RTHK Programme Wins Award As Producer Faces Verdict

An RTHK documentary investigating the 2019 Yuen Long mob attack has won the prestigious annual Kam Yiu-yu Press Freedom Award, as one of the producers awaits the verdict in a court case connected to the programme.

The award went to an episode of Hong Kong Connection titled 7.21 Who Owns the Truth, which aired on July 13 last year.

As it announced the result on Wednesday, the Kam Yiu-yu Press Freedom Foundation said the programme not only received the highest average score among the 19 nominations, but also got the best scores from every individual judge.

The programme went through a large amount of surveillance footage to identify people believed to have participated in the mob attacks in 2019, in which armed white-clad men indiscriminately assaulted people at Yuen Long MTR Station.

One of the judges, University of Hong Kong’s associate journalism professor Fu King-wa, said: “Through detailed and professional use of public records, examinations of raw surveillance footage and interviews with key figures, the report raised important leads that the people in power refused to respond to.”

The award comes as a court is scheduled to hand down a verdict on Thursday for RTHK freelance producer Bao Choy, who worked on the documentary.

Choy has pleaded not guilty to two counts of making false statements in relation to car licence plate searches she conducted to try to find perpetrators of the vicious mob attack.

RTHK has said it will not accept any awards during a “transition period”, as a review of its operations is conducted by the new Director of Broadcasting, Patrick Li.