}
CONFIDENTIAL
2
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Services Department is a highly professional and efficient machine for the dissemination of official information and the preparation of publicity material. The expenditure of money and talent on this service should indicate the extent of the Government's concern to keep the public and particularly the communications media informed.
9.
On the other hand the Information Services Department is poorly thought of by the public, distrusted or resented by many other Government departments and certainly by many individual civil servants and openly and frequently attacked by the press.
10.
It may be said on the latter point that no official information service can hope to endear itself to the press who must on principle regard it as a hindrance to their free access to original sources of information. But this cannot explain the regular condemnation of the department. In the past month two British national newspapers, the Daily Express and Daily Telegraph, have gone out of their way to print reports by their staff correspondents criticising the service of the department. One cannot find parallels for this in other situations where correspondents might be thought to have met similar frustrations at the hands of official information departments.
11.
It is possible, though probably not profitable, to suggest historical reasons for various resentments which exist among foreign correspondents, local journalists and among other departments. But some of the friction can only be traced to the structure of the department and its relation to other departments and can only be cured by literally breaking the present structure of information services and reforming it so as to meet new conditions and requirements.
12.
This is an urgent requiroment because the relative popularity of the Information Services Department is something more than a matter of personal concern to the officers concerned. The test of the department's value is the acceptability of the information it distributes and if, as seems only too clear, that acceptability is reduced a drastic remedy is urgently required.
13.
In fact acceptability of material from the department has reached on occasions such a low level that it can really be said to amount to the famous "credibility gap" and that is a situation which cannot be tolerated for a moment.
14.
In the international sphere Hong Kong depends more than anywhere else in the world on a correct, firm and appreciative understanding. Locally, the Government in the absence of other channels of communication relies heavily upon the medium of the department to create appreciative understanding of its actions and policies.
15.
A starting point for the examination of the performance of the present information services is their place in the Government organisation with its advantages and draw-backs.
16.
The department grew rapidly from a simple PRO function to a fully-fledged department largely through the drive and energy of its first director. It is certainly to the Government's advantages that he was able to establish the importance of information work, and
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