Apple Daily void hard to fill: journalism lecturer

A media lecturer says it will be hard for another newspaper to fill the void left by Apple Daily, should the pro-democracy paper fold as expected in the coming days, after authorities froze funds under the national security law.

Several senior executives from the company have been arrested and accused of colluding with foreign forces.

Grace Leung from The Chinese University’s School of Journalism said the government was sending a clear signal to the media not to breach the national security law, which she described as vague and broad. She said the move would curtail press freedom with more journalists exercising self-censorship.

She spoke to RTHK about the paper’s legacy.

“It has promoted, what they call, that kind of populism in political terms in Hong Kong. So in the past, Hong Kong people are not so aware, they’re not so insistent on their own rights but after the past two decades, they become more aware of the rights they should assert and then they also want to take more initiative and become more provocative in asserting their rights,” she said.

“So I think that is their kind of legacy even though Apple Daily disappears in our eyesight, that kind of feeling – or emotions or sentiments – are still there in Hong Kong.”

Apple Daily halted some of its services on Tuesday, just a day after warning that the media outlet’s entire operations could come to an end by the weekend.

A brief message on the newspaper’s English-language web pages said: “This concludes the updates from Apple Daily English. Thank you for your support”.

The newspaper only began its English service last June, offering news articles, opinion pieces, interviews and satirical pieces.

The paper’s online financial news also came to an end, hours after the final live news show was aired on Monday night.