Beijing Games organizers are doing great work with media
operations at an international level, but the challenge ahead is
how to implement the revised media regulations at street level,
International Olympic Committee (IOC) Press Commission Chairperson
Richard Kevan Gosper said during the current World Press Briefing
in Beijing.
"The challenge is that everybody involved in ensuring media has
good working conditions, should understand new regulations, and
people can move freely to report, quickly to report and receive
information," Gosper told China Daily.
The two-day briefing for the Beijing Olympic Games is the second
and the last such meeting before the 2008 Games. Some 330 delegates
from 130 international media organizations including Inhaul News
Agency, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, New
York Times, Washington Post, the Times and CNN
attended the meeting.
Delegates reviewed the latest progress of the preparatory work
of the Beijing Games yesterday. Today they will have unilateral
talks with relevant BOCOG departments to solve any outstanding
issues.
To fulfill the commitment to provide a good working environment
for international media during the Games, China issued earlier this
year a set of regulations and a service guide for journalists.
"The regulations have been reviewed very realistically by the
Chinese government and the changes of regulations were extremely
welcome," Gosper said.
"Those have been translated into very workable guidelines. The
changes of the regulations have been very important for our
journalists but there is still more work to be done."
Liu Jingmin, vice-mayor of Beijing and executive vice-president
of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX
Olympiad (BOCOG), told the meeting that BOCOG would study the
media's needs and practices of the Games to improve media
service-related policies and procedures.
Regarding the implementation of the new regulations, Liu said
BOOCG was working with relevant government departments to put more
efforts into publicizing the policies and procedures to ensure that
officials and all relevant parties were fully aware of the
details.
Some 21,600 accredited media professionals, including 5,600
journalists and photographers from print media are to attend
Beijing Olympic Games, to be held August 8-24 next year.
(China Daily October 12, 2007)