At the time of writing, the last edition of the Hong Kong tabloid Apple Daily is going on sale. The sun has not risen, but there are already long queues at newspaper stalls across the territory.
This was a result of a series of assaults from the authorities. Its founder and majority shareholder Jimmy Lai had been charged with foreign collusion under the new “National Security Law” (NSL) last December and has been in jail under remand since. Last week, its editor-in-chief and chief executive were also taken into custody after being charged under the NSL. Its parent company Next Media then announced that it would close the newspaper down the coming Saturday as the authorities have also frozen its assets and accounts, rendering it unable to pay its staff.
It was not to be. Yesterday morning another opinion writer was arrested. In the afternoon, the management decided to close the newspaper two days early, citing “safety of staff”.
The Apple Daily has been an interesting creature. Its reporting style is unashamedly that of a tabloid: sharp, funny, and incisive. From celebrity news to culture features, from horseracing tips to international news, it gave readers what they wanted in that genre, in honesty, but also in a way they would like it.
For its entertainment pages, this meant introducing US-style paparazzi into Hong Kong and Taiwan and pioneering the use of animations in news reporting. Western readers may remember a viral news animation about Tiger Woods - yes, that was Apple Daily's work. It was a quieter time with less to worry about, and readers liked its famously lewd yet witty gossips.
On the other hand, its culture pages serves a different dish to a different clientele. From an author of a BAFTA- and Cannes-winning screenplay (Farewell My Concubine, Lillian Lee) in its early days, to a prolific lyricist (Albert Leung / Lin Xi), it is hardly unrefined.
It has had its own fair share of scandals. Making a sensation "scoop" about a woman's suicide by paying the widower (Chan Kin-Hong) to visit a prostitute? Yes, that was Apple Daily in 1998. They lose libel cases, but again so do the pro-government tabloids like the Oriental Daily.
Editorially, it is firmly aligned with the cause of universal suffrage and the pro-democracy camp in Hong Kong. It might be less obvious at the time, but it did say it was founded as a paper that "belongs to Hong Kong" "in defiance of fear" back in 1995.
Over the last 10 years or so, however, it has morphed into something slightly different. As local newspapers had one by one come under ownership of businessmen with significant interest on the Mainland, it increasingly found itself a lone and proud beacon of dissent. It took on columnists who no longer write elsewhere.
Readers have started to perceive it differently too. Ten years ago, the Apple Daily was largely a tabloid with a pro-democracy bent. Today, Hong Kong democrats see it as an advocate for their cause, a speaker of truth to power with an endearingly colloquial style, a fixture that reminds them of another way of life before influences from the Mainland encroached.
Indeed, for some, the perception has started to change very early on. A history teacher of mine once told us that he reads the Apple Daily because it “holds the powerful to account, though they use vulgar words”.
Last year it started an English version. It was also unashamedly pro-democracy, but that was the whole point: to provide an alternative to Jack Ma's South China Morning Post.
For most of my lifetime, the Apple Daily has been part and parcel of Hong Kong’s local life. Of course that does not necessarily mean anything: all sorts of organisations had been integral parts of lives somewhere until, well, they are not. The comings and goings of newspapers should be uneventful in a fair media landscape. Readers and advertisers are free to choose what papers they patronise. But freezing a media company's assets on trumped-up charges so that it has to close? That's thuggishly abhorrent.
I’d always prefer a tabloid that speaks truth to power in short words and colloquial constructions to a broadsheet that verbosely defends the indefensible for the powerful.
I’d rather have the gutter press than the Pravda.
And this is why the Apple Daily will be sorely missed.
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| Queues for the last Apple Daily during the small hours of 24 June 2021 (Thu). Source: The Stand News |
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- The Guardian, "Timeline of events leading to the closure of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily", 23 June 2021
- BBC, "Apple Daily: Hong Kong pro-democracy paper announces closure", 23 June 2021
- BBC, "Apple Daily: The Hong Kong newspaper that pushed the boundary", 23 June 2021
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