Not only Jimmy Lai’s 20-year jail term, but local coverage of it speaks loudly of the need for the press freedom he has effectively given his life to champion.
The 78-year-old was sentenced last Monday, after being convicted of “sedition and colluding with foreign forces”, charges widely seen as politically motivated – designed to silence the Apple Daily publisher and punish him for standing up for democracy.
As World Editors Forum president David Walmsley said when urging his release in December, “Let him leave Hong Kong. You have made your point.”
This week, Western media have been more analytical, observing that the “lack of response” shows the security law and harassment by authorities have been effective in muzzling critical voices.
In a bizarre way, the effectiveness with which Lai ‘got up the nose’ of authorities not only in the former UK colony, but of the mainland giant – which has responded as if threatened – is a mark of the effectiveness of his medium… print.
His remarkable story began with stowing away to Hong Kong from Canton as a 12-year-old. From working as a child in a garment factory, he rose to manager, then owner, with US retailers as his customers. His Giordana retailing business later went Asia-wide, and family interests still include extensive property holdings.
Failing an opportunity to meet Lai, I was able to take a close look at Apple Daily’s print and prepress operations during a visit to Taiwan in 2007. As an occasional judge for what was then the PANPA technical awards, I went already aware of the high standards they were meeting.
In Taipei and at the press centre in remote Shinwu Shiang – one of two print sites in the country – the focus is on quality from prepress to printed copy was clear. Notably, chief operating officer Alvis Woo told me, 25 Photoshop experts – in a production team of 85 – spent at least ten minutes retouching each photograph.
Post-RIP files were sent directly to the press centres, where I saw four Goss Unversal presses producing their share of the print order (which rose to 600,000 copies)… their quality boosted by the use of Australian-made colour inks.
Special attention I recall, had been given to optimising the skin tones of scantily-clad women, whose presence in the pages appeared to be an important part of the mix, with James Tu telling me, “politics are not as important to readers as some publishers think”. If not, they doubtless contributed to its reach.
All of that apart, Apple Daily was nonetheless, a potent and powerful mix, and neither Taiwan nor Hong Kong is the same without it. The absence of much in the way of published comment since his sentencing is some measure of that.