Hong Kong Baptist University who works as an intern for Associated Press and also works as editor in chief of Hong Kong’s oldest student newspaper, the Young Reporter.
Tai Po is where Elaine was born and raised, and where Laura started her first job in broadcast journalism. Both were among the first media on the scene, and subsequently worked for days on end covering what is now one of the worst fire disasters in Hong Kong's history. They discuss some of what was missed in world media coverage of Tai Po, and what it was like to see the blossoming of a huge community response for the fire victims which was ultimately shut down by a government concerned about un-named "hostile external forces".
The conversation also touches on the impact of the fire on the local community and the role of social media in shaping public perceptions, and how overseas media narratives quick to blame Hong Kong's historic tradition of bamboo scaffolding for the fire's spread lead to a surge of Hongkongers taking to social media to refute these narratives. They speak about their efforts to manage mental health and exhaustion in days-long shifts dominated by trying to keep track of social media.
Find out how the FCC has joined the aid effort and how you can help the victims of the Tai Po fire:
https://www.fcchk.org/stand-together-how-you-can-support-the-tai-po-recovery-efforts/
The Young Reporter: https://tyr-jour.hkbu.edu.hk/
Written and produced by Jarrod Watt
Theme music composed and performed by Allen Youngblood
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Laura Westbrook and Elaine Lai are journalists both born and raised in Hong Kong and both were reporting on the Tai Po tower fires for foreign news organisations. In many ways they experienced this news event very differently from both local and overseas born journalists covering this disaster. Laura Westbrook works for broadcast media channels all over the world, covering news all over south east Asia, but has been most recently - and most prominently - been reporting for the Al Jazeera channel, while Elaine Lai is a fourth year journalism student at Hong Kong Baptist University who works as an intern for Associated Press and also works as editor in chief of Hong Kong’s oldest student newspaper, the Young Reporter. Tai Po is where Elaine was born and raised, and where Laura started her first job in broadcast journalism. Both were among the first media on the scene, and subsequently worked for days on end covering what is now one of the worst fire disasters in Hong Kong's history. They discuss some of what was missed in world media coverage of Tai Po, and what it was like to see the blossoming of a huge community response for the fire victims which was ultimately shut down by a government concerned about un-named "hostile external forces". The conversation also touches on the impact of the fire on the local community and the role of social media in shaping public perceptions, and how overseas media narratives quick to blame Hong Kong's historic tradition of bamboo scaffolding for the fire's spread lead to a surge of Hongkongers taking to social media to refute these narratives. They speak about their efforts to manage mental health and exhaustion in days-long shifts dominated by trying to keep track of social media. Find out how the FCC has joined the aid effort and how you can help the victims of the Tai Po fire: https://www.fcchk.org/stand-together-how-you-can-support-the-tai-po-recovery-efforts/ The Young Reporter: https://tyr-jour.hkbu.edu.hk/ Written and produced by Jarrod Watt Theme music composed and performed by Allen Youngblood Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.