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HONG KONG: THE TIMES
W/12/
/12/2
"CHED 30111
FROM: D H Gillmore
CC:
W37 270 2156
PA
7 March 1989 PS/Lord Glenarthur
Mr McLaren
Mr Burns, News Dept
1. Mr Geoffrey Smith, the Times political columnist, asked me to lunch yesterday. I took the opportunity to raise with him the question of the level of British press comment on Hong Kong.
2.
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Mr Smith was not particularly helpful. But, disclaiming any detailed personal knowledge of the issues, he said that, in his view, the ill-informed nature of so much of the comment on Hong Kong was merely a reflection of the general lowering of standards among British journalists in recent years. Too few today made the effort to keep themselves properly informed. In particular, commentaries and articles of the op-ed kind tended to be written by people who really lacked any true expertise on the subject on which they were writing. He made the point that, while a large part of the blame for this state of affairs lay with the British media, it was not all their fault. He thought that the Government in general (and he did not say the FCO in particular) ought to make a more concerted effort to provide informal briefings for trusted journalists, preferably at a relatively senior level. On the specific instance of Hong Kong, he said he thought that public and Parliamentary reception of the Joint Declaration in 1984 had been far too euphoric . For his part, he thought it was probably the best agreement we could have hoped to have got in the circumstances; but it was not an ideal one since an ideal was unachievable. As a consequence, the media had only subsequently, and relatively recently begun to pick holes in it all.
3. Mr Smith claimed to be unsighted when I asked him who wrote leader articles in the Times on Hong Kong. This may be true; Mr Smith seems to have fairly distant links with his own newspaper. He appears to devote most of his time to preparing a book on US/UK relations over the last decade.
4.
None of this is very helpful, I fear. What Mr Smith recommended is, of course, what we are trying to do. I fear we shall have to keep at it persistently over a good period before we can hope to see any results.
D H Gillmore
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