The award-winning Hong Kong journalist Bao Choy won her appeal on Monday, June 5, related to her investigative documentary in a rare court ruling upholding media freedom.
Bao Choy was found guilty of deceiving the government in April 2021, by getting vehicle ownership records for journalistic purposes. This was after she had declared that she would use the information for “other traffic and transport related issues”.
Choy was trying to track down perpetrators of a mob attack on protesters and commuters inside a train station during the massive anti-government protests in 2019.
She was fined 6,000 Hong Kong dollars (€714) for two counts of making false statements. A ruling that sparked outrage among local journalists over the city’s shrinking media freedom. Choy herself described it as “a very dark day” for Hong Kong journalists.
But on June 5, judges of the city’s top court unanimously ruled in the journalist’s favor. Thereby overruling her conviction and setting aside the sentence.
“7.21 Who Owns the Truth”, the story Choy co-produced, won the Chinese-language documentary award at the Human Rights Press Awards in 2021. The judging panel hailed it as an “investigative reporting classic.”
Source: euronews.com
