Apple Daily () was a Chinese-language newspaper published in Hong Kong from 1995 to 2021, with an English-language online edition launched in 2020. Founded by Jimmy Lai and part of Next Media, Apple Daily was known for introducing tabloid journalism to Hong Kong and being the city's only mass-circulation newspaper with an editorial position that has been variously described as pro-democracy, anti-government, or anti-China. In a survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Apple Daily was the third most trusted paid newspaper in 2019. In a 2021 Reuters Institute poll, it ranked fourth offline and second online among the most-used news sources in Hong Kong.
Apple Dailys editorial position made it a subject of advertising boycotts and political pressure. After the Hong Kong national security law was enacted, police raided its headquarters on 10 August 2020. On 17 June 2021, Hong Kong authorities froze the assets of Lai and his company, which was described as an attack on press freedom and thus forced the paper to cease operations. The final issue was published on 24 June, with over one million copies being printed (up from the usual 80,000). The newspaper's YouTube channels were shut down at midnight on the same day.
History Apple Daily was founded on 20 June 1995 by garment businessman Jimmy Lai. After the success of Next Magazine, another publication owned by Lai, he launched Apple Daily with an initial capital of HK$700 thousand ($89,750). Lai, a Catholic, named Apple Daily after the forbidden fruit, which he said if Adam and Eve did not eat, there would be no evil and no news. With the launch of Apple Daily in 1995, Jimmy Lai used "An apple a day keeps the lies away" as the commercial slogan.
Price war The newspaper launched against a poor economy and a competitive Chinese-language newspaper market. Political uncertainties from Lai's criticisms of the Chinese government also made media analysts pessimistic about the future of Apple. Its launch was teased by television advertisements where Lai was portrayed with an apple on his head, which would have been a shooting target for its competitors. In the first month of publication, the newspaper gave out coupons which effectively reduced the cover price to HK$2 ($0.25), despite a standardised retail price of HK$5 per issue set by the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong. The price was restored to $5 after a month, but the newspaper switched to promotion with T-shirts and coloured posters. The campaign boosted Apple Daily to 200,000 copies on its first day, to become the newspaper with the second highest circulation in Hong Kong.
A price war ensued between popular newspapers in response to Apple Dailys entry into the market. Oriental Daily dropped its price to $2 from $5 per issue in December 1995. Other newspapers, such as Sing Pao and Tin Tin Daily followed suit. Apple Daily reduced its retail price to $4 one day after Oriental Daily announced a 10 per cent drop in its circulation. As a result, a number of newspapers collapsed: TV Daily ceased operations on the first day of the price war, Hong Kong United Daily, China Times magazine, and English newspaper Eastern Express, a sister newspaper of Oriental Daily, collapsed soon afterwards.
In 2003, Lai founded a sister publication of the same name in Taiwan (see Apple Daily (Taiwan)).
Editorial history In March 2015, Chan Pui-man became the first female chief editor of the journal, replacing Ip Yut-kin. In 2019, Apple Daily was an award winner of the Hong Kong Human Rights Press Awards for their reporting on Liu Xia, the wife of Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo. In 2020, Apple Daily launched the English edition of its digital newspaper. According to the most recent filings prior to its closure, it had a print circulation of over 86,000, and its website had approximately 9.6 million monthly unique visitors in Hong Kong.
The paper became the target of the Hong Kong authorities after its very strong and vocal support for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Jimmy Lai was arrested in December 2020 and sentenced to jail in April 2021 relating to the 2019–2020 protests. The offices of the paper were raided in 2020, its accounts frozen and five people including its editor Ryan Law and CEO Cheung Kim-hung were arrested in 2021. The paper announced its closure on 23 June 2021.
Film feature Apple Daily was prominently featured in the 2022 film The Hong Konger produced by American right-wing think tank Acton Institute. The film had a positive reception among its conservative base, and showcased the final days of Apple Daily's operations before being shut down due to the Hong Kong national security law.
Content The newspaper was modelled after USA Today, with printing in full colour and concise writing. It also extensively used written Cantonese, when most Hong Kong newspapers used written vernacular Chinese, and a focus on reporting crime, celebrity news, eroticism, gambling, and drug use. It carried at least three pages of entertainment news at the beginning but this was increased to eight pages by 2000.
Apple Daily is described to have introduced tabloid journalism to Hong Kong. The focus on large colourful graphics and more sensationalist stories, such as celebrity scandals, traffic accidents and deaths, quickly made Apple Daily Hong Kong's second most popular newspaper. This type of journalism has also been replicated by other newspapers in Hong Kong.
Apple Daily attracted public criticism in 1998 for a report about a woman who jumped off a building after pushing her children out the window. The woman's husband was widely reported to have little remorse for the deaths of his wife and children. Apple Daily published a photo of the man with two prostitutes soon after the deaths. It was then revealed that the newspaper had paid the man to pose for the photograph, for which Apple Daily issued an apology after a public outcry. In the same year, Apple Daily ran a front-page article claiming that a lawyer absconded with more than of clients' money for her law firm. Apple Daily was ordered by a court to pay the lawyer more than in damages for defamation. In 2000, an Apple Daily reporter was sentenced to 10 months in jail for bribing police officers for information on criminal cases.
Journalism scholar Paul Lee said the establishment of Apple Daily has changed the Hong Kong newspaper ecosystem by transforming broadsheet newspapers into tabloids. Lee said newspapers with a high circulation, such as Apple Daily, The Sun and Oriental Daily, are known for their tabloid journalism as well as making mainstream reporting (see middle-market newspaper). Apple Daily did not join the self-regulation panel of the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong.
Apple Daily was also known for its coverage of breaking news and current affairs in Hong Kong and China. The newspaper had exclusive reports on political scandals, including member of the Legislative Council Cheng Kai-nam not reporting conflict of interest in 2000, and former Financial Secretary Antony Leung for avoiding tax when purchasing a car.
Editorial position Apple Daily favoured the Hong Kong pro-democracy camp. Its criticism of the Hong Kong government has been described as a marketing strategy. According to Fung (2007), the newspaper is also said to have sensationalised politics and produced public dissent. In 2003, Apple Daily was critical of the second Tung Chee-hwa administration and encouraging readers to participate in pro-democracy demonstrations with its front-page headline. It launched a social media campaign in support of students in the 2014 Hong Kong protests and its social media presence was considered a mainstream pro-activist community.
Apple Daily was also known for xenophobia against tourists and migrants from mainland China. In 2012, it published an advertisement that portrayed mainland Chinese mothers who travelled to Hong Kong to give birth as locusts. The advertisement, paid for by users of HKGolden, popularised the use of locust to describe mainland Chinese in Facebook groups and flash mobs in areas popular with mainland tourists.
Critical of the Chinese government, it was the only newspaper in Hong Kong that expressed optimism when Chen Shui-bian was re-elected President of the Republic of China in 2004.
The editorial position against the Hong Kong and Chinese governments has resulted in advertising boycotts. In 2003, several major property developers in Hong Kong ended their advertisements in the newspaper. According to Mark Simon, an executive of Next Digital, HSBC, Hang Seng and Standard Chartered stopped advertising in the newspaper in 2013 due to pressure from the Chinese government's Liaison Office. However, the Liaison Office denied it had contacted the banks, and the banks said they pulled advertising for commercial reasons.
Apple Daily also said Chinese-sponsored hackers have attacked it almost every week. FireEye said in 2014 that denial-of-service attacks on Apple Daily were professional cyberattacks that may have been coordinated by the Chinese government.
Misinformation against Hunter Biden
During the 2020 presidential election cycle in the United States, Lai and columnists began to publish opinion pieces in Apple Daily supporting Donald Trump and promoting falsehoods against the Democratic Party.
In September and October 2020, the newspaper published a factually inaccurate 64-page report produced by Typhoon Investigations alleging that Hunter Biden was connected with the Chinese Communist Party, which was later cited by far-right influencers such as Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui. NBC News reported that the Typhoon Investigations was linked to a fake author and intelligence firm. The original poster of the dossier, Christopher Balding, admitted that he wrote parts of the document and later stated that the dossier had been commissioned by Apple Daily. Lai later said that he was not connected to the dossier but said his senior executive, Mark Simon, had worked with the project. Simon resigned following the NBC News report and apologised for having "allowed damage to Jimmy on a matter he was completely in the dark on". According to Quartz, these actions may have led the protesters to be sympathetic to the January 6 insurrection.
In October 2024, president-elect Donald Trump, during an interview with a host who said that Lai was "very important to America's Catholics and the world's Catholics" and asked whether Trump would speak to CCP general secretary Xi Jinping about "getting Jimmy Lai out and out of the country," replied "100 per cent yes."
2020 national security law raid
The Hong Kong offices of Apple Daily were raided by over 200 national security officers on 10 August 2020, following the arrest of Lai the previous day for violations of the recently implemented national security law. Lai's two sons, four senior executives of Next Digital and three social activists, were also arrested on the same day. The arrests, coming amid Beijing's ongoing crackdown against many pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong, drew condemnation from international governments and human rights groups. Lai and other arrestees reportedly faced charges of "foreign collusion", which included advocating for foreign sanctions, based on the broad definitions of the national security law. Earlier in the week, the United States had placed sanctions on 11 high-profile Hong Kong officials involved in the city's democratic suppression.
The police raid lasted nine hours, as the officers rifled through the business property and carted off 25 boxes of documents. The police search warrant did not disclose what they were looking for in the headquarters. The police also brought Lai into the office for two and a half hours and paraded him through the newsroom in handcuffs, an act possibly aimed at humiliating Lai and to silence the press.