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)
