Is the press sacred and untouchable in today’s world? Some think it is. Yes, press freedom is a universal value and fundamental to a free society, but what are its limits, if any? These are pressing questions many struggle to answer.
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The answer recently given by the Hong Kong court in relation to Stand News, convicting the paper and its editors of sedition, however, is not very palatable to many.
It may be instructive to revisit a similar case in 1998. In that case, the publisher of a mainstream Chinese-language newspaper was prosecuted for criminal contempt, a common-law offence, for inciting others to disparage the judiciary in relation to a series of articles published in that paper.
Both the publisher and the editor were convicted. The paper was fined HK$5 million and the editor jailed for four months. The case went all the way to the Court of Final Appeal, which dismissed it. No one made a fuss at the time about freedom of the press and freedom of speech being suppressed, certainly not in the way the Stand News case has attracted attention.
There is no material difference between the two cases. Both relate to disparaging an important pillar of our society. In the 1998 case, it was the judiciary. In the case of Stand News, it was the Hong Kong government. The responsibility of the paper is the same.