Jesse Pang and James Pomfret
HONG KONG (Reuters) – After Hong Kong police raided Stand News and arrested two editors, staff at the publication decided they needed to shut down the online publication, which saw a surge in readership due to its hard-hitting coverage of the 2019 pro-democracy protests, to avoid further arrests.
That afternoon, on December 29, 2021, in a newsroom that had seen most of its terminals and equipment removed by police, a group of staff gathered around a computer and wiped the archives.
“It’s such a shame that all our hard work has disappeared overnight,” said Louise, a former video journalist for Stand News.
A Hong Kong court on Thursday found Stand News’ former editor-in-chief Cheong Pui-kuen, 54, guilty of conspiring to publish inflammatory material. Another editor, Patrick Lam, 36, was also found guilty.
The case marks the first sedition conviction of a journalist since Hong Kong was handed over from Britain to China in 1997, and critics, including the U.S. government, say it reflects a deterioration in media freedoms under years of security crackdowns in Hong Kong under Chinese rule.
StandNews began in 2014 as a struggling nonprofit with a skeleton staff that relied heavily on donations from the public.
During Hong Kong’s months of pro-democracy protests in 2019, the media outlet’s popularity soared with more than 20 million monthly page views thanks to its hours-long Facebook (NASDAQ:) live streams, in-depth features and investigative journalism.
StandNews’ liberal reporting has helped it attract new readers as people seek greater freedom and democracy. New donations have poured in, and the editorial staff has nearly tripled to more than 60.
Six former staffers said Chung, its founding editor, was committed to hard-hitting reporting using text, charts and video to hold authorities to account at a time of heightened risk, with the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily closing and arrests on the rise.
“He was really willing to put effort into any story that he thought was worth writing,” said Athanasia, the former reporter, who declined to give her full name because of the sensitivity of the topic.
And Chung’s enthusiasm for reporting the news was reflected by the StandNews staff.
On the night of the police raid, one of Stand News’ reporters continued editing his story until police took away his earphones, said Louise, a former video journalist.
“He really persevered until the end,” she said.
Louise said the “heartache” over Stand News’ closure never went away.
“It’s like a beautiful scar,” she said.
Nearly three years on, and despite the conviction of two editors, former StandNews staff are sticking to their jobs, which they say has led to a decline in independent reporting in Hong Kong.
“Stand News was so free and had such great ideals that I didn’t think there was any turning back,” says Louise, who is now a freelance video journalist and documentary director.
