Court overrules Headliner warnings

Eunice Lam

The Court of Appeal has overruled the warnings issued by the Communication Authority against RTHK's satirical TV program Headliner, while also ruling partly in favor of the appeal with the public broadcaster's union and the Hong Kong Journalists Association.

An episode of the now-suspended Headliner was accused of insulting police and exhibiting bias toward the pro-democracy camp, leading to warnings from the authority in May 2020.

Finding the accusation unsubstantiated, the appellate court said the program aimed to highlight police efforts during the pandemic rather than insulting them.

The authority said it will study the judgment with its legal consultant.

In the 74-page verdict handed down yesterday, the three judges - Chief Judge of High Court Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor, vice president of the Court of Appeal Susan Kwan Shuk-hing and Justice of Appeal Thomas Au Hing-cheung - were unanimous in dismissing the authority's appeal.

The judges said the authority made a "fundamental error" by failing to apply the correct approach in identifying the factual allegation of the statement "had a lot of masks in surplus."

The program was trying to sarcastically say police were worthless and unprofessional, which is insulting to police, but the whole segment of the show was focusing on police efforts in fighting the pandemic, which is obviously related to police officers' working performance and public discontent of police within society, according to the judges.

As such, the court ordered the relevant rulings to be quashed.

"I accept that the police were mocked and lampooned as worthless and unprofessional in the opening and closing sequences of the segment and that this must be insulting and denigrating to them," Kwan wrote in the judgment.

"However, it is clear that when the opening and closing sequences are considered in the context of the entire segment, the mockery was directed toward the work of police in the fight against Covid."

One of the involved skits in the episode suggested that medical staff were facing a shortage of surgical masks during the pandemic but police "had a lot of masks in surplus."

RTHK Programme Staff Union and the HKJA filed a judicial review against the authority's decision and the Court of First Instance in 2021 ruled that the watchdog's findings were partially substantiated.

eunice.lam@singtaonewscorp.com