XN000022-1995-01-12 — Page 7

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Governor: I very much hope that Hong Kong will continue to have the freest and most vigorous press in the region. I think it's not an exaggeration to say that that is the condition today. No one in government always loves what's said about in the press. There isn't a love affair between those in authority and the media, nor should they be, because it is your job to probe and to question and to find out what's going on and then to tell the truth as accurately and fearlessly as possible. When you have that sort of press, when the media behave like that, then you have a free society and you have an open society and frankly you have a successful society. You get better government if people think that they're going to be asked tough questions about the decisions they take. You get in an 'open community like ours where there is open trade, inevitably you get the open exchange of ideas. We have in government to do everything we can properly and legitimately to uphold the freedom of the press and that's why we're reviewing a number of laws which have concerned legislators and concerned the Journalists' Association which some people think could be abused and we'll remove those laws from our statutory book. But I have to say that the main determinant in whether Hong Kong continues to have as free a press in the future as it does today will be how much the community shows it cares about that issue and how much individual journalists, editors, and proprietors care about that issue. I don't invent stories about self- censorship and I hear stories about self-censorship from journalists and editors and proprietors. That affects the broadcasting media as well as the written media. So I hope people will stand up for a vigorous media in Hong Kong. I think it's important and I'm sure that if they do that in the future as today, we'll have not just one of the most successful and thriving economies in the region or the world, one of the most successful and thriving newspaper industry and broadcasting media as well. If I can just add, obviously all of us are sad when we see a newspaper close down, particularly one with the history of the newspaper which is closing today. I very much hope that journalists and others employed by the paper will soon find other jobs in other newspapers.

End/Thursday, January 12, 1995