Journalist wins appeal, defends media freedom

Associated Press

Hong Kong: An award-winning Hong Kong journalist won an appeal Monday quashing a conviction related to research for an investigative documentary, in a rare court ruling upholding media freedom in the Chinese territory. Bao Choy was found guilty in April 2021 of deceiving the government by getting vehicle ownership records for journalistic purposes after she had declared in her online application that she would use the information for “other traffic and transport related issues.”

The investigative journalist was trying to track down perpetrators of a mob attack on protesters and commuters inside a train station during massive anti-government protests in 2019 for her documentary. Choy was fined 6,000 Hong Kong Dollars ($765) for two counts of making false statements at that time and called it “a very dark day for all journalists in Hong Kong.”

That ruling also sparked outrage among local journalists over the city’s shrinking press freedom. On Monday, judges of the city’s top court unanimously ruled in Choy’s favor in a written judgment, quashing her conviction and setting aside the sentence.

“The issues of falsity and knowledge were wrongly decided against the appellant because her journalistic investigation into the use of the vehicle on the dates in question did fall into the wide catchall category of ‘other traffic and transport related matters’,” the judgment read.