The Tibet Autonomous Region government held its first-ever news spokesperson training on October 10th. The training is designed for 80-plus students who are spokespersons from various levels of governments in Tibet, some official news agencies, and other media professionals.

The training includes trends in current news and opinion, simulated news conferences, etc., and has a total of eight classes.

Jiang Jie, Publicity Minister and vice Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region(TAR), said at the opening ceremony that news coverage in Tibet needs to be based on overall reform and development, helps to maintain regional stability, and actively respond to public concerns so as to achieve the best reporting about TAR of China. 　　

Jiang said there were 51 official press conferences held in 2015, with 38 of them attended by senior officials of the regional government, and 20 conferences were hosted by prefecture- and city-level governments and official agencies.

Jiang said that press release on Tibet is highly watched, so it is imperative to make story-telling about TAR a priority in news; the issues of “afraid to say, not willing to say, or not knowing how to say” should be resolved. It is necessary to elevate the official Tibet government’s international influence in Tibet-related topics, and make the voice of TAR heard and understood.

Xi Yanchun, Deputy Director of the foreign news agency of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the CPC was the first teacher of the training class. She spoke about the importance of news work, new policies in news and opinion, practical experience for news spokespersons, and many other topics relevant to news work in TAR.

The news spokesperson training will end on October 13th.