The Correspondent, July - August 1983

July

-

August

1983

THE

lntern atio nally acknowle dged

to be the finest cigarette in the world

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FAREWELL TO A TRUE FRIEND With the death of Tso Yiu-kam, the Club lost one of its most popular members and many of us mourn the passing of a dear friend.

Mr. Tso, or Y.K. as we all knew him, was a delightful person.

He had an engaging grin, a cheerful smiling manner and a warm wit.

He was always smiling. Y.K. looked like an amiable grandfather which, of course. he was.

He was also a very experienced

and talented journalist. Although he was educated in Hong Kong, he began his working life selling medicines in Shanghai. After the People's Liberation Army took the city, he came to Hong Kong where

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he entered journalism.

His tenacity and hard work won him rapid promotion and when

he passed away suddenly at the end

of June he had for more than 20 years been editor of the Free China Review, the English-language magãzine which reflects the viewpoint of the Kuomintang Party and the Nationalist Government of the Republ ic of China on Taiwan. But he was no political fanatic, merely an honest patroit who carried out his duty as best he could in the way God saw fit for him to see it.

Y.K. Tso was one of those few people about whom it could be said that he never had a harsh word to say about anyone. He liked almost everybody and everybody, without exception, loved him. lt would have been hard not to feel affection for the pixie-like figure with the bald head and the big grin. He was a man with a big heart and a big mind. His wit was as affectionate as it was genuine.

He was a man without enemies and a man with a wealth of friends.

The day before he died, lshared a glass with Y.K. in the main bar.

We talked of a possible trip to the outpost Nationalist island of Ouemoy.

W¡th his usual humour, he warned me of the major danger that Ouemoy holds for the unwary - the local ferocious white lightning spirit - and how best I could avoid it.

Every Saturday, in a mezzanine floor room in the Club, Y.K. would meet with a bunch of cronies in what was billed as a "cultural and artistic" society but which in reality was the famous meet¡ng of the Hong Kong Mafia Alcoholics Synonymous. The week before he died he made his normal affable appearance and drank his customary modest couple of glasses of Campari and soda.

The next week, he was dead and after his funeral old friends at Alcoholics Synonymous raised their glasses in memory of a kind-hearted and true friend. lt was a toast echoed throughout the Club in a farewell gesture to one of the most popular and respected members that the FCC has had in its long and turbulent existence in Asia.

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HK GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING: CIGARETTE SMOKING IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH MIDDLE TAR ( MANUEACTURERS ESTIMATE )

Kevin Sinclair

3

TELLING HONG KONG'S DAVID ROADS, former FCC president, doesn't write stories any more. Now he tells the facts about Hong Kong to hundreds of journalists who visit the Colony every year. And he is just the man for the job, reports Kevin Sinclair, because Roads is an old storyteller himself and a reporter who can give journalists what they want - just the facts!

When visiting journalisß come to Hong Kong on assignment, as they do at the rate of more than 1,000 a year. the chances are that one of the first people they look for is former FCC president David Roads.

As the man in charge of the unit in the Government lnformation Services which deals with overseas visiting journalists, Roads is the person charged with making sure that the hordes of newsmen who come to Hong Kong every Vear to get the full story on the Colony.

As a former correspondent and editor of vast experience, David Roads is the logical man for the job.

His aim is not to peddle propaganda but to give journalists the facts they need to write their stories. What

they write is up to them, he maintains. The Hong KonE information policy is that there is no need to gloss over reality; people are free to see that they want, talk to who they want and write what they want. lt is üe job of the Overseas Public Relations Section to give them basic facts and to arrange interviews with the people who can brief newsmen on what's what in Hong Kong.

It's a job he's been doing for the past six years but David Roads has been looking at the Hong Kong story for a lot longer than that. After service in the US Marines during World War ll, during which he was badly wounded, he returned to his native Denver and went back to school. His ambition was to study to be an academic and return to the Asia he had come to know and love during his years as a flighting

STORY TO THE WORLD mementous times were looming

a lesson and the Vietnamese began their heartless genocide of the ethnic Chinese. The boat people were pushed out to sea on leaky boats and hundreds of thousands of them died. Many of the survivors reached Hong Kong. Also coming into the Colony were hundreds of thousands of Chinese swarming across the border and swimming over the bays. Hong Kong threatened to sink under the load of unwanted humanity and the two stories prompted another flood, this time of newsmen looking for the story.

Roads had to handle them, a job he did with great distinction. Over those difficult years, visiting reporters foulrd an unusual beast - a formal government spokesman who not only knew exactly what they wanted but also how they could get it and, what's more, had a real enthusiasm

David Boads læ6 former governor Sir Murray MacLehose and visiting newsmen through the cramped Vietnamese refugee camp at the dockyards in Yaumati in the crisis vear of 1979.

Vê put your

for Asia and Hong

Kong. China went over the border to teach Vietnam

to

see the

truth told.

Such an attitude came as a shock to reporters accustomed to dealing with devious bureaucratic liars in many other Asian countries where the boat people were being greeted with considerably less enthusiam than in Hong Kong and Roads quickly made hundreds of new friends - for Hong Kong as well as for himself. ln Hong Kong, of course. he had friends a plenty because he had spent most of his life here but some of the new friends he made when the eyes of the world were focused on the Colony were valuable in more ways than one. For a start, many of them (probably a majority) breasted the bars in either the old Club premises or in the

moneytowork foryou

working for a publication aimed at marines serving in North China. Just across the artificial border were Soviet troops - mostly occupied in plundering Manchuria of its economic goods before the Chinese Government once more took over the provinces and Roads and other reporters in uniform broke the story of the pillage.

But then it was back to school for a few years before he ventured east again as a student. A friend as a reporter than an academic so he started at Associated Press in Hong Kong and has been in Hong Kong ever since.

First he worked for AP, then for magazines, TV and American papers before "retiring to write seriously" in the mid 1970s. lt was in 1978 that he

told him he would learn more

went to GlS, partly because he felt the Colony

he

had come to regard as home was not doing enough to put its best face forward to the world. ln some ways, it was not the best of times to have become a government spokesman because

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Telegraphic Transfers.

Forward confacts.

Buying and selling banknotes.

Foreþ currency drafts.

o Foreign remittances. o Travellers cheques.

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Vietnam, 1974.

new Clubhouse, a Club of which David Roads was president (in 1966 when he worked for the old New York Herald Tribune.l ln addition to being a long-term member, he also wryly admits today that he was one of the men who decided in the 1950s not to pay the exhorbitant sum of $125,000 for the majestic old premises in Conduit Road.

"We were not, perhaps, the smartest of businessmen," he admits when talking of how the Club lost the opportunity to buy the mansion in which was set the film Love is a Many Splendoured Thing.

The film, in fact, could in some ways almost have been modelled on David Roads because when he was a young AP man dispatched up to the Conduit Road premises to interview a beauty queen from the Phil¡ppines. (He must have been one hell of an interviewer, friends remarked enviously at the wedding of David Roads and Pacita

man.

lronically, it was when he was still in uniform in 1945 that he got his first taste for reporting,

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Úrtemational hansfer of funds.

Francisco

in 1956. And not without reason; even by the of Filipina beauty queens, she was a

normal high standards stu nner,

Deok-PerËïö

)

ln his present job, Dav¡d Roads bears a pretty hefty burden on his pretty hefty shoulders. lt sometimes seems

We put your money to work for You.

that almost as many journalists make their way to his office on the first floor of Beaconsfield House as there are refugees coming over the South China Sea, Mirs Bay and the border

Deak-Perera Far East Ltd. 40ó Shell House, 2ó Queen's Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Telephone H.K. : 5-266111

He met Pacita during an interuiew at the FCC

barbed wire.

That's not quite true, of course, but on some days a casual visitor can be excused for thinking the United Nations has set up Asian headquarters in GlS. Take a typical day; there's a Norwegian film crew want¡ng Roads to fix them up with a police launch to take them to the Harbour Ouarantine Anchorage where a cargo ship from Oslo is waiting to unload 126 Vietnamese the crew rescued 150 miles from land; there is an American natural life movie team which wants to know where to get the best pictures of birds (Wanchai?); there's a very serious Japanese economic journalist wishing to enquire about Hong Kong's computer kings; there are two Nigerian newspapermen wanting to buy watches; there is a scandalised Australian from a women's magazine querying the notorious dog-eating habits of Hong Kong people and there is a Thai wanting infirrmation about something which David Roads cannot quite understand.

That's a day when nothing much is doing.

Other days are a lot busier, especially when he has to handle not only the routine work but also groups of visiting journalists inv¡ted to Hong Kong on some of the many look-and-learn visits sponsored by various official and semi-official bodies.

Such visits cost the taxpayers a pretty penny, but David Boads is adamant that it is money well spent, an ¡nvestment in cash that buys Hong Kong publicity which advertising could never buy.

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A couple of years ago Esquire magazine carried a piece by a New York Times staffer about the level of accuracy in that newspaper's reporting. The writer noted rhat fhe Times carried the legend 'All The News That's Fit To Print' on its masthead and ventured that the cautionary rider 'And

Only 68 per-cent Accurate' should

be added. The point being made was not that the Times wilfully set out to make errors, but such was the daily pressure on report-

Government to Announce Major Policy Change Today

ers to produce for the edition that

il

was totally

almost impossible to produce a factual, error-free story within the t¡me frame. Thus all newspapers, the august

New York llmes included, disseminate stories know¡ng them to be flawed yet justifying this.

Clearly the Times man cared but reading through Fleet Street's daily offerings, one

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is expected lo ht,¡

if Fleet Street any longer

cares

about the fiction content in its publications.

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understand, for example, that the Press

Council is studying a complaint against the Sun which purported to have a first person interview with Falklands VC widow Mrs Marica McKay. She denied ever speaking

.

to any reporter or representative from that newspaper and on the day in quest¡on the Sun's quotes came from her home-in the North

They say there are lies, damn lies and stat¡st¡cs, but

the figures for overseas press visitors to the GIS office of David Roads and his team are hard to dispute. Think of a major newspaper, magazine, radio station or television service anywhere in the world and the chances are that Roads' OPRS has handled someone from there in the last few years. lt is no easy job as th¡s reporter can testify because, a few years ago, at the height of the boat people influx, I well remember David Roads tearing at what little is left of his hair as he wondered how in ONE week he was going to shepherd around Hong Kong the following motley crews. TELEVISION - American, Canadian, lsraeli, Norwegian, New Zealand, British, Australian, Malaysian, Japanese, Swedish, German, French, Greek, Belgian, lndonesian, Saudi, ltalian, lndian, Mexican, Pakistani.

RADIO: All of the above plus lrish, Dutch, Thai, Sri Lankan and Bengali. NEWSPAPERS: All of both above PLUS Syrians, Ghanaians, Eygptians and people from publications and countries that do not immediately sprint

The tickof the clock turns news into history Wilh Reuters you will be the firsl to gel the news To pare those crucial minules and seconds off its news transmissions, we have ordered powerful new computer systems for oul Asian headquarters in Hong Kong. The new Sll/55 computers will put Reuters in the foreÍront of information service technology making ¡t possible to serve Asia at speeds up to 16 times faster than is possible today However, speed is not our only priority We think our subscribers also have a right to expect quality both in news coverage and in delivery, ln 1983 we added another 16 journalists to our worldwide editorial staff of 550 More energy specialists were lrained, bringing the lotal to nine in five key world centres During the same period, the Reuter Foundat¡on awarded four study grants to journalists from the Third World at Stanford University and Oxford, in the ¡nlerests of improving international communications Reuters Asian news summaries have just been launched and 1983 will also see the introduction of an improved version of daily international financial market wrap-ups Later this year, a new range of video display terminals for copy-editing will allow us to provide our subscribers with a wide range of improved edilorial services such as news packaged by subject.

But a world news organisat¡on founded in 1851 is not likely to ignore history, Over the next year we will also inlroduce an historical database news retrieval service, enabling our subscribers to retrieve the past, as well as the presenl

to mind.

6

newspaper.'

lncreasingly the Sun has been running

stories quot¡ng members of the

Royal Family and those close to them. The idea that any journalist, especially from the Sun.

Sandringham

and elicit a quote from a guest is risible.

Yet this is what the Sun gaily prints, sure in the knowledge that the Royal Family can only deny and even surer that they do not häve to carry that denial. Michael Shea, the Oueen's Press Secretary, says that the level of invention by Fleet Street tabloids, especially the Sun, of royal stories is such that he no longer bothers 1o issue denials.

The Sun's editor, the mysterious

Kelvin

McKenzie, was, of course, not¡ceable by his absence in December 1981 when the Oueen met Fleet Street editors (some since sacked) and asked them to lay off the Princess of Wales. Even she was too wary, having been virtually called a liar by the Sunday Mirror over the Royal Train tryst splash, to beg the assembled ed¡tors to try the

bounds of truth and established fact. woild maùêls

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.

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Bombay. Biisbane Canbeta . Colombo. Delhi Adelaide Auckland Bangkok Kuala Lumpur. Macau Madras Manila Fukuoka a Hong Kong Jakarta. Kobe Melbourne Nagoya. Osaka Peking Perth Singapore. Sydney . laipei Tientsin. Tokyo. Wellinglon. Yokohama

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editor

When refusing 10 accept the official Buckingham Palace denial, put out on the orders of both the Oueen and Prince Charles, that Diana had not spent the night

on the Royal Train (th¡s was before

Fleet Street back in 1973 when

the

engagement of Princess Anne and Captain

Mark Phillips was imminent? And,

he

insinuated, could the Buckingham Palace Press Office ever be trusted again? lt was a

poor excuse but the Precedent

the

Sunday Mirror has never adm¡tted - that ¡t opened the floodgates for was wrong the invented -story. After all, if Fleet Street can cock a snook at the Oueen and get away with it once, why not all the time?

It is not only in the realm of

royal

stor¡es that inventions take place. Almost everyone I have met who has featured in a newspaper item, be it a small provincal publication or a national daily or Sunday, has complained that they were misquoted, misrepresented or never even interviewed at all. Andy Warhol once presciently said that soon everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Given the American explosion of cable televis¡on and the need to fill all those hours be¡ng transmitted, this is now not only possible, but probable. Everyone, virtually, has a story and the media has a terrifying need 1o print or broadcast it.

Standards of accuracy and truth, ¡nevitably,

must suffer in the telling. And given the we lack of joy that complainants have are all gu¡lty of trying to talk an aggrieved party out of a printed correction the - has cynicism which the general public about the media, and newsPaPers, is understandable.

For many years the gossip

columns were the most likely arena for the invented quote. Too often a 'close friend' is brought

in to substantiate an item and it is

not unscrupulous are able to make free play of such an artefact.

These quotes need never be substantiated and newcomers to the diary world have been quick to utilise this ploy with total disregard to the facts. lt is as if Private Eye, which at least makes no bones about the accuracy of many of its items and has pa¡d out around f 500,0OO in damages and legal fees in the 21 years of ils existence in acknowledgement, has taken over many parts of the Press. New reporters arrive in Fleet Street and are not slow in catching on. The'Royal' correspondent of one tabloid is famous among his colleagues for making up the Oueen's quotes in the pub

difficult

to see how the

whence he has been dispatched

by

his

editor to come up w¡th an 'exclusive'. lt is cast-iron journalism: no comebacks and the reader gets exactly what he or she expects even though it bften seems that members of the Royal Family have a sound grasp of South London idiom!

Credibility

P¡ecedent

move

Reulerg 5/F Gloucester Tower' 11 Pedder Street Central Hong Kong

cameramen.

one who speaks Swahili?" K.S.

spoke to the Sun. They know that. I know that. You can imagine what I think of that

and keep their royal items within

This crisis was handled by Roads with his normal cool approach to crisis.

"How are things?" I asked him one morning amidst a seeth¡ng mob of uncouth international TV

"OkaY," he rePlied.

Then he asked: "l don't suppose you know any-

she was in London as a guest

- Daily Mirror. She told the of the rival Observer's diar¡st Peter Hillmore: 'l never

can telephone Balmoral or

fhe sunday Mirror

Robert Edwards hid behind an old excuse.

Had not the self same Press Office lied to

Ma¡l

her

Richard lngrams, the Eye editor, ex-

plains that he does not wish to have the majority of his items (City Slicker being the notable exception) checked for two sound reasons. He expects anyone questioned to lie as a matter of course, and, often, the

truth would ruin a good story. Sadly this is a lead which Fleet Street is rapidly following in certain areas, some of which have intruded to the front pages. And the more it happens the less likely the readers are go¡ng

to take notice when a totally factual,

is splashed. Contrary to opinion, the Brit¡sh newspaper reader is not a gullible idiot and the one factor in the continuing fall of circulatons which is never brought up is the credibility factor. People are stopp¡ng buying newspapers because they find ¡t hard to believe much of what is unbiased story

fed to them. Nearly everyone in

Britain

these days knows someone who has been mentioned in a paper, or knows of someone who knows someone, and the word has percolated through that a lot of it is not credible.

Sadly, there does not appear to be a safety net, given the urgency to print

today's stories tomorrow. Editors cannot

sit

hunched over tape recorders checking every word of an interview. The system, anyway, is open to abuse. One of Amerithat market is ca's weekly newspapers - of Ìhe National now saturated by imitators went on a truth hunt and Enquirer - its reporters when writing a ordered all story to back it up with tape recordings from at least two sources. lt did not take long for a gifted mimic to set himself up in business willing and able to provide any voice saying whatever was wanted for a fee. Such a ruse should shock but one is left with the awful thought: does anyone really care anymore?

PRESS THE IN ETHICS than Vlle're better other professions says veteran

Vsable Difference.

US editor Distinguished American Tln Hoqloqg rnd Sh¡¡eh¡i B¡tddtB

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journalist Norman lsaacs' decision to talk about journalistic ethics could not have been better timed given the

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Norman lsaacs, as the moderating influence in the debate

the type of financial uncertainty Asia

clearly sided with the editors.

has been facing these past eight

analysis

organisati on.

Little wonder that when a rumour triggered off the run at Honolulu Federal, there was panic.

The tremors in the financial institutions of this city were felt on the editorial floors of newspapers

+

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and television stations where editors were faced with the dilemma of not merely when to run the story -particularly in the case of Honolulu Federal - but whether or not to run

it at all.

During the question-andanswer segment of Norman lsaacs' lecture, it became evident that the floor was divided on the issue.

Senior media men found themselves being opposed by reporting staff who felt that having gathered the information and given the seriousness of

s-

the situation, editors had an

obligation to print the story as soon as possible. There seemed to be a suggestion, too, that editors were favouring the major institutional investors who, by the time the story actually broke, had long since with-

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drawn their money from both

financial organisations.

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Hongkong and Shanghai lìanking Corporal ¡on

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33

almost 40 years.

Five of the newspapers he directed received Pulitzer Prizes for distinguished service to journalism.

He is recognised as the originator of the ombudsman movement and until recently was chairman of the American Press Council. He served as professor in the graduate school of journalism at both Columbia and Stanford Universities and is a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He is currently at the East-West Centre's Communication lnstitute in Honolulu as a Journalist-in-Residence.

recent developments in Honolulu where one deposit-taking comPanY, Manoa Finance lncorporate, filed for bankruptcy and went into receivership and the Honolulu Federal Bsnk experienced a run for the first time in its history.

Honolulu is experiencing today

months or so.

Manoa Finance's problems are directly related to high ¡nterest rates and heavy ¡nvestments in real estate.

The company's main customers are the small investors, generally old folk, and the ills of the company have meant in some cases the loss of lifesavings to those unfortunate enough to have entrusted their cash to this

t-

Norman lsaacs is one of the best-known figures in American journalism. He was editor of several newspapers tn a career spanntng

His

O. What conflicts arise and how are they handled?

decision had acted responsibly and ethically. Had they printed the story before all the facts were in,

A. Most conflicts'concern acCuracy. The second largest number involve fairness. Good news organisations handle these with courteoui efficiency. The rest deal with them miserably. Arrogance leads the list

the damage would have

of journalistic

of these developments was that the men who had to make the

been

irreparable, he said.

The former editor of the Louísville Courier-Journal who is at the East-West Centre working with the Jefferson Fellowship programme, while accusing American journalists of "blind arrogance" and a superiority complex - criticisms which maY well apply to the profession as a whole - nevertheless felt the ethics of today's media compared more than favourable with professionals in the rest of society.

He was particularly critical of the legal and medical professions in the United States (and again his comments would be applicable to Asia) and concluded that educat¡on in the United States is in a shambles.

Norman lsaacs opened his lecture by posing six questions and then providing succint answers: O. What are the ethical standards of American journalism?

A. Accuracy, fairness, a willingness to listen to challenges, openly correcting errors.

Q. Who decides these standards?

A. The journalists themselves, through editorial direction.

Q. Are they enforced?

A. Fairly well on many larger papers and broadcast units. Sloppily on many others. Not at all on many.

sins.

O, Are journalists more or less ethical today than their predecessors?

A. Far, far more ethical. You can measure this by leagues.

O. Do Americans view the reporting of news with trust or scept¡cism?

A. Despite all the thunder on this score (and in which I have played a major role), the majority of Americans trust and respect the news organisations. However, a substantial minority of Americans - from 35 per cent to perhaps as much as 40 per cent - see reasons to challenge the credibility of the Press.

"This drum-fire Precis leads me to the fuller asPects. I have charged - and repeat it todaY - that many of the challenges to journalists' credibility f low from what I have publicly termed "intellectual incest" on the part of entirelY too many news people. They have thrown

about themselves a kind of mantle of superiority: that what is committed to paper or film is, in figurative form, cast in granite. The countless unhappy individuals in society who have run into these kinds of blind arrogance have drifted into the lists of non-trusters of the press. Their growing numbers inay well forecast major move in the Years ahead to

a

curtail the press' present freedoms.

this. But the journalists who talk only to their Social scientists recognise

own kind do not listen. Or have not.

And people like me, therefore, pound away at them incessantly.

And we make gains.

"lf

I d¡d not believe

so

profoundly in the importance of journalism, I could be induced to forgive many of the press' transgress¡ons. For, after all, when one compares the ethics of today's journalists with the professionals in the rest of our society, we may rank even better than most of the others.

"With¡n the past two weeks we have seen the majority of members of the American Bar Association reject five and a half years of effort by the best in their profession to change the ethics rules to permit lawyers to divulge clients' activities if they are clearly fraudulent and illegal. ln short, the nation's lawyers have decided

to make

themselves

.to crime. "ln conjunction with this. I am impelled to remind you that we have become a society tied up in constant

accessories

litigation. The courts are foundering in cases, so much so that Chief Justice Burger is pleading for a new higher-appellate branch to help cut down the load. "l am impelled to comment that the vast majority of lawyers have never spent so much as an

hour studying ethics. ln most of the law schools the steady faculty pressure is

to turn those with

an

interest in public service law to corporate law, instead. They succeed to a great extent because the dollarpull of corporate law is so immense.

"Medicine, the other traditional profession, skirts its major ethical problems with regularity. Medicine still prefers to look the other way when faced with cases of malprætice.

or to deal with the issues of drugp*ushing

or inexcusable overcharging.

"Education in this country

is

in shambles. The teachers are less interested in teaching than in plumping for less work and more money.

Read the current U. S. News & World Reporf and you will fi nd some intriguing comments by Derek Bok, Harvard's president. He says flatly that universities have gone too far in

trying to produce value-free teaching.

There is no such thing, he says.

10

Values always creep in.

the Government for a redress

can only touch the highspots of his remarks because of time, but I want to stress one - that

of grievances.

"l

students about ethical issues are likely to be limited in value and to produce cynicism if the institutions themselves are percevied to be ethically careless or insensitive -

"lf one were to depend on many of our army of journalists, or their lawyers, the First Amendment was created solely to protect journalists - to the point they have liberty to rely on confidential the sources and defy anyone to reveal those sources, even on matters that

which have been my own convict¡ons

are utterly trivial.

for so many years.

"This morning's Advertiser (Honolulu's major daily) brought home the great ethical gaps in our

"Let me offer these few samples of proper ethical conduct for journalists: "No reporter should ever

higher education system. More than a page was devoted to the episode of 20-year-old Herschel Walker, the Georgia football star. For what apparently has been a $2.5 million down payment, Walker has signed a five-year contract for some $16 millions.

"Yesterday there were more columns devoted to another sports programme where the team is rated No. 1, but precious few'of the players ever graduate. The ethical violations in university sports are so vast they are beyond measurement. But university administrations continue to permit it because their alumni want winners, not ethics.

"Which brings me back forcefully to journalism.

"My drive, as it is with others, is to try to keep journalism from slipping over this edge into blatant cynical conduct.

"The US is the only nation on earth that ever saw fit to exempt it from governmental reach. That was I susPect - is - a great step. But that most Americans, given the state of our educational processes these

accept an assignment where he or she has an open conflict of interest.

"No story of any issue in public conflict ought ever to be turned in without a strong effort to

efforts by universities to teach

past two/three decades, have the impression that the First Amendment applies only to the press. The fact is that the First Amendment contains

45 words. Four words, spliced in between commas, applies to the press.

They were inserted through the influence of those two glants, Madison

and Jefferson. You know it, but it is worth reciting over and over: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably

to assemb'le, and to petition

obtain comments from the other side. No editor should pass such an open story without a strong pro(est to the reporter. "lt is an ethical imperative, barring the coverage of accidents of fate where speed is essent¡al, that reporters do homework on stories they are given to cover so that what they produce contains a clear understandlng of the event or issue. "lt is also an ethical imPerative that when inaccuracY is called to attention, that corrections be published or aired swiftlY and fullY. "Ethics demands that there be no outside subsidy from anY source that a news organisation undertakes.

There are still many, many viloations of this necessary policy.

"At the outset of this small list I stipulated conflicts of interest.

Many newspapers now say that no staff member may ever take any role as publicist or other public affairs role for any kind of outside organisat¡on, no matter how honourable the

Spurr's message hits home Sir,

Pray allow me a spot of trumpet-blowing . . . but it's so rare

to hear something nice about

your work in our particular line of business. A young American school-

boy has won the Library of Congress essay award, from some 10,000 entr¡es, choosing as his subject my recently published book A Glorious Way to Die. This is how he concluded his essay: "l've always had a liking for World War ll and have read many books about it. I even used to cheer

for the killing of Japanese soldiers until I read this book.

"SuddenlY the gore a¡rd horror

of war came to me. War wasn't

so

great after all. lt was sad knowing from the accounts of the Yamato

survivors how homesick and worried they were for their families. Their feelings were no different than the feelings of our men.

"Now I understand that war is someth¡ng terrible that should never

happen."

I wrote the book because I believed the Japanese sailors deserved to be Presented as human beings. Seems like someone got the message. What a Pleasant feeling.

Chee rs,

Russell SPurr

"ln summary the whole ethical drive in journalism is focused on trying, by whatever means, to assure that the dailY rePort be uncontaminated by individual value

fuHn¡

Foreign Correspondents' Club of China during the war) swiftly noticed one glaring mistake.

Al looked at the role of honour

which hangs near the front door of the Club on which are inscribed the names of members who have been killed in action covering the manY wars which FCC members have Two names were missing, he said and promPtlY took action to çt information that would Put the record straight.

Acting as his leg man on the assignment was none other than the Asian Editor of Fortune, Louis Kraar, who on a recent visit to New York undertook to investigate the fate of

two long-dead FCC members who were killed in action 33 years ago.

What Kraar discovered makes fascinating history; both men were Time correspondents killed a few months apart a continent away from each other. Both were brilliant young correspondents who died covering insurrections or civil wars.

Both were men of great Promise snuffed out in their prime.

The first of the forgotten men

to

be killed was Time Correspondent Robert J. Doyle. He was riding across Java from Bandung to Cheribon with the Professor of Anthropology from Yale University, Dr. Raymond

Kennedy, when their vehicle was stopped by a gang of armed bandits. ln those days, lndonesia was in

or by reason of outside

tampering, or through anY other form of contamination. "lt - the ethical drive -presumes what rnay be imPossible: that all of journalism str¡ve to produce the most thorough, the most accurate and the fairest report men and women of honour are able to produce."

But the old eagle'eyed UPI bureau chief from Chungking days (where he was pres¡dent of the

covered.

undertaki ng.

assessments,

When former FCC president Ravenholt recently paid his first visit to the new Club premises he was delighted with what he saw.

Al

turmoil, Java was in terror of

diaries

And yet more on the Hilter

from The Bulletin.

armed

bandits and lawlessness was rife.

Doyle and the professor, it was learned much later, were forced at gunpo¡nt from thier jeep, marched into the jungle and murdered in cold blood. The newly-independent lndonesian Government promised an

investigation but the killers were never found.

Doyle had served in US Naval lntelligence in Warld War ll and acted in the China Theatre. His fluent command of Mandarin aided him in cover¡ng the civil war and the communist occupation of Shanghai, from where he filed some brilliant copy.

His replacement was another skillful Time man, Wilson Fielder Jnr., a reporter who carried out his job with verve and courage.

But soon after Fielder arrived to take up the job, he was called to Korea where American and RePublic of Korea forces were reeling back

from the first onslaughts of the Northern offensive.

As the communist armies closed in on the siege city of Taejon, Fielder was one of the last to leave with the evacuating American troops.

But he left it too late - as the jeep he was in pulled out of the battle zone a burst of enemY machinegun fire killed him. His death was not

confirmed until the armistice.

Al Ravenholt feels the names of both men, who were FCC members, should hang with pride alongside other Club members who have died in

action. lt is an oversight he would like to see remedied.

For the record, Doyle was 31 when he was killed by lndonesian bandits; Fielder was 33.

11

Being bugged by the Truth

Absentee members and many friends overseas have written to The Correspondent saying they would like to see some pictures of the interior of the Club. Here are a few and next issue the magazine will feature a full pictorial coverage to give those who have not recently been to Hong Kong a bettet idea of what the FCC looks like today in the Old Dairy Farm Building.

TALK about invasion

of

privacy. l'm

lying in Epworth Hospital feeling wan, having just been wheeled upstairs from intensive care, when a nurse hands me a phone message. Please ring a name I don't recognise on an unfamiliar number. Woosily, curiously, I do. And to my astonishment I find myself talking

EATING OUTDOORS

to a

Ï I )}

reporter from Melbourne lrufh

who wants to headline my incision.

I profess amazement that the newspaper tracked me down l've book- secretly. ed myself into hospital farly To prevent family anxiety, l've simply told mine l'll be interstate for a week or so. Naturally, he declines to name his source and, while annoyed, I can't help but be impressed. For this is at least the third time that Truth has been

informed of my pr¡vate doings. The first involved a visit to Pentridge where

l'd talked with Billy (The Texan) Longley. l'd no sooner walked ¡nto my office than the phone rang, with Truth cross-examining me. Then, a few

past.

The Board is awaiting government The outdoor feeling of dining on the balcony may soon be a thing of permission to enclose the popular balcony because it is too hot.for comfort during the steamy summer months.

But the glass enclosures will retain the boulevards of Paris ambiance which has become to popular. the

months later, being strangely moved by the pornographically violent Australian film Turkey Shoot, l'd stumbled

out of the cinema in search of a

loo.

That weekend Truth's front page

screamed "Adams Walks Out on Linda Stoner Movie," which the ingenious Roadshow people used as the basis of

their advertising campaign for that eprc.

Wfrh the ComplimenÍs

A visit to the hospital, to a prison. to a cinema toilet. All reported to Truth within moments so that they, in turn, could report these remarkable events to the public. One can only assume that the paper has as many spies as it has readers. You wouldn't get more efficient dobbing-in in the most jack-

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The Reliance Jewellers

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CIA and the KGB, not to mention Savak, are lamentably inefficient.

Truth's ears and eyes (perhaps bugs?)

are everywhere.

I was told my surgery would be the

subject

of a major story in the

next

issue and I waited with curiosity. And there I was, in due course, sharing the front page with Don Lane's latest romantic difficulties. EXCLUSIVE! said a big headline in red. Read of Adams' insides inside.

20th Floor, Far East Consortium Building, 121, Des Voeux Rd., C, HongKong. Tell'5-420264

Philip Adams is one of Australia's most noted satirical writers. In this article, reprinted by courtesy of The Bulletin, Sydney, he looks at one of the more bizarce of the shock-horror! publications in the Murdoch empire, the inimitable Melborune Truth.

So I turned the pages and saw a surgical headline "Penis Sewn Back Three Times." Fortunately this turned out to refer to a microsurgeon's efforts

on behalf of a Pentridge prisoner who belongs to the prison's so-called Van Gogh Club, a bizarre group'pract¡sing self-mutilation rites. The story of my operation occupied the preceding page.

And as I read the account of

my sufferings beneath the scalpel, it occurred to me to ring Senator Gareth Evans and suggest that ASIO be closed down

for good and all, just as John Cain sacked the Special Branch. Why waste tax-payers' money on fielding a team of spooks when Melbourne lrufñ must have thousands of freelancers feeding them stories?

Clearly Mark Day and Owen Thompson, the joint proprietors of this histor-

ic journal, both excel Alan Dulles

and

Andropov when it comes

to

intel li gence-gatherin g.

Yet, in the middle of tossing off a note to Gareth, the ink suddenly froze in my biro. Perhaps Truth's interest in expionage, in cloak-and-dagger, is not simply journalistic? What if it's merely a frontfor subversion?

Suddenly everything

was

clear.

Messrs Day and Thompson are Soviet moles who have infiltrated the Australian media. Thompson the upper eche-

lons of the Murdoch empire, Day grabbing the editorship ol Playboy and an influential microphone at Macquuarie. And all the time working for

Funtasia, Mistress Lee and the Garden

of Eden.

They used to say the Herald was printed on the back of Myer ads. Well, Truth is published -on a mattress of massage parlours. Suddenly it all becomes perfectly clear. Just as the KGB use socialist sirens to lure randy diplomats to double beds where they're drugged and photographed for blackmailing purposes ... just as Mata Hari long relied on pillow talk for the best

unintelligence Messrs Day

and

Thompson use massage parlours message parlours. No secret would

safe with the strumpets of salacious cesspits. By running

fast feel franchises. the

as be

those these atheistic

communists undermine a decent Australian society while, at the same time, picking our mental pockets.

I peruse the Personals, full of referto S & M. What else can this mean but Stalin and Molotov? Columns of classifieds that are quite

ences

unintelligible except as code messages

to the KGB. And to think that some conservative journalists have the audacity to call the Melbourne Age the "Spencer Street Soviet!

"

While there's no hard evidence, I ask you to consider the appgarance of M. Day. lmagine that bearded face

topped by a beaver-skin hat, those heavy jowls framed in fur. He looks

Moscow, sending back our most intimate secrets. For all I know, they arranged to have the surgeon pop a microphone into my incision while I lay anaesthetised at Epworth, so that l'd

the cadaverous Thompson as a Muscovite but, if you stuck on a goatee, he'd

unwittingly transmit

look vaguely like Lenin.

encounters, went flat.

all my political at least until the battery

Looking through Truth I see any amount of camouflage for their fifthcolumnism: page after page of massage parlour ads luring the husbands of Mebourne to Bubbles, Magic Touch, Heavenly Bodies, Double Trouble, Wild

Cats, China Dolls, Disciplne

House,

more Russian than a boyar in an Eisenstein movie. lt's a bit hard to see

I hope that Prime Minister Hawke will widen the terms of reference in the forthcoming inquiry into the Combelvanov-Young-Cameron-Farmer-Le Car-

rê-Smiley-Uncle Tom Cobbleigh affair.

It's perfectly clear that the whole messy business can be sheeted home to Truth. Which is, after all, the English translation oÍ Pravda.

13

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BRIAN HOGBEN, group general manager (editoriat) of News Ltd. recently ad.dressed a legal conference in London on defamation. In Hong Kong, we operate under similar laws'to those in Britain so his remarks made fascinating reading.

The practice of defamation law is concerned to an overwhelming degree with whât ¡s published in the press but it seems to the people who

work in the press that the law often has superficial

and far from accurate

- the press is really t¡on of what

a

percepThe about.

purpose of th¡s d¡scourse, then, is to present the

it, to discuss the way journalists and publishers see defamation law as it relates to them and to refer to what we believe to be weaknesses in the law.

Journalists and newspapers are an unloved lot and deservedly so. When sensat¡onal news happens they treat it as sensational. When there is no sensat¡onâl news, and even when there is, they sprinkle froth and fr¡volity through newspress as pressmen see

papers for no other reason than that it ¡s entertaining. They are opinionated, they are sometimes inaccu¡ate, they comm¡t errors of judgment and of taste. and, of course, they publish libels Altogether. they are too like the rest of human¡ty to be likeable.

But worse of all of th¡s ¡s the fact that journalists and newspapers pers¡stently publ¡sh facts which other people do not want publicised, and when they are given news to pr¡nt they often don't present ¡t ¡n the light the suppliers hâd in mind.

As a result, they are cordially detested by

the mil¡tary, pacifists,

professional groups, bureaucrats, autocrats, plutoôrats, aristocrats, champ¡on athletes, âctors, athe¡sts, many clergymen and by practicâlly all of the¡r who thinks newspapers should only readers the news which each reader be publishing prefers It is truly a wonder that there are enough

polit¡cians,

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people left to buy the many millions papers which go on sale each daY

of news-

The fact that journalists and their newspapers provoke thought and d¡scussion about top¡cs wh¡ch otherwise would go unremarked, the fact that the¡r nosiness keeps a lot of people more honest than they'd choose to be, the fact that newspapers often serve as courts of last resort for unfortunâtes put upon by others and beyond reach of the a¡d¡ng arm of the law". none of these things redeem them in the eyes of the¡r detractors The judgments might be less harsh ¡f the critics and accusers spared a little more thought for the press and had a better understanding of rt

Simple though

it appears

a few sheets of

- printed on with words and pictures

them paper a newspaper is among the most complex and of man's products difficult It is a d¡stillation of man's abil¡ty to perceive, to evaluate, to convey to others factual information and ideas. lt is a m¡xture of solid news and entertainment. lt ¡s the product of terrifyingly complicated technology. lt is an exercise in the ha¡r-ra¡sing art of mak¡ng value .iudgments wh¡le watch¡ng the second hand of the clock career around towards the point of no return. lt is an accountants' nightmare: no other product costs so much and sells so cheaply and, in fact, the sale of the average Austral¡an newspaper returns to the publ¡sher less than half of ¡ts production cost.

A newspâper must cater for the lastes and interests of the widest possible cross-section of the publ¡c and there are two valid reasons for th¡s

The firsl is commercial. A newspaper's viability depends on ¡ts readersh¡p and there is no spec¡al ¡nterest group large enough to provide the readership necessary to sustain an ordinary daily or Sunday newspaper The second is a more philosophrcal consideration No matter what an individual's special interests m¡ght be there is a need for him or her and often no great to know other things - interest newspaper, desire to know. A general

therefore, includes something for practically everyone's special tastes and, through that, leads ¡ts readers to interest themselves in th¡ngs

about wh¡ch they otherwise would remain ignorant.

That is why most newspapers publish so much which is dismissed as froth and bubble.

Because it is entertain¡ng, amusing, it serves as the spoonful of sugar which makes the medicine go down.

There is a diversity of newspaper styles ranging from the so-called quality newspapers to the much-maligned tabloids. But I musl stress that th¡s is only style, not intr¡ns¡c worth, for there are good newspapers and bad ones and whether they are restra¡ned quote qual¡ty unquote broadsheets or râcy tabloids is only incidental What makes them good or bad is the accuracy with which they present the news and their efficiency in informing the¡r readers. lt ¡s t¡me more people realised that the size of the headings in, say, The Times, does not necessar¡ly make it a better newspaper than, say, London's Sun which runs big, bold head¡ngs.

Nor is a prose style which is funereal more accurate and informative than tabloidese

which very often is the vernacular which most -of the people use themselves.

It ¡s a paradox. this matter of newspaper style. That racy, down-to-earth method of

presenlat¡on which causes the greatest number of people to read newspapers also arouses the greatest amount of crilic¡sm. I suspect that all too often this ¡s due to pretentiousness on the part of the crit¡cs; they seek to show that they are more l¡terate, more intellectual than the common herd.

Let me now define a good newspaper for you.

The size of the head¡ngs, the size of the page are incidental and so is the presence or absence of a Page Three Bird. What matters is whether

the paper uses ¡ts available space to tell the readers not only what they wânt to know but also what they need to know What matters is the paper's standards of accuracy and fairness.

What matters is whether reâders keep turn¡ng to ¡t for their information. And ¡f ¡t ¡s couched in the vernacular. so much the bettef because more people will be able to underdtand it. Finally, I

should add, in assessing the worth of a particular publicâtion I give no po¡nts at all for pomposity. given the It is inev¡table that a newspaper number of items ¡t carr¡es and the- diversity of will publish libels. and the subjects ¡t reports the raw figures of the -total number of defamation act¡ons launched against the press tend to convince many people that the whole ¡nstitut¡on is scurrilous and malicious. lt would be better ¡f such people withheld judgment until after considering the types of libel which are published

There are ent¡rely unintent¡onal l¡bels

words which have no obvious defamatory meanings to journalists, editors or publishers but which turn out to be libellous because of extrinsic facts.

There are libels which are not ¡ntentional but which are the product of sloppy, inaccurate, thoughtless journalism.

There are libels which are the product of spite and ill-will on the part of some writer but

these are rare; they are edited out mostly.

There are libels published with full awareness

of their defamatory nature and w¡th

equal awareness of the penalty the publisher must pay if a successful defence cannot be presented.

They are published because a newspaper be-

lieves it hâs a duty to make facts known

however defamatory they m¡ght be, or because a newspape believes publication is the only way of

securing justice

for someone who has

been

wronged Some l¡bels are inexcusable and I offer no defence of them, either moral or journalist¡c. although they well might be defensible at law. I will defend to the utmost the right of the press for the fa¡r with proper mot¡ves 1o publish information- of the publ¡c or to r¡ght a wrong.

I believe, too, that ¡t ¡s proper to analyse the reasons why people ¡nst¡tute action for defamat¡on lf the great major¡ty of suitors seek only redress for injury to reputation, there are still

many other litigants who have baser reasons.

There is the pla¡ntiff who issues a writ solely in the hope of frightening a newspaper out of making further disclosures of things the public should know And, particularly in the jurisdiction in which I l¡ve. there ¡s the suitor who cares not a fig about reputat¡on but sees only the prospect of making some money out of a newspaper. This type has turned libel into a growth industry in the most populous state in Australia.

Well then, how journalists and publishers view defamat¡on lawT What do they expect of ¡t?

15

Free Advertising In Hongkong Ctty The Large.st Ci rculation

Bi{ingu aI \rlagazine In T own

Essentially, the view of thinking journalists ¡s little different from that of lawyers who specialise ¡n defamation. We understand that defamation law seeks to strike a balance between the right of every man to his good name and the right of every man to speak his mind freely. We understand that a newspaper has no greater or lesser right of free speech than has the ordinary man. Above all, we expect the law to be applied fairly and wisely so we do not expect leniency for the reckless or spiteful defamer.

But we do expect the full benefits of all the

defences

the law provides when we

defamatory material in the course job for which newspapers exist.

publish

of doing the

'The law is not supportive' Yes, most advertising in Hongkong City is absolutely free.

When there is talk of recession'bottom-line'watchers immediately scrutinise costs. They no longer stop advertising.

They do demand response.

This is why advertising volume in 'Hongkong City' the magaane for Hongkong Bank Visa cardholders will show tremendous growth during 1983.

To the majority of advertisers this advertising will be absolutely free

!

Yes free ! Here are just a few examples of high quality, image concious advertisers who decided that selling was not a dirty word. By presenting 'Hongkong City' readers with a tasteful merchandising message they show a handsome profit on their advertising.

Advertise in Hongkong City and put

a selling message in your advertisements. Your quality image

this part of your advertising will be paid for . . . by somebody

will be secure and at least

else !

-!fl

E

Í¡ ilih{

,Gt

famed, not whether there is a defence to offer, but whether the agents of the law approve or disapprove of part¡cular k¡nds of typography and literary styles. lt seems to me, also, that there ¡s a prevalent preconception that anything which

to the vulgar masses is base

and

And, sad to say, ¡t ¡s hard to avo¡d the conclusion that some trial judges, w¡th little or no previous experience of defamation pract¡ce, have a less than perfect understanding of what

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;=] g

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in

excor¡at¡ng the press, I have come to suspect personally that. as much as anything else, the

appeals

-:E

---:.ÆËl

they allow counsel for the plaint¡ff to go

is not whether someone has been

the law is supposed to be.

Let me tell you as best a layman can about the ways in which we believe the law deals less than fairly or wisely with the press.

I should start with someth¡ng basic to the the way in which course of a defamat¡on tr¡al judges rule on what is defamatory and what not,

and on what imputations should be decided ult¡mately.

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Journal¡sts are not versed in legal language but they are versed in current English usage and they are aware of contemporary community standards. Therefore some of the rulings as to what is defamatory seem to them to fly in the

face of contemporary standards and ignore cuirent usage of the language. Too often, it seems, judges with l¡ttle practical experience of defamation are swayed by textbook examples of defamatory material and pay too little heed to the here and now.

When earlier judges were making the rulings now recorded in, say, Gatley, they are considering what would be defamatory in the communit¡es ¡n which contemporary society ascr¡bed to them. Today judges living in communities which are radically different and which place different eights on words, if not entirely different mean¡ngs, still look to those old cases and rule as did their predecessors of a century and more ago.

They disregard the here and now and this ¡s what can happen as a result.

X was a man known far and wide for

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his

radical left-wing politics, his support of communist causes, his publicly proclaimed admiration for communists and the Commun¡st Party.

A newspaper described him as a communist, not in a peiorative sense but merely by way of description and he sued for defamat¡on. At a pre-trial hearing a judge ruled that ¡t was defamatory to call a man a communist and he refuse{ to str¡ke out imputations derived from the reference

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Libels inevitable

ordinary, reasonable men and women His Honour's rul¡ng might have been perfectly apt for the 1920s but, in my opinion, it was a load of old cobblers in the 1970s.

The outcome? As ¡t is practically impossible to prove whether or not a person ¡s a communist and as other defences were not readily available, the defendant newspaper settled with X for descr¡bing him as part of a group he admired.

At other times the Bench seems to be out of touch with all community standards, past or present.

Unfortunately those who study the relationship between the press and the law are being forced to the conclusion that the law is anything but supportive of the proper functions of the press. We see a tendency to use the law censoriously and not as an instrument for the protection of reputation. Further, we are tempted to think that often a defamat¡on action becomes noth¡ng more than a technical game played while iustice waits on the sidelines.

Having listened often to the words of learned judges, having observed the lengths to which

issue

This despite the plaint¡ff's notorious utterances, despite the fact that the Communist Party is a perfectly legal organ¡sat¡on, despite the fact that ¡n rhis latter part of the 2oth Century known communists are not shunned, avoided, hated, ridiculed or condemned by

The law presumes that a man is innocent until proven guilty and I think that ¡s what ordinary members of the public believe, too.

Only someone remarkably avid for scandal would assume a person to be guilty until a verd¡ct has has been delivered after due process of law. No

journalist or publisher in his wildest flights of fancy has ever imagined that the report¡ng of a charge being la¡d against a person ¡mputes per se that the person is guilty.

Yet my group has had to go to the High Court of Australia to have this bas¡c presumption of innocence upheld. Other very learned judges had ruled that publ¡cat¡on of a charge be¡ng preferred was capable of imputing that the charged person was guilty.

Disturbing though all this

is to the

press

there are matters of even graver concern to us.

'Crooks, swindlers

cheats,thieves...' lf a newspaper can produce admissible that proves the truth of defamatory material, the sky's the lim¡t, virtually. ln my years as an ¡nvestigative reporter I described evidence

people as crooks, swindlers, false pretenders, thieves, charlatans, quacks, prostitutes, panderand I used a great ers and brothel keepers - terms which I can number of other defamatory no longer remember. My paper was sued at least once a week and we never lost a case. We had the evidence.

That ¡s defamation the easy way. Although my art¡cles undoubtedly performed some service to the public by making it aware of villains, there are other kinds of defamatory articles a newspaper should publish which are far more imporbut wh¡ch cannot tant than anything I wrote be supported by the kind -of copper-boìtomed, brass-bound evidence I was able to produce.

Time and again editors are left without

a

solitary doubt as to the truth of what has been

subm¡tted for publicat¡on but time and again they know they cannot rely on one shred of

evidence which will be admissible in court.

Firsthand witnesses cannot be produced be-

cause to do so would be to expose them 1o reprisals ranging from loss of livelihood to being found floating face down ¡n the nearest handy

body of water. Vital documents cannot

be

produced because a newspaper had no right to see them in the first place.

You may question why a newsþaper should

feel entitled to publ¡sh defamatory

mater¡al

based on informat¡on wh¡ch cannot be tested in the w¡tness box but let me assure you that there are perfectly proper and equally effective ways of determining whether an informant is telling the truth. They are good enough to satisfy the most who usually caut¡ous and sceptical ed¡tor demands a higher standard of- proof than the balance of probab¡lities.

You may wonder, too, at the prudence of newspapers which bite the bullet and publish desp¡te the risk they run. I shall tell you why newspapers take that r¡sk.

There is no profit in it for us; it would be more rewarding and a whole lot easier. let me

but froth and bubble. We publish because we bel¡eve the public should bg tgld someth¡ng or because we are seeking justice for someone who

it otherwise. We believe we are performing a duty.

Once we bel¡eved that the law relat¡ng to qualified privilege had been developed to cover just th¡s sort of situation. We believed what was laid down in Watt and Longsdon and other cases going back to 1829 as far as I know. I quote from Gatley's exposítion of the law in order to place emphasis on words the press believes to be important. cannot obta¡n

"There are occasions upon which, on of public policy and convenience, a person may, without incurring legal liability, make statements about another wh¡ch are grounds

defamatory and in fact untrue. On such occasions a man. stating what he believes to be the

truth about another, is protected in so doing, provided he makes the statement honestly and without any indirect or improper motive." Further, and I quote again, ".......the protection which the law ........ affords is not absolute but depends on the honesty of purpose w¡th which the defamatory statement is made " I shall not digress by arguing the difference between a statement which cannot be proved to be true and one which is demonstrably untrue.

My major po¡nt ¡s that our belief in the truth of what is published and our honesty of purpose in publishing must count for someth¡ng.

What does the law think of us, then? Do judges think we merit the benefit of the defence of qualified privilege?

By now I can tell you well in advance how some judges are going to d¡spose of a plea of

qualified privilege. The tell-tale, observed in a number of cases, is a tone of utter puzzlement and a quest¡on to defence counsel in terms like th¡s: "But how can you plead qualified privilege ¡f the facts aren't true?" lf a judge thinks that, what chance is there of his appreciat¡ng the essence of qualified privilegeT

Unsettling to us though thât attitude m¡ght be, journalists and publishers are even more concerned over the adv¡ce received from our

attornies about trends ¡n the thinking of appellate courts here and in Australia on qualified privilege.

lf we

have understood the advice correctly

there is almost no hope of succeeding with a plea of qualified privilege, at least under Common Law, because their Honours refuse to

accept that we are performing a duty in publishing. They think we are out only to sell newspapers.

17 Thomson Press Hong Kong

Limited, 19th Floor, Tai

Sang Commercial BuiJdng,24-34 Hennessy Road, Hong

Kong.

Telephone: 5-283351

That, if you will pardon me, ¡s tortured reasontng.

lf lwant to sell more newspapers I can do so

by publishing more information about

horse

racing or by running more frippery about television stars. lf it's a breath of scandal the publ¡c wants I can assign more reporters to covering

the courts and provide the spice without

any

legal risk at all. I cannot think of any occasion in which a defamatory article, published out of a sense of duty, has sold more newspapers or made more money for a publisher.

Of course newspapers are publ¡shed so that people will buy them and, hopefully, the publisher will make a proft. Without readers and profits there would be no newspapers at all and,

indeed, many unprofitable newspapers remain in existence only because they are subsidised by

profitable stablemates. I hardly need suggest what would have happened to The Times had iÌ not been for the support of the News Corporation.

Press people have similar misgivings about the equally jaundiced views of the law in respect the to other important âspects of defamat¡on it rules on malice, for instance. The rules make extremely d¡ff¡cult for any newspaper to mount âny sort of a defence aga¡nst an action by a public figure.

As we often have been told, a plaint¡ff can prove malice and defeat an otherwise valid plea, for ¡nstance by producing previous unfavourable articles- the defendant newspaper has published about him

But ¡f, for the sake of argument, there were 1O unfavourable articles about a public figure, there could well be 20 that were favourable, not to ment¡on 30 which took a neutral l¡ne.

A defendant newspaper could produce all its neutral and favourable articles in rebuttal but it would be a fut¡le ploy if my experience is any

guide. A jury's attention would have been

focused on a few articles said to be indicative of malice and that would be that.

What a s¡mplistic way for an ¡nst¡tution as sophisticated as the law to operate! Newspapers unceas¡ngly report the words and deeds of public figures; inevitably they criticise at times and they criticise vehemently

Every one of our Australian papers has published literally thousands of articles about Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke, the two protagonists ¡n our recent nat¡onal election. Go through our files and you will find plenty of articles prais¡ng and condemning them. But that does not mean that we are actuated either by love or ill-will towards either of them.

I own to the fact that there have bêen and st¡ll are wr¡ters who conduct spiteful campaigns against other people. Put the ent¡re body of their

work ¡nto evidence and the malice will show through.

But ¡t is nonsense to deal as selectively as the law does with what a newspaper says in the course of ordinary report¡ng of affairs of public interest or w¡th the comments ¡t makes about people in public office. lf occasionally you criticise your wife, should that be taken to be prime evidence of your malice towards her? Should you be compelled to prove all the endearments you have whispered to her to refute a charge of malice?

Surely there must be a better way of judging the ¡ssue. Perhaps the present procedures have stood the test of time but I doubt whether they ever have been subjected to the test of simple logic.

'A certain

sense

of bafflement'

lcome now to something most journalists

and publishers have utmost diff¡culty standing and

under-

I confess to a certain sense of

bafflement myself.

The law protects fair comment based on true

fact. Comment must be identifiable as such Simple enough on the face of ¡t. We can

18

understand that.

But ¡t seems to us that the law has

reasons.

mortals when

We cannot prove truth when blatant l¡es have been told, we could hardly establ¡sh an honest belief in the truth of such material and

of opinion, my point of view. You don't for

we could not show that we had taken reasonable steps to ascerta¡n the lruth of the matter.

The remaining options are limited: publish and hope no writ is issued or suppress the news by not publishing ât all. There is no middle

an

entirely different formula to that of ordinary

it comes to distinguish¡ng comment from assertions of fact. you I say to over drinks, "The minister for lf malaprops is crazy for do¡ng that", you recognise my statement as a comment, an expression a

moment th¡nk that I am stat¡ng as a fact that the honorable m¡nister has an acute mental ¡llness. lf, as an editor, I address the publ¡c under the d¡st¡nct¡ve logo which identifies an editorial

expression of opinion and lwrite the same "The m¡nister for malaprops is crazy words - that" for doing my words are not comment; they are a statement of fact. To defend my paper I cannot plead fair comment. I must seek to prove that the minister is literally crazy There is a way round it, we are told. Simply ident¡fy each comment as such, identify each fact on which you rely.

Can you imagine an editorial written to meet these requirements? lmagine the interpolated phrases bristling among the lines of type? "lt is the opinion of this newspaper....." "We base this v¡ew on the fact that. . ." "ln our opinion.. .." "Because the fact is ....." "Our view is that... " "By virtue of the following facts...... " We m¡ght avoid libel damages but we would be guilty of a crime the premeditated murder of the lânguage.

-

Editorial opinions are supposed to be expressed in reasonably graceful English. They are supposed to be comprehens¡ble to the reader, easily absorbed. To insert all the qualifications the law appears to demand would be to reduce commentary to impenetrable gobbledygook And why? Why, when the publ¡c sees an editorial or a byline stat¡ng, "Comment by ..." and says to itself, "Well, that's his opinion," does the law insist on the sort of pedantry up w¡th which Winston Churchill would not have put? lf the test of defamatory mater¡al is its likely effect on ordinary, right thinking pêople not av¡d for scandal, why does not the law apply the same standards of recognition of comment âs do ordinary, right-thinking people?

It ¡s possible that the only true understanding of words does repose beneath horse hair wigs and that ¡n matters of usage the ordinary, rightthinking public is, as we say in Austral¡4, a flock of galahs. lt ¡s bes¡de the point lf a law deals with the effect of words on the public at large surely ¡t must rely on how that public recognises or fails to recognise comment.

So far everyth¡ng I have said has merely been to suggest a change in thought processes. Now I must ask you to consider the need for one change in the law.

It ¡s a basic function of the press to report, fairly and accurately, the things people say about each other. lt ¡s regrettable that people now are more inclined to make extravagent and potentially damaging statements about each other but nonetheless thier words shot¡ld be reported to the publ¡c. The public has the right to information on which it can judge the speakers and the issues they debate.

So it is that newspapers constantly rece¡ve reports which accurâtely set out what has been said, they see that the words are defamatory and they see, too. that they should be published for the fâir ¡nformation of the public.

What to do? A newspaper knows it cannot prove the truth of the defamâtory statement; indeed it ¡s likely that ¡t bel¡eves the statement to be false and the only reason for publication is to let the public know that the speaker has been

tell¡ng lies. The defence of truth cannot

be

considered

Oualified privilege, lost to us as a defence in all other circumstances, is still available to us when we have published defamatory matter, or so we are told. otherwise not protected We have our doubts We- feel, rather, that we are utterly defenceless for a comb¡nation of

course,

ln consequence, many statements

made

publicly are withheld from the knowledge of the general public because they are defamatory. This type of self-censorship is be¡ng imposed with increasing frequency in Australia where pol¡ticians joyously libel each other with¡n parliament and its protection but are quick to sue should they see themselves on the receiving end in print. (lt is worth nothing that they seldom sue the

original defamer. They go for the newspaper beacuse that's where the money is.)

The Australian Law Beform

Commission offercd a remedy for the problem of such reports several years ago as part of a sweep¡ng plan to

reform defamation law. The whole project might have been too ambitious, I adm¡t and, although I was an honorary consultant to the comm¡ssion myself, I could see that some of its proposals would be unacceptable generally. However, there was much to be said for the defence of fair report as proposed by the commission. ln essence, a fair and accurate report, published without improper or indirect motive for the fa¡r ¡nformation of the public, would not have been actionaþle even though defamatory. But a person defamed ¡n such â report would have had and with equal prominence the r¡ght of reply - which published the report. ¡n the newspâper There also would have been safeguards to prevent newspapers setting up men of straw to

utter defamatory statements concocted by

a

newspaper itself.

From the press viewpo¡nt il seemed fair and, I think, workable, but it rema¡ns a slice of pie in the sky I have little hope of the defence ever being introduced in Australia.

As members of the Australian Bar know, the Law Reform Commission produced a fraft bill for a uniform Defamation Act w¡th two objects in mind: one to dispense wth pecun¡ary damages and, two, to substitute more appropriate reme-

JOURNAIIST is the local vicar able to mainta¡n morâl standards from the pulpit but newspapers can restrain the worst excesses by exposing them to public

scrutiny.

Usually, we come to you as

asking you to

suppl¡cants, get us out of trouble. You see our

worst side but now, ât least, I have the opportunity of asking you to see our good points.

As I have indicated already, the press does

things wh¡ch shame us all and I cânnot excuse such lapses. All I do ask ¡s that the law and those who prâctise ¡t should accept this one proposition: because the press ¡s occas¡onally at it fault and even if it is generally at fault must be preserved and defamation nonetheless

law should not be used against ¡t as

an

instrument of pun¡shment. ln 1 798, James Madison, fourth president of the Un¡ted States and father of the American Constitut¡on, made this observation: "Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything; and in no instance is th¡s more true than in thât of the press".

One hundred and seventy six years later the United States Supreme Court added â postscript

NEW MEMBERS

Gertz v Robert Welch lnc.: ".....and punishment of error runs the r¡sk of inducing a cautious and restrictive exercise of the const¡lutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and of the press".

The court shrank from caus¡ng the sort of self-censorship wh¡ch newspapers now practise under our rule of law. Having been compelled to practise it myself, I applaud their Honours.

The press is far from perfect; that can never

to Madison in its judgment in

ASSOCIATE

Sabinuddin Ahmed/ 1st Secretary Bangladesh Commission

Greg Wadas

Lufthansa German Airlines

Klaas Frerichs

Trade Media Ltd. Masayasu Tsuchida

lnterAsia Publications

Anth ony Barker

Ms. Alexandra Strykers Netherland Consulate General

Reuters Ltd. Joanne Mason

Gregory D. Austin Australia Commission

Reuters Ltd. Bevis England

First Secretary

Thomson Press HK

Dept.

Royal Rug Company

Whether you like us or not we are an essential part of the democratic process. The

of

Defence

KOWLOON Has MovedJust 200 Yards To A lVew location.

a

governments which rule us no longer are elected by an el¡te few with all the necessary facts at

a

hand to make the r¡ght iudgements; governments are elected by a general public which,

complexit¡es is conta¡ned in newspapers Professional ethics are no longer the sole concern of the members of a profession; they are a matter of importance to the publ¡c. but often it is only the press which can ¡nform the public. No longer

ance

diminished, not restored.

It would be a tragedy, a great tragedy, if the prop you provide were to sap the strength of the prop we provide

Wffh the Compliments

ed at the simple level of the neighborhood grocery; it is complex and about the only ¡nformation consumers can get about ¡1s

F reel

whole society will be diminished and, once

penalties, indeed. when you consider the likelihood of courts ordering newspapers to devote ent¡re front pages to eating crow. lt's very hârd to sell a newspaper w¡th a story which says how wrong you were At any rate, the Attorn¡es-General of the Commonwealth and the Australian States considered the reform proposals but did nothing more than decide that the new penalties proposed by the Comm¡ssion should be added to the old pecuniary penalities Hit 'em twice as hard; that's the stuff to give 'em. ln the circumstances one can do no more, therefore, than to urge pract¡tioners of defamation law to rev¡ew the general attitude of the law towards the press.

of government Commerce no longer ¡s conduct-

Ms. Parichehre MostesharGharai

of ¡nterdependent props and you, the law, are one while we, the press, are another.

Destroy the strength of one prop and the

dies such as court-ordered corrections and apologies. These would hâve been salutâry

perforce, relies on the press for its bas¡c ¡nformat¡on about pol¡tics and the performance

Sally Patterson A.T.V. Ltd.

¡t ¡s held up by a number tal pillar;

The Mainichi Newspapers

Asia Wall Street Journal Melinda Liu Newsweek Magazine

David Malcolm Radio Television HK

der¡ve their ¡nformation. Muzzle the press or tâke ¡t awav ent¡rely and there is nothing else. need I remind This cherished free society - one monumenyou? ¡s not supported by just

Robert Karnoil

T. Hammond

Asia Television Ltd.

be forgotten. But ¡t must also be remembered that the press is the only source from which many millions of people ¡n our two countr¡es

CORRESPONDENT

James

Stephen William Clark

494, Carnavon Road, Cround Floor, Kowloon.

U.S. Navy Contractor, China Fleet Club, Sun Hung Kai Centre, Hong Kong.

Tel: 3-664320 3 696225-6

a a a a a

RESERVATIONS:

+æß27 & 36840æ

Over 50 years of fine dining in Hong Kong's

oldest European restaurants.

SAFEST PLACE IN HONG KONG?

WRITING METHODS For those of us who

NATIONAL AMERICAN DAILY

have

procrastinated for so long over the great novel that we will (one day,)

finally write, a solution

A new newspaper aimed at being America's first true national daily has got off to a rather unsteady

has come

to light.

Robert Drewe, prominent Sydney journalist, has just finished his

start, according to correspondents in

third book, a tome he wrote by turning himself into a hermit for three months. Vowing that nothing would prevent him from getting the work done, he went into monk-like retreat and did not emerge to the light of day until the book lhe

Although the Gannet chain claims circulation of about 750.000 for its new publication, USA TODAy, and says that progress is about as planned, sales are said to be sluggish and copies of the paper are being given away on the streets of Mahattan.

The paper is published in 15 centres throughout the Un¡ted States via satellite. The aim is to blanket

New York.

Bodysurferc was completed.

UH HO MOVE

Law and order reigned supreme in the main dining room recently when some of Hong Kong's top lawmen gathered for a lunch.

The occasion was a farewell meal for one of the best-know policemen in Hong Kong. Detective Chief lnspector Michael Ouinn. which was hosted by his old friend Kevin Sinclair of the So¿/f/, China Morning Post.

Also present were Sarah Monks

of the SCMP, Tony Paul of Bæders Digest and Charlie Smith of The Asia

Letter.

Police officers around the table included such formidable figures as Chief Superintendent Bill Ross. the

United Præs lnternational is shifting its headquarters from New York to Washington. The aim is to cut costs and get the troubled wire service back into profit. according to its new owners.

i

the country within a year.

WELCOME AND FAREWELL

Sheraton Hotel's Grandstand Grill.

The annual occasion was the birthday celebration of two popular Club members, Nick Demuth and Bert Okuley.

But this year, Bert was not at the party; he has returned to work and live (temporarily, we hope) in his native Detroit.

McKay, Superintendent David Hodson and Detective Chief lnspector Sammy Cheah of Homicide Squad.

Looking at this gathering of awesome law enforcement men, Hugh van Es said: "This has got to be the safest place in Hong Kong today."

Radio and real estate executive Dona

Toal have a drink over discussions of what's happening to property prices

in Florida.

Dona's company flies prospective investors in Florida real estate to America and if they buy, the cost of their trip is deducted from the price of the property.

Changing of the guard at the New Zealand Press Association bureau and Robert Horrocks (left) departed after two years in Hong Kong to be replaced by David

Wífh the ComPlimerús

Got a story

it to

Forþ

Enterprises Ltd

us.

Write to the Editor, The Correspon&nt.

20

old friends.

Next year, with any luck, perhaps Okuley will be back in the old Asian stamping grounds he knows

Porter.

to tell? Tell

Tel'5-778026

And to mark his absence a chair was left for him at one end of the table where a glass of bourbon, a tipple in which Bert was known to indulge on occasions, was placed in front of it.

During the party a telephone call was made to Detroit and Bert was roused from bed to speak to his

so well.

Nick Demuth of Commercial

the extra care movers for international household shipping personalized service free estimates

For many years, a group of FCC members made it a practice once every year to gather together for a long and tiring lunch at the

Deputy Police Commander of Kow loon. Detective Superi ntendents Bob Brooks, Bertie lrvine and Evan

mov

TOASTING AN ABSENT FRIEND

No.1B, Man Wah Building, 4th Floor, Jordan Ferry Point, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Tel: 3-853859 3-858039 3-303881

HAPPY BRITHDAY

SWANNING IT!

The Observer of London recently held a party to celebrate its 10,000th edition. The quality Sunday papdr was first published in a coffee shop in 1791. Since then it has racked up a notable string of journalistic milestones and to mark its birthday the paper held a party with a medieval theme featuring jugglers and magicians.

GREMLINS Every sub-editor knows how gremlins tend to creep into type but the staff of the Jamaican Weekly Gleaner (surely one of the most apt

titles of any publication anywhere) must have gone out and drowned

their sorrows in rum recently when there was a classic blooper on their own masthead.

The paper appeared under the banner

of the

Jamaican Weekly

Cleaner.

Reporting can be a dangerous game but who would have imagined the hazards that await one ยกn the peaceful rural playground of Penfold Park in the middle of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club's racecourse at Shatin?

Certainly not James Sun of the South China Morning Posf who was there recently on assignment and ambled over to have a look at a colony

of

swans gliding gracefully around

on one of the artificial

lakes.

With no warning and little hestitation. the regal birds launched an all-out offensive on the inoffensive scribe.

Sun has resolved that in future he will restrict his birdwatching activities to the streets of Central.

DONALD AND DAUGHTER

YOUCANDEPEND

ON USI

GIVE US A BREAK Surveys conducted by journalists in America and Britain show that newspaper reporters in Britain get considerably better holiday provisions from their bosses. than do their counterparts on the other side

of the Atlantic.

The US newsmen generally have to work for a paper for eight years before getting an annual four weeks holiday and have to put in 20 years service before qualifying for five weeks leave.

But holiday provisions in both countries pale in comparison to Australia where all journalists on daily newspapers qualify automatically for six weeks' holiday - and to boot get paid an additional 17.5 per cent salary while they enjoy their vacations on the grounds that they spend more on holiday than when they are at work.

22

FCC Vice-President Donald Wise was seen around the Club recently

with a charming and intelligent young'lady he had not seen for 15 years.

It was his daughter, Gillian, in town on a brief holiday from her home in South Africa where she works in advertising. Donald proudly took her around the Club and introduced her to such people as Geoffrey Somers from GIS with whom they are seen above at the main bar.

TheSwire GrouP

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