'Apple Daily plays up China Covid concerns'
Apple Daily gave extensive coverage to questions raised overseas about the Covid-19 outbreak in China because of its founder's stance, the national security trial of Jimmy Lai heard on Friday. Testifying as an accomplice witness, former associate publisher Chan Pui-man said Lai believed Beijing was hiding information about the pandemic from the outside world, and that his stance affected the now-defunct newspaper’s editorial decisions. Chan said during the early days of Covid in 2020, Apple Daily reported on the source of the outbreak, the latest situation as well as medical discoveries about the coronavirus. She said the newspaper described the disease as “Wuhan pneumonia”. “When many scientists, people from the medical field and overseas governments raised questions, we played the news up and made the reporting more conspicuous,” she said. The court also heard other issues that Lai paid attention to and wanted the newspaper to cover. According to minutes of a lunch box meeting between the Apple Daily boss and staff, they discussed coming up with special reports on topics such as the extradition bill and the China-US trade war.  Chan said her ex-boss gave “lots of opinions on every issue” during these meetings. In a commentary by the defendant in April 2020 that was shown in court, Lai wrote about pressing on under the “despotic tyranny” of the Chinese Communist Party. “What we can stick to, as Chan Pui-man said, is our courage to knowingly do the impossible,” the article read. Asked about her remark cited by Lai, Chan told the court it came from a column she'd written for the paper. “There were still people who came out to talk about universal suffrage and the five demands. By then, it was clear that those calls would not be heeded. Looking back, I admired the persistence of those people,” she said. Chan is among six former senior staff who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit collusion.  Lai has denied three conspiracy charges relating to collusion with foreign forces and sedition. The trial resumes on February 19.