Apple Daily’s Covid coverage affected by Jimmy Lai’s perspective, says Chan Pui-man

Jimmy Lai Chee-ying had instructed Apple Daily to focus on the origin of Covid-19 and find out if the Chinese government was hiding anything, the newspaper's former associate publisher Chan Pui-man said on Friday. 

Today was the 27th day of the trial and Chan continued to testify against Lai, 76, at the West Kowloon Court for the sixth consecutive day. 

The prosecution said Apple Daily called Covid-19 by the name of “Wuhan virus” when the coronavirus first broke out and took over the world by storm. Chan then said apart from the origin of the virus, Apple Daily also continuously reported on the latest medical discoveries and developments of the pandemic. 

Lai expressly said Apple’s coverage should focus on “whether the Chinese government is hiding something” and “if foreign countries will challenge the integrity of China” in meetings with the newspaper’s management, Chan said. 

Chan also said Lai hoped Apple would run more feature stories other than daily news, such as protesters’ situation after they were arrested during the 2019 unrest, listed companies selling properties, and the first anniversary of the Sino-US trade war. 

Chan continued that international feature stories included U.S. news but were not limited to this category. 

Lai had also sent an internal video memo to staff, in which he said the number of subscribers would be the key to the paper’s survival and attracting more subscribers was an extremely essential task for them. 

Lai appealed to staffers to share any good ideas of further boosting the subscribers’ number as well. 

The prosecution also displayed an article written by Lai that blasted President Xi Jinping as an absolute dictator, and asked if Chan had read that piece. 

Chan then replied she would usually take a quick scan at the headline and the content of articles by Lai and not read them thoroughly because she was very familiar with his stand. 

The trial will continue in the afternoon on February 19.