COMMUNICATIONS, THE MEDIA AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
larger papers include overseas Chinese communities in their distribution networks, and some have editions printed outside Hong Kong, in particular in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.
One English daily publishes a daily Braille edition, in conjunction with the Hong Kong Society for the Blind. Two English dailies and eight Chinese dailies are published on the Internet. Five news agency bulletins, issued in Chinese, English and Japanese, are registered as newspapers.
Hong Kong is the base for regional publications such as Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review. The Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, USA Today, International Herald Tribune and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun are also printed here.
Several organisations represent and cater for people working in the news media in Hong Kong. The Newspaper Society of Hong Kong represents Chinese and English newspaper proprietors. It is empowered to act in matters that affect the interests of its members.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) is the only industry-wide union of journalists in Hong Kong and one of the most active. It has 600 members, an estimated one-fifth of Hong Kong's journalists. From its beginnings in 1968 as a union with a high proportion of expatriate members, Hong Kong Chinese now comprise the bulk of its membership.
The association promotes the right to freedom of expression and focuses on a range of
press freedom and ethics concerns. Its subcommittees cover such issues as press freedom, pay, labour rights and disputes, training, China-related matters, international solidarity and book publishing.
The Foreign Correspondents' Club offers its members social facilities and a range of professional activities, including news conferences, speeches, briefings and films.
As a result of the reorganisation of the training boards under the umbrella of the Vocational Training Council, the Journalism Training Board and the Advertising, Public Relations and Publishing Training Board were merged into a single body, the Mass Communications Training Board.
During the year, the council allocated $300,000 to this new training board to organise 16 upgrading courses for people working in the media. The most popular course was a 'Journalism Symposium '99'. The symposium's theme was media management but participants also discussed at length the subject of ethics. The training board continued to provide a subsidy of $32,500 to the Hong Kong Journalists Association so that it could arrange talks and seminars for its members.
Information Policy
The Secretary for Home Affairs has overall responsibility for policy formulation on information and related matters, while the Director of Information Services advises the Government on the presentation of its policies, and on public relations matters generally, within Hong Kong and overseas. The main aims are to ensure an open exchange of information in the community and to keep the media fully informed of the Government's plans, policies and activities, and to promote Hong Kong's image abroad.
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