ENG-1995 — Page 375

COMMUNICATIONS AND THE MEDIA

news; five focus on finance; and the rest cover entertainment news, especially television and cinema news. The 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. Another launched a service on the Internet during the year. Five news agency bulletins, issued in Chinese, English and Japanese, are also registered as newspapers.

Hong Kong is the base for regional publications such as Asiaweek and the Far East Economic Review. The Asian Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune 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 affecting the interests of its members. The Hong Kong Journalists Association is the only industry-wide union of journalists in Hong Kong. It has roughly 645 active members, an estimated one-fifth of the territory's journalists. From its beginnings in 1968 as a union with a high proportion of expatriate members, the association is now very much a local union, with Hong Kong Chinese making up about 75 per cent of its membership. The association promotes the right to freedom of expression and actively focuses on a range of press freedom and ethics concerns. Its trade union activities cover such issues as pay, labour rights and disputes, health and safety, and training.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club offers its members social facilities and a range of professional activities, including news conferences, briefings and films. The Hong Kong Press Club provides professional facilities and the opportunity for journalists to meet socially.

With a view to upgrading the standard of working journalists in Hong Kong, the Vocational Training Council (VTC) allocated $350,000 to its Journalism Training Board and Advertising, Public Relations and Publishing Training Board to conduct some 20 upgrading courses for journalists working for the mass media. The most popular courses covered 'Journalism Symposium '95 — a new challenge for the media' (jointly conducted by VTC and the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong), 'Internet and Multimedia' (held by the City University of Hong Kong) and publishing seminars (by the Anglo-Chinese Textbook Publishers Organisation). The Journalism Training Board also provided a subsidy of $20,000 to the Hong Kong Journalists Association in conducting a number of short talks and seminars for reporters and sub-editors.

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, both 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 government's plans and policies, so that members of the public are kept aware of government activities which affect their lives; and to promote Hong Kong's image

overseas.

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