Nine has said it will appeal against a court order to pay $280,000 in damages to Chinese businessman Chau Chak Wing, after a federal court judge ruled that a 2015 Sydney Morning Herald article linking him to a US bribery case was defamatory.

Less than an hour after Justice Michael Wigney ruled on Friday that the article, written by journalist John Garnaut, had used “imprecise and loose” language in a way that was “derisive” of Chau, the Herald’s new owner said it would appeal.

“We are disappointed that the judge did not uphold our public interest defence, which was the only one available to us under Australian defamation law, and was not persuaded by our evidence,” a spokesman for the group said in a statement.

“John Garnaut is a careful, meticulous, Walkley award-winning journalist who is globally recognised for his China expertise.

“Within the current defamation regime, both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age remain committed to the role of public interest journalism. We source and check all our stories vigorously and take great pride in our role to inform the community debate.”

Chau had brought the defamation proceedings against the Sydney Morning Herald over an online article titled “Are Chau Chak Wing’s circles of influence in Australia-China ties built on hot air?”, published on 16 October 2015.

Published shortly after US prosecutors accused Chinese-Australian woman Sheri Yan and her finance chief Heidi Park of arranging a $US200,000 bribe for former UN general assembly president John Ashe in 2013, Garnaut’s article said Chau was an unindicted co-conspirator identified in US court documents by the pseudonym CC-3.

During the trial, Chau’s barrister, Bruce McClintock SC, did not dispute whether Chau was CC-3, but argued that the Herald had gone further in its article and wrongly asserted that he was guilty of an offence.

Chau claimed the article defamed him by falsely suggesting he bribed Ashe and participated in a conspiracy to bribe.

The other imputations were that Chau acted in so seriously wrong a manner as to deserve extradition to the US on criminal charges and that he created his Australian business empire by making illicit payments to government officials.

Fairfax Media, the owner of the Herald at the time, and Garnaut denied the article insinuated “actual guilt”, saying it suggested he was “suspected” of being involved in the UN scandal, and contended the publication was reasonable.

If Wigney did find it conveyed those imputations, it sought to plead the qualified privilege defence, which requires a media outlet to show the defamatory article was of public interest and that it acted reasonably in publishing it.

On Friday, Wigney ruled in Chau’s favour on all but the last imputation, and dismissed the Herald’s qualified privilege defence.

In the summary judgment read out in the courtroom, the judge said the article had gone “well beyond” merely imputing suspicion by “a combination of disparagement, insinuation and suggestion” which had “effectively imputed guilt”.

Wigney said the “general tone and tenor” of the article was “rather derisive and disparaging if not at times sneering and contemptuous” of Chau, and that it used “sensational and hyperbolic language” and included “gratuitous barbs”.

A reference in the article to a $70m Vaucluse mansion Chau bought from James Packer contained an “implicit insertion” that he was implicated in a bribery, Wigney said, because it stated Chau might never live there but instead “bunker down in China”.

The judge said denials from Chau included in the article were “undermined” by being “disaggregated” throughout the text and a general tone of “incredulity”, which was likely to cause an ordinary, reasonable reader to be “dismissive” and “sceptical”.

He dismissed the defence of qualified privilege, saying he was not convinced the Herald’s conduct was “reasonable under the circumstances” in part because of the suggestion Chau might remain in China to avoid extradition despite not having been charged with any offence.

After the judgment, the chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, Andrew Hastie, released a statement saying the judgment would “be carefully analysed”.

“Generally speaking, we are concerned about the impact that defamation laws in Australia are having on responsible journalism that informs Australians about important national security issues,” he said.

“The ability to report freely and fairly on national security is a vital part of our democracy. Australia’s democratic institutions – including our free media – must be protected. We take this responsibility very seriously and will continue to work as a committee to uphold Australian sovereignty and interests.”