HONG
KONG
PRICE: $1.00
ANNUAL
DEPARTMENTAL
REPORTS
1958-59
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER
HONG KONG
ANNUAL DEPARTMENTAL REPORT
BY THE
PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER
FOR THE
FINANCIAL YEAR 1958-59
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY W. F. C. JENNER, Government PRINTER
AT THE Government Press, Java ROAD, HONG KONG
NOTE
After the conclusion of the year to which this Report refers, the title of the Department was altered to Information Services Department. The old title has been used in the text, which refers to the activities of the Department at a time when the title had not been changed. The Report is, however, issued over the signature of the Acting Director of Information Services as the new title had been adopted when the Report was in preparation.
EXCHANGE RATES
When dollars are quoted in this Report, they are, unless otherwise stated, Hong Kong dollars. The official rate for conversion to pound sterling is HK$16=£1 (HK$1=1s. 3d.). The official rate for conversion to U.S. dollars is HK$5.714=US$1 (based on £1=US$2.80).
GENERAL.
ROYAL. VISIT
STAFF
PRESS SECTION
VISITS, ETC.
PUBLICITY
+
FILMS
FILM CENSORSHIP
CONTENTS
+
Paragraphs
1 - 4
5 - 8
9
10 - 16
. 10
15
17 - 24
25
26
•
GENERAL
THE recruitment of three specialist officers shortly before the year began made possible a considerable expansion on the visual publicity side, which is described in more detail below. The pattern of the work of the rest of the Department remained little changed during the year under review.
2. The number of visiting journalists and publicists increased some- what and averaged out at about one a day through the year. Several photographers of world-fame made long stays in the Colony. The most noticeable increase was in the number of commentators and film teams working for television: besides free-lances, there were representatives from both the B.B.C. (three teams) and independent television in England, the U.S.A., Australia, Germany and France. The recent expan- sion of the Department made it possible to give them a little more time than previously and to facilitate their work generally. Help of various kinds was also given to makers of cinematograph films, one of which (Ferry to Hong Kong-Rank Organization) was shot entirely in Hong Kong.
3. The number of feature articles about Hong Kong that appeared in foreign journals was also greater than before, many being illustrated by photographs supplied by the Department. It was noteworthy that many visitors wrote about Hong Kong incidentally, as it were: that is to say that while passing through on their way to or from Japan or China or other places, their attention was caught by conspicuous achievements like the new runway or the housing estates, and they came to the Public Relations Office to find out more.
4. The Department continued to handle the press relations of all other departments, as well as to issue statements of policy and informa- tion on behalf of the Government as a whole. Press arrangements at public functions are generally made by the Department, and press conferences were arranged for visitors with official standing.
THE ROYAL VISIT
5. The Department's main effort of the year came with the visit to Hong Kong of H.R.H. The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, from 6 to 8 March. Arrangements were made for about two hundred local
1
and overseas photographers and commentators to witness the Prince's arrival and departure and his various public engagements. With the additional help of two officers from the Colonial Secretariat, officers of the Department accompanied pressmen by bus, car and launch to the various functions; reporters and photographers had mostly to divide into separate teams for each function because of the difficulty of getting from one place to another in time.
6. For photographers, suitable vantage points were marked off, in consultation with the organizers of the functions, and in some cases raised platforms-in one, a 40-foot tower-were put up at the Depart- ment's request for the use of photographers. Wherever the number of photographers had to be limited, a pool was organized, and at four functions the Department itself, with the help of three Services pho- tographers, supplied pictures to the press gratis.
7. The Department's tour de force was the lighting (which required much ingenuity) and the other publicity arrangements for the Chinese banquet at the Ying King Restaurant. The proceedings were broadcast over Radio Hong Kong and Rediffusion, and full facilities were pro- vided, in limited space, for commercial, press and official photographers and for television-filming.
8. The Department issued no news items during the visit but took (and had processed by a contractor) over a thousand photographs and issued more than twelve hundred prints, as well as a good deal of background information to go with copies of the official prograrime. The arrangements were planned well ahead, in full co-operation with other Departments of the Government, with the three Services Public Relations Officers, with the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong and with members of the Foreign Correspondents' Club, and in this way they were generally acceptable as the most suitable for the various occasions. It was gratifying that everything went off perfectly smoothly.
STAFF
9. The Features Writer resigned and left the Colony in August; the post remained vacant at the end of the year. There were no other changes in the senior staff.
PRESS SECTION
10. No radical change took place in the organization or work of this section, which, apart from answering a great many questions by
2
telephone, continued primarily to concern itself with the issue of the Government's Daily Information Bulletin and other statements (always in both English and Chinese), the preparation of news bulletins for Radio Hong Kong, the making of digests of the vernacular press for official use, and the arrangement of press visits, interviews and con- ferences. The Press Room is manned by English-speaking and Chinese- speaking staff for twenty hours a day, the off-duty hours being from 6 to 10 in the evening; between 10 and about midnight the staff are kept busy answering telephone inquiries from the editorial tables of the morning papers just before they go to press. The library, with its works of general reference and abundant research material about Hong Kong, is visited regularly by a number of journalists and undoubtedly con- tributes to the balanced and accurate reporting of Hong Kong affairs.
11. The volume of material of various sorts issued to the press was a little less than last year, but this was the price of improving its journalistic quality still further. Just short of two thousand items of news were issued in the Daily Information Bulletin, and each was published in seven or eight Hong Kong newspapers an average of one more than last year. Police reports of traffic accidents, robberies and so on are issued separately, and during the year 2,486 items were put out in three hundred more or less daily bulletins. A little over a hundred photographs, plans and diagrams to illustrate press announce- ments were issued, and on average these were reproduced in five or more newspapers each, compared with half as many again issued last year but published by only two or three papers each.
12. The Department also issues a great deal of news received by cable or post from the Central Office of Information in England. The less topical items, not telegraphed by the agencies, get good publicity in Hong Kong, especially the services known as 'Colco' (news of the Commonwealth) and 'Feastco' (news selected as of special interest for the Far East). These and other less ephemeral items of news from London are issued by the Department in almost daily bulletins of the London Press Service. Associated with this service is one of feature articles, sometimes with photographs, by writers in the United Kingdom. Over six hundred feature articles were offered to Hong Kong editors for exclusive publication during the year; one in six got into print.
13. The Press Section's machinery for distribution was also placed at the disposal of the press relations officers of the three Services, the British Council and the Committee of the Festival of the Arts.
3
14. News bulletins in English, three, ten and fifteen minutes long, were prepared every day for broadcast by Radio Hong Kong and thence by Rediffusion. Two other bulletins in Chinese, three and seven minutes long, were prepared daily to be read over Radio Hong Kong only, the former in Hakka and Chiu Chow dialects, the latter in Mandarin and Cantonese.
15. Apart from the occasion of the Royal Visit described above, three press conferences were arranged, as well as thirteen conducted visits by road or sea for local reporters and photographers to observe and report on public events or on the progress of big public works.
16. There were no major changes in the number of newspapers published in Hong Kong; at the end of March, 147 newspapers and 31 news agencies were registered with the Registrar of Newspapers.
PUBLICITY
17. A big expansion was achieved on the photography side. Although no films were made and the Department had no cameras or other equip- ment of its own, over six thousand photographs were taken, of which 750 were in colour. The number of selected negatives held as stock in the library was increased from 250 to six hundred. About six thousand black-and-white prints were made from them, of which 1,600 (in size 10′′ × 8′′) were distributed through other departments of the Hong Kong Government and to about a hundred newspapers, magazines and visiting journalists.
18. Sales through an agency in London of reproduction rights in official photographs began to get into their stride, and a small revenue of $360 was collected during the year.
19. This output accounted for about half the time and effort of the Films & Photographic Officer and his staff of two non-professional assistants; the other half was spent on guiding and otherwise helping the many visiting photographers mentioned in paragraph 2 of this report.
20. Another big increase in output was achieved on the art-produc- tion side. Displays on the theme of Hong Kong's 'problem of people', were designed for the Ninth International Conference of Social Work at Tokyo in November and for the Labour Department's stall at the annual Exhibition of Hong Kong Products in December. For the Agricultural Show, also in December, the Department designed leaflets and a big map to accompany a working model of the Tai Lam water- conservation system.
4
21. A poster and a catalogue were designed for the exhibition of the Ho Tung Collection of Paintings in January, another poster for the Annual Police Review, and others for the tree-planting campaign, for post-early-for-Christmas, for the Dental Service and for the immuniza- tion of children against diphtheria. A new series of covers was designed for the Commerce & Industry Department's monthly Trade Bulletin, and Chinese captions were drafted and over-printed on eleven pictorial posters published by the Central Office of Information for distribution through Foreign Office posts in S.E. Asia as well as in Hong Kong. A big contribution was made to the Colony Annual Report in the form of graphs, photographs, captioning and lay-out of illustrations.
22. The biggest single production job, spread over the whole year and beyond, was publicity in Chinese for a Health Education campaign. The aim is to instil habits of simple hygiene, and the pictorial symbol around which the campaign is devised is 'Miss Ping On'--a kind of MR. THERM based on the Chinese characters for 'free from care'. A new full-colour poster with a slightly different message is issued every month, and cinema slides, handbills, leaflets and car-stickers have been dis- tributed with the same slogans. To supplement this campaign an oratorical contest for schools was conducted with pictorial advertise- ments designed in the P.R.O., and a cleanliness competition was held in resettlement estates with a 'Miss Ping On' prize for the cleanest block. 23. About sixty posters on United Kingdom and Commonwealth topics issued by the Central Office of Information were distributed to schools, clubs and institutions. There is always a good demand for posters, running at present at 1,100 copies of each, no doubt because they provide attractive glimpses of other countries and of activities of all sorts not to be had from books or even the cinema. They are also in good demand from teachers as a visual aid. ̧
24. Advertisements by other Government departments in the news- papers continued to be placed by the P.R.O.; 661 were handled during the year at a cost of almost $200,000.
FILMS
25. There was a small drop from the previous year's record number of documentary films borrowed from the 16 mm. library to 2,626 borrowings and audiences totalling 912,000. However, the number of films available on loan went up by 137 to 1,154 (155 acquisitions less seven destroyed as no longer topical or serviceable). In addition to this
5
service, British Television News was received once a week for screen- ing on Rediffusion's wired-vision service, as well as an almost weekly supply of British-way-of-life documentaries.
FILM CENSORSHIP
26. Details of films censored before public exhibition are given in the appendix to this Report. It will be noticed that, although the numbers of full-length features and of shorts fell back from last year's high figure, there was a further increase in the number of advertising films and a big increase in films for television.
April, 1960.
J. D. DUNCANSON,
Acting Director of Information Services.
6
Country of Origin
FEATURE FILMS (35 mm)
Czechoslovakia
China (Mainland)
France
Germany
14.
APPENDIX A
FILMS CENSORED DURING THE PERIOD 1.4.58 TO 31.3.59
Hong Kong (Chinese-Amoyese)
(Chinese
*
***
BOARD OF REVIEW
PANEL OF CENSORS
Total submitted
Pussed clean
Passed with cuts
Banned
Total Appeals
Passed clean
1
1
**
18
...
**
6
3
18
17
3
1
162
136
...
25
1
3
2
73
15
2
***
Cantonese)
(Chinese Mandarin) (Chinese-Swatowese)
...
Passed with cuts
Banned
1
10-1
د.
7
Hungary
India
...
Italy...
Japan
Korea
...
Philippines
Sweden
Taiwan
***
***
---
·
***
1
1
23 8
20
A
•
***
++
唱接
...
United Kingdom
U.S.A.
U.S.S.R.
FEATURE FILMS (16 mm)
China (Mainland)
India
United Kingdom
U.S.A.
NEWSREELS
United Kingdom
Hong Kong
U.S.A.
SHORTS
Canada
China (Mainland)
Frauce
Germany
Hong Kong.
Japan
Korea
United Kingdom
U.S.A.
U.S.S.R.
Taiwan
...
•
...
备
...
1
1
54
246 14
1
1
2
230
12
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1
1
5
17
1
3
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1
14
97
4 103
161
6
1
3
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HONG KONG
Code No.: 3043-59