I have read SCMP on a regular basis since around the time Jack Ma bought it. I felt that outside of the editorial section it was a pretty decent press organization until recently, with the Hong Kong protests being a surprising high point with good, objective and informative coverage all Summer and Fall. Their Coronavirus coverage has not been good at all, mostly reprinting State media press releases and human interest stuff from Hong Kong. I think they experience the same issues foreign organizations do trying to report from the Mainland.

If anyone can be said to have shown some backbone in this crisis, it's Caixin, but they have had to pull lots of stories due to CCP pressure as well.