appreciate that if reports are to remain
newsworthy they must be issued quickly, often
before their accuracy can be verified or
corroborated or their significance appraised,
and that because of this need for speed,
inaccurate
Some
unee: roborated reports are an occasional and
inevitable hazard. These considerations do
not, however, apply in the case of a programme
such as the one now under consideration.
journalistic licence we must allow, but I do
not consider that this licence should be
carried to the point of giving a totally
misleading impression of a situation to those
who are not in a position to question what they
are told. For example, Mr. Pettifer said
11
that a few weeks ago, hundreds of bombs were
being scattered throughout the Colony every
day". The maximum number of bomb incidents
in any one week throughout the period
11 May, 1967 to the end of February, 1968, was
1,044. This would give a daily average of
149 incidents during the week in question,
were it not for the fact that, out of the total
of 1,044 incidents, 818 were due either to
false alarms or to hoax bombs. This reduces
the daily tally to 32 genuine bomb incidents
during the week in question: and throughout
the whole period of the disturbances, the
daily average of genuine bomb incidents was
five or six.
Parhope this repark of
Mr. Pettifer's is what you had in mind when you
said in your reply to the Governor that
"we have all been given a vivid fidea of your
situation and the complications of life in
Tiếng Kong "
/ I ..
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