Stand News was an online news media established in Hong Kong in December 2014.  It carried news, editorials, op-eds, blogs, and features. An opinion survey conducted during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB Protests indicated that Hong Kong young people rated it highly for credibility, and it co-investigated on the 2021 Pandora Papers. However, on 29 December 2021, following the Hong Kong police force’s raid of its premises, Stand News ceased operation and all online contents were removed. Its corporate proprietor and two former editors were prosecuted for conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

‘Seditious publication’ was one of several offences in the Crimes Ordinance that were based on the British concept of ‘seditious intention’.  Since 2020, the Hong Kong authorities had reactivated enforcement of these type of offences. Against the Stand News defendants, the prosecution claimed that they and others agreed to publish and/or reproduce publications that involved, among others, ‘bringing into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the Chinese Central Authorities and the Hong Kong Government’, and ‘raising discontent or disaffection amongst Hong Kong inhabitants’.

The trial began in October 2022. The trial court reserved verdict in June 2023 but delayed delivering it, pending the Hong Kong Court of Appeal’s judgment in the Tam Tak Chi case. This author discussed this appellate judgment in an April 2024 blogpost.

When the trial court delivered its verdict convicting all the Stand News defendants on 29 August 2024, it rejected the defence’s constitutional arguments, relying on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal’s decision in Tam’s application for leave to appeal, which held that it was not reasonably arguable that the seditious intention offences were legally uncertain and disproportionate restrictions of freedom of expression. Instead, the verdict, now officially translated into English, offers a detailed and contemporary approach on the distinction between journalism and sedition.

The prosecution relied on 17 articles (which was less than 1% of Stand News’s output) as ‘overt acts’ of the criminal agreement. The trial court found 11 to have ‘seditious intention’. Nine were blog articles, i.e. short articles of 500 to 1,000 Chinese characters. The trial court found them to have denigrated law enforcement actions, attacked the Hong Kong National Security Law and the seditious intention offences, and used incomparable examples to incite public hatred of the Hong Kong Government. Two went further to rally readers to be ready to act against the Chinese Central Authorities. None substantiated claims with any objective basis.

The foundation of the findings above was the trial court’s appreciation of the ‘context of the relevant time period’, following the jury directions reported in R v Aldred (1909). Reading opinion surveys, the trial court concluded that throughout the publication period, a few to several million Hong Kong inhabitants distrusted the Chinese Central Authorities and the Hong Kong Government, and were susceptible to incitement, disinformation or rumours. Conflicts between the Government and inhabitants and social divisions became more likely to happen.

Pui-kuen Chung and Patrick Lam, the two former chief editors, were convicted on the findings that each of them had, in that capacity and knowing of the intention of the seditious articles, approved them for publication, and that each of them had agreed with Tony Tsoi, who directed Stand News’s corporate proprietor, regarding the continuous publication of seditious articles on Stand News. The editors’ claim that they only sought to achieve quality journalism and disseminate information and pluralistic views was rejected.

Rather, the trial court found from its reading of Stand News’s ‘Launch Statement’ (which included this indication: ‘Hong Kong is the home turf of Hongkongers; defending the home turf is our unyielding stance.’) that this online media (and its backers) had a political proposition, which was ‘Hong Kong’s localism for Hongkongers’ autonomy excluding China’. And, during the Anti-ELAB Protests, Stand News allowed itself to ‘become a tool for smearing and vilifying the Central Authorities and the [Hong Kong] Government’.

Whilst the verdict made stark and political findings and it has been seen as exemplifying the decline of Hong Kong’s press freedom, commentaries continue in the press here. For example, John Burns, a political scientist, had written on the press’s watchdog role after the verdict. What the verdict does frown against are articles that offer a singular political viewpoint or interpret governmental acts with exaggeration and emotion. Omitting basic facts in a dispute is risky. Coincidentally, one Hong Kong newspaper’s chief editor wrote to columnists recently, urging them to be ‘more prudent’, base comments on ‘accurate facts’ and be ‘law-abiding and measured’. His note ended ominously: ‘Otherwise it is difficult to say whether one day crisis may come.’

Readers of this blog may find one detail in the verdict remarkable. The trial court referred to British and European free speech and journalistic ethics materials. It was positively impressed with their emphases of ‘good faith’, ‘reliability’ and ‘verification of facts’ in news reporting and of ‘a sufficient factual basis even for a value judgment’. Editorial decision-making carries duties and responsibilities. This Hong Kong verdict’s prohibitions could well be not wildly far from the restrictions on press freedom internationally accepted as permissible.