Over the past few years, some have questioned the BBC’s impartiality in its stories about Hong Kong in the wake of the violent anti-China protests of 2019-20. My own perception is that its tone has generally been too sympathetic toward the rioters who wreaked such havoc on the city for months, destroying transport infrastructure, petrol bombing the police, vandalizing and setting fire to buildings, attacking Putonghua speakers, scrawling anti-China slogans, and generally turning one of the safest, most tolerant cities in the world into a cauldron of violence and hate. In common with the rest of the British media, the BBC has seemed reluctant to roundly condemn these violent activists, as the riots were taking place under the untouchable “pro-democracy” umbrella and were therefore seen as “a good cause”.

I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, to read a BBC article published earlier this month that now takes a much more supportive tone toward the tough sentences that have been handed out to rioters. The article focuses on the case of one activist sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in “violent disorder and arson with intent to endanger life”. The BBC doesn’t comment on the harshness of the sentence or attempt to legitimize the man’s actions in the context of the “good cause” he was fighting for. Indeed, far from portraying him sympathetically as someone bravely fighting for his beliefs, the BBC reports the tough sentencing in a positive way, quoting at length the words of the judge that he had been a prominent participant in “mob violence” and had been “intent on spreading a hateful message of violence”.

The article reports that police officers were injured by rioters armed with weapons. It also describes how the guilty man threw bricks and broken paving slabs, used fencing slats and metal poles as weapons against the police, and set fire to barricades. The prosecution case is quoted at length in the article. It describes how the rioting “caused significant amounts of physical damage”, adding, “Highly experienced police officers described the disorder as the worst they had ever seen in their careers. The violence had left them in fear for their lives.” The prosecutor is also quoted as saying that the nine-year sentence imposed should “serve as a lesson for anyone considering taking part in this type of disorder in future”. The defendant’s claim that his actions were for a “good cause” is given short shrift by the BBC report.

I do hope that the BBC will at least acknowledge the difference in the tone of its reporting here. As someone who grew up regarding the BBC as a national treasure, it’s been very disheartening to see its reputation for impartiality and balance being questioned

If you’re surprised by this change of tone in the BBC’s reporting, there’s something you should know. The nine-year jail sentence for rioting was for someone involved in this summer’s riots in the United Kingdom, not the 2019 Hong Kong riots. The perpetrator was found guilty not for his role in a protracted campaign of vandalism, arson, petrol bombing, destruction and violence spanning months, but for an incident of violent disorder on Aug 4 in which he smashed windows and stoked a flaming bin at the Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, a hotel housing asylum seekers. I’m certainly not diminishing the seriousness of this crime just because it was a single event. A tough sentence was clearly warranted. However, the crime does pale into relative insignificance when compared with the highly organized violence, arson and destruction which caused such mayhem in Hong Kong over so many months.

I do hope that the BBC will at least acknowledge the difference in the tone of its reporting here. As someone who grew up regarding the BBC as a national treasure, it’s been very disheartening to see its reputation for impartiality and balance being questioned. We’ve long come to realize that the British media in general can have double standards when reporting events at home and abroad, but we should never expect this from an organization as highly respected as the BBC.

The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, an international secondary school in Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.