Hong Kong’s Press Freedom Falls as Jimmy Lai Jailed (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: A lot can change in 25 years. Reporters Without Borders published the first World Press Freedom Index in 2002, shortly after it joined CNN here in Hong Kong. From then and now, the city has dropped 122 spots from 18th in the world to 140 out of 180 places in 2025. So what's changed? Media tycoon Jimmy Lai and his Apple Daily newspaper were at the forefront of the city's pro-democracy movement. It was a defiantly populist and deeply popular tabloid that backed the scores of Hong Kongers who paid vigil to the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown and marched for democracy. A quarter century on, the now 78-year-old Lai has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of sedition and colluding with foreign forces, serious crimes under the Beijing-imposed national security law. Six of Lai's former Apple Daily colleagues were also jailed, receiving sentences ranging from six years and nine months to a decade. The national security law has transformed Hong Kong. Supporters say it restored order after the social unrest of 2019, but critics point out dozens of opposition figures have been jailed, civil society groups have been disbanded, and outspoken media outlets have shut down. Hong Kong's top leader, John Lee, has repeatedly denied media freedoms have faded, saying that there is no need to defend it since it already exists in the city. As for the case of Jimmy Lai, he has said that the verdict has been handled in