BY Chris Fuchs
Source: Tea Leaf Nation
Taiwan maintains the distinction of
having the freest television and print media in all of Asia,
ranking 50th among 180 countries worldwide in a press freedom index
compiled by Reporters Without Borders, a French nonprofit. But if an outsider
had docked on the island in the last few months, he might be forgiven for
assuming that all of Taiwan was transfixed on two major news stories: a
building-sized art installation in the form of an inflatable yellow duck, which
on Dec. 31, 2013, exploded in the waters off of Keelung, a city
near the capital Taipei, and a mixed-race Brazilian teenager on a
self-discovery tour in Taiwan who rode the metro, ate some dumplings, and, on
Jan. 4, made out with a reporter almost twice his age.
While mainland China, Taiwan's
cross-strait rival, continues to keep a tight leash on its media, Taiwan's
freewheeling television, print, and web media -- and their penchant for
superficial reportage -- are causing antipathy among a growing number of its
inhabitants.
Over the last decade, Taiwanese media have come to be known
for in-your-face, no-holds-barred reporting that manages to be simultaneously
sensationalist and mundane.
Over the last decade, Taiwanese
media have come to be known for in-your-face, no-holds-barred reporting that
manages to be simultaneously sensationalist and mundane. A popular online
editorial published Jan. 7 by Taiwanese magazine Business Weekly lamented that important issues -- like the
county government forcibly taking land in Dapu, Miaoli, a village
in northwest Taiwan, and the June 2010 signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework
Agreement between China and Taiwan -- remain underreported. Meanwhile, the
island has seen what the editorial calls coverage "of every move" of
the Taipei Zoo's new baby panda for about half a year, and Taiwan's Yahoo page
has created an entire page devoted just to the
now-deflated yellow duck, regularly re-posting news articles published in other
media outlets.
In a Jan. 6 editorial in China
Times, a Taiwanese daily newspaper, media executive Antony G.C. Wu related a personal story of a friend living in
Europe who returned to Taiwan after an unspecified period of time abroad, only
to be shocked by what the Taiwanese talking heads were saying on-air.
The
rhetoric included frequent Chinese-language equivalents of "shit,"
"what the fuck," and other verbal bombs unfit for even some of the
crassest U.S. cable news shows. Journalism professor Yang Aili, in a Feb. 12
editorial in the same publication, blamed Taiwan's media for a lack of international
perspective, observing that outlets seemed to attach "more importance to
covering car accidents than to important world affairs." (Yang advised
readers to sign up for Chinese-language email updates from publications like
the U.K.-based Financial Times and U.S.-based New York Times,
instead of relying on the Taiwanese press.) Even users of social media are
showing signs of fatigue; a search on Facebook -- the social network of choice
for young Taiwanese -- revealed multiple pages devoted to discussing
the problems with Taiwanese media, writ large. On one such page, a user rants in English that "Taiwan's media
sucks," providing "junk-food like news" that turns the audience
into "zombies."
The macabre, salacious, and
ridiculous stuff populating Taiwanese media certainly enjoys a wide audience.
Readership for Taiwan's print media has waned over the last two decades; but as of March
2013, there were just under five million cable television subscribers in
Taiwan, accounting for over 60 percent of households across the island, with
news programming ranking second only to movies in viewership in 2012, the
most recent time period for which data could be found. But with
17.5 million Taiwanese (about 75 percent of the island's 23 million
inhabitants) wired to the Internet as of May 2012, readers have increasingly
been turning to the web for their news. That might help explain why Taiwanese
were so intrigued by chatter about that giant yellow duck that 1.5 million
people, presumably mostly from Taiwan, travelled to Keelung to snap pictures.
Taiwan's media have not always enjoyed the freedom they
possess (and arguably abuse) today.
Taiwan's media have not always
enjoyed the freedom they possess (and arguably abuse) today.
During Japanese
colonial rule from 1895 to 1945 and then also during the martial law period
under the Kuomintang government, which lasted from 1949 to 1987 after the
Kuomintang fled mainland China after losing the civil war, authorities
maintained tight control on Taiwanese press. It wasn't until 1987 -- when
then-President Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law -- that restrictions on news
coverage were removed and Taiwan's media landscape came to life with a new crop
of independent print publications and television stations.
Andy Hong, a reporter for Taiwanese
newspaper Want Daily and a journalist in Taiwan for 20 years,
said that Taiwan's post-martial law media did not originally run
"bloody" or "gossipy" news stories, adding that
"newspapers were like those published in the early days of China's
Republican era," after China had toppled two millennia of imperial rule.
Instead, Hong said, they thought they had an obligation "to promote
cultural literacy." Hong's colleague Yongfu Lin, who became a reporter
with the China Times in 1985 and is now deputy director of Want
Daily's cross-strait news division, said that in the years after martial
law, "news reports were very diverse," and the public had "fewer
misgivings about the media," partly because journalists were for the first
time targeting political figures who were "once considered
off-limits." But Hong claimed things changed around 2003, when Hong
Kong-based Apple Daily, a web site and broadsheet with a
tabloid flair known for publishing color photos of grisly crime scenes and
scantily-clad women, entered Taiwan and "immediately attracted
readers."
One possible explanation for the
domestic attraction of Taiwan's increasingly inward-looking media is its
continued diplomatic isolation at the hands of China, which still considers
Taiwan a renegade province. Joe Wei, managing editor of the World Journal,
a U.S. and Canada-based Chinese-language newspaper owned by Taiwan's United
Daily News, said he believes the lack of opportunities to participate in
international organizations has led to a "loss of interest in things going
on outside the island." Hong agreed, saying, "It probably has something
to do with the island's mentality of being a small country." In the China
Times editorial, Wu noted that compared to Taiwan's television
media, even China Central Television, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece,
covers a wider variety of topics with "both a sense of history and a
worldly perspective," adding that the outlet's performance "is enough
to make Taiwan's television journalists ashamed."
Taiwanese media also reflect -- and exploit -- a schism
between those preferring the island's current status of de facto
independence from mainland China and those who want something more formal.
Taiwanese media also reflect -- and
exploit -- a schism between those preferring the island's current status of de
facto independence from mainland China and those who want something more
formal. Strong political beliefs among Taiwanese, Hong said, have emboldened
media outlets to reveal their own political character, thus cleaving the
country's media landscape into two halves, leading to highly biased
reporting of almost any political or economic issue by media outlets
sympathetic to one or the other political cause.
To be sure, Taiwanese investigative
journalists do occasionally break real stories. As early as 2005, Taiwan's
media began reporting on problems with the island's
electronic toll collection system, which most recently has come under fire for
overcharging motorists. The magazine Business Today, a reputable
business weekly, published an exclusive in May 2013 exposing the
presence of carcinogenic additives in a popular brand of soy sauce sold in
Taiwan, touching off a wide-reaching scandal involving some of the island's
most well-known food companies, and prompting the government to take additional steps to ensure the safety of all its
food products. And in December 2013, Taiwan's television and print media reported on accusations that a technology
company in the southern city of Kaohsiung secretly dumped wastewater into
rivers, leading to further government investigation.
It's heartening to know that
Taiwan's press has the capacity to cover real stories, when it wants to. But in
the end, Taiwanese journalists and media critics say, it is the public's
decision to either tune in or tune out that will ultimately shape the direction
of news content in Taiwan in the years to come. The public's following a policy
of "no watching, no clicking, no responding" to trivial news, the Business
Weekly column argues, is the only way Taiwanese media will
change. The prognosis is not good. It might "take decades before seeing
results," the column continues, even if the public does change its
consumptions habits. If it doesn't, the next generation will continue to be
"bombarded by brain-dead news."
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