CONFIDENTIAL
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Finding themselves in a machine with rigid seniority levels and rigidly delineated responsibilities information officers begin to see their work in terms of their output rather than the effect of it. Over the years the department has settled down to a routine in which success is measured by the comprehensiveness and regularity of the material issued and not by its effect on the public mind,
36.
This explains the apparent paradox of an information department which is much admired for its organisation and the methods it employs but as much reviled for failing to do its real job. The press room of the Hong Kong I.S.D. is much better equipped than any comparable organisation, on a superficial assessment better staffed, and is in a better position in the Government organisation to make information policy work effectively. But its shortcomings are constantly brought to notice where less well organised services are treated with respect and affection.
37.
To some extent the very efficiency and comprehensiveness of the I.S.D. is its own worst enemy. It is too obtrusive. The journalist enmeshed in the system feels inevitably that he is getting a "snow-job", a machine made substitute for real live information, and however unjustified this suspicion may be it is a factor in the acceptability of the output of I.S.D. which we must deal with.
38.
It is
The mere size of the establishment is suspicious. a "machine". Its establishment is 140! By the time you have mentioned that figure it is too late to point out that this includes 14 messengers, 17 clerks etc. not to mention that many of these officers are engaged on specialist duties like poster production or film-making. There is an irremovable suspicion that this great organisation, which promises so much with its big staff, spacious offices, teleprinter networks, somehow doesn't live up to the promise.
39.
Most people are incurably sceptical of professional public relations organisations. While they will accept architecture, medicine or accountancy as fields for specialisation they sub- consciously resent the idea that the communication of ideas, especially the communication of ideas about their own work is something they cannot handle for themselves. It is possible by example to demonstrate to such people that a professional organisation can help them to "put themselves over" but the establishment of I.S.D. as a separate, and in a sense "rival" department, makes other departments less likely to seek such help than if they had the assistance of their own public relations expert.
40.
The chief argument against the haphazard proliferation of departmental public or press-relations functions has been and still is that in a small territory where all operations are subject to the same political considerations there must be a recognised and uniformly applied public information policy.
41.
The solution seems to lie therefore in two directions
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