Hong Kong Free Press has become Hong Kong’s only Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) certified news outlet, reflecting its commitment to high-quality, trusted, and transparent journalism.
HKFP underwent a rigorous, 130-point evaluation of its editorial and ethical practices by external, independent auditors over the past year. The process involved disclosing HKFP’s governance structure, sources of funding, training procedures, and policies to ensure editorial independence.
The JTI was developed in 2019 as an ISO standard by a panel of 130 experts, including journalists, institutions, regulatory bodies, publishers, and new technology players. It aims to tackle the rise in disinformation and the acceleration of unregulated AI.
Over 2,000 media outlets have joined the certification process across 119 countries – around 100 outlets are now fully on board.
Unlike other credibility indicators, the JTI evaluation considers how journalistic work is put together, not just the output.
It works as a benchmark for governments, regulators, advertisers, social media platforms, and search engines to be assured that HKFP delivers quality, accurate, and ethical reporting. Already, the algorithms of search engine Bing, digital newsstand Cafeyn, content aggregator YEP and fact-checking application Ask Vera recognise the certification.
Credibility hallmarks
HKFP’s JTI accreditation is just the latest in a number of credibility hallmarks the news outlet has gained in recent years.
Trust Project: In 2023, we gained the Trust Project hallmark – the first global transparency standard that proves a news outlet’s commitment to original reporting, accuracy, inclusion, and fairness. As part of their external audit, we publicly disclosed and expanded our ethical policies, standards, reporting and corrections guidelines to adhere to the eight Trust Indicators.
NewsGuard: HKFP meets all nine of the NewsGuard initiative’s credibility and transparency criteria. NewsGuard lists green or red credibility scores for over 6,000 news sites, with assessments carried out by humans, not algorithms. Our 100 per cent rating reflects that we avoid false content, publish information responsibly, correct errors, label opinion and ads, avoid deceptive headlines, disclose ownership, financing and conflicts, and provide biographical information on writers.
Ad Fontes Media: In 2024, we were rated by Ad Fontes Media experts as providing reliable, factual reporting from a politically neutral perspective. HKFP scored 43.20 in terms of reliability and news value, similar to NPR, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, and slightly above Sky News, The Economist and the local South China Morning Post. HKFP is among the most politically balanced news outlets in the world, according to the watchdog’s rating.
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