Olympic Times - Sports Daily

The number of foreign journalists received by the Beijing Olympic Media Center has increased eightfold in 2007, a senior official of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) said on Friday.
Jiang Xiaoyu, BOCOG executive vice-president, disclosed this at the center’s 100th press conference, which also happened to be a weekly session of “Getting to Know.”
The function attracted over 70 journalists from more than 40 media organizations, including Reuters, CNN, AP and Kyodo News. Getting to Know is an unscripted, casual, face-to-face dialogue with a BOCOG department director; Jiang was the first BOCOG executive vice-president to chair the meeting.
Jiang told a packed room that across the 100 press conferences spokesmen from 297 Beijing municipal bureas and BOCOG had hosted 9,682 journalists from 5,539 Chinese and foreign media. Also, 2007 saw a 3.19 percent growth in the number of press conferences and a 3.78 percent increase in the number of attendants, compared with 2006.
Foreign journalists described the center’s press conference as their main source of information about Beijing and the Olympics.
Jiang said that in 2007, the center has received 3,806 overseas journalists in 580 visits, and has organized 60 press tours, half of which were attended by groups of over 100 members. As a key program, press briefings have been held on the Olympic preparations of the Chinese athletes, food safety and security arrangements for the Olympics, as well the preparatory work for the Paralympic Games. The total number of journalists received over the year has surged 8.37 times.

A packed press room with more than 70 journalists

from: beijing2008.cn