Reporter denies she used barrister as a scapegoat, court hears

A former South China Morning Post reporter told a court yesterday that barrister Kevin Egan did not directly disclose to her the identity of a woman on the ICAC's witness protection programme. But the journalist argued it was the 'only reasonable and logical inference' she could draw from what he had told her in two conversations.

Magdalen Chow Yin-ling, who has been granted immunity against prosecution, denied using Egan as a scapegoat after realising she 'might have done something wrong' in two of her articles on a habeas corpus application for Becky Wong Pui-see, secretary of listed company Semtech International Holdings. Both articles included the line 'a legal source said Ms Wong was in the ICAC's witness protection programme'.

John McNamara, for Egan, asked in his cross-examination of Ms Chow why the line in question appeared in her article published on July 16, 2004, but not her original, unedited version. She said she called a duty editor after filing her story from court to add the line 'a legal source said it was believed Ms Wong was in the ICAC's witness protection programme'. That was the 'only reasonable and logical inference' she could draw from her two conversations with Egan.

'I believe the other reporters' understanding was also the same,' she said, adding the words 'it was believed' were omitted in the published version.

Ms Chow agreed that Egan had never said to her 'word for word' that Ms Wong was, or that it was believed she was on the witness protection programme.

She recalled the barrister mentioned the words 'witness protection programme' and pointed out that Eric Yang Yan-tak, senior ICAC officer who was outside the court, was in charge of the programme.

He also told her to look up the Witness Protection Ordinance when she asked him to define 'protective custody'.