For a man with the Newspaper Registration Unit in his empire Eddy Chan, Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing, has some strange ideas about how newspapers operate (letter, Sunday Morning Post, March 9).
In the interests of keeping factual reporting separate from comment they are usually done by different people. I am not a reporter. I am not invited to press conferences held by Mr Chan's or any other offices and I would not accept such invitations if they were offered.
Nor is it my duty, if an official produces a comment-worthy remark, to telephone the head of his department and ask him if he wishes to withdraw or correct the statement. The article to which Mr Chan takes such lengthy exception was an expression of my personal opinion on one point in a news report published, without complaint from anyone, nearly a week before.
I am not obliged to repeat what Mr Chan fondly supposes to be the message of his press conference. Indeed the report in question did not in fact mention a press conference.
I did not think it worth commenting on the claim that the object of the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority's campaign is to protect young people because this has been the favoured excuse of the culture cops since the poisoning of Socrates.
Nor did I wish to comment on the alleged upsurge of community concern over the proliferation of obscene and indecent articles. Really I thought it was no longer possible for officials to emerge from meetings of their nominees and colleagues with announcements of what the community is concerned about. The community has better ways of expressing its concerns.
