Dd. 32855 Ed (4200)
NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN
4
of
perverseen
Bemark. Among officials and the general public
in Hong Kong there is understandably considerable
relief (and as Mr. Davies remarked, some reason for
self-satisfaction) that the communist campaign of
has
violence have been successfully overcome. But there
any Garter are no llusions in court as to the nature of the
continuing communist threat that lies ahead.
I have already aired my views on the standard of
B.B.C. reporting on Hong Kong to members of the staff
I did this at a press conference
of the Corporation.
I gave after my return from Hong Kong in October
when I had fresh in my mind the inaccuracy and
exaggeration of reports (including B.B.C. reports)
particularly on incidents in the border area. It is
difficult for me now to quote chapter and verse in
support of this criticism but I know that my views
were shared by others, both in this country and in
Hong Kong. I do appreciate that if reports are to
remain newsworthy they must be issued quickly, often
before their accuracy can be verified or corroborated
their significance
or very significantly appraised, and that because of
this need for speed, uncorroborated reports are an
>
occasional and inevitably hazard. These considera-
tions do not, however, apply in the case of a programme
such as the one now under consideration.
Some
journalistic license we must allow, but I do not
consider that this license 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 aretas
For example, Mr. Pettifer said 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