Do fair elections really exist? This is a valid but oft-neglected question that has once again ignited fiery debates recently.
The Taiwan Media Watch Foundation (台灣媒體觀察基金會) recently released a critique of politicians waltzing into the media as well as media workers jumping into politics. The foundation believes these practices have led to the abuse of public apparatus for personal ends -- thus leading to unfair elections.
However, unfairness is not limited to this field when it comes to the entanglement of politics and the media. The partiality reaches into at least three levels: structure, resources and manipulation skills.
In terms of structure, the political leanings behind media ownership leads to a fundamentally unfair situation. In the past, the KMT controlled Taiwan's three terrestrial TV stations and the Broadcasting Corporation of China (中廣). The party used its control of the media to shape public opinion to its own advantage. Being in a disadvantageous position, the opposition naturally called loudly on political parties, government and the military to withdraw from the media.
The government's policy at the time was not to withdraw from the media, but to bring the opposition into it, opening the way for a fourth terrestrial TV channel and a massive liberalization of radio frequencies. The DPP then started Formosa TV (民視) and a number of medium- and low-power radio stations, while the New Party people also made some small gains. The calls for the separation of media from politics subsided drastically.
After Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) came to power, the government was still unwilling to let go of media resources under government and military control. Instead, it has followed the KMT's ways.
Also, the much-criticized TV hosts are but one possible tool for politicians. Money remains the most flexible resource.
Money can buy advertise-ments. It can also be used to arrange specific program guests. The more money you can fork out, the better you can highlight yourself and thus drown voters in propaganda. This unfairness caused by money politics in the media is deeply harmful.
Even though the Election and Recall Law (選罷法) sets ceilings for campaign funds, they have not been effectively enforced. According to calculations based on related rules, a legislative candidate's campaign funds should not exceed NT$10 million. This amount is chicken feed compared to the amount of funds actually raised, which easily go up to hundreds of millions of NT dollars -- enough to prevent the average citizen from dreaming about running in any election. This in turn makes for further injustice.
Apart from money, the rights to host programs and write regular columns should also be considered resources. While the so-called "Sisy Chen phenomenon" (陳文茜, former DPP propaganda chief turned TV host and legislative candidate) may be representative of media workers going into politics, it is by no means the first of its kind. To be fair, democratic elections are a publicity contest in the first place. It is only natural for people to run in elections once they become famous.
Finally, it is similarly unfair that those who know how to manipulate the media should enjoy an advantage. Media insiders can communicate in ways familiar to the media and naturally gain more for their efforts. From defining news topics to decorating the venue of a press conference, to contacting reporters, to writing press releases -- all of these can lead to unfairness.
All told, cases where the media get entangled with political ideals are numerous during elections. If we really want to talk about a fair election, we must at least aim to minimize these cases.
Weber Lai is an instructor in the department of mass communication at Chinese Culture University.
Translated by Francis Huang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs