On an otherwise beautiful day not long ago, I stood in a parking lot in Kinmen watching with despair as I was forced to make a decision: side with the BBC and my integrity, or with the Government Information Office (GIO) and my career.
The immediate cause of my Faustian choice was a set of defunct speakers that had once been used to broadcast propaganda to China.
"We want to film the speakers. You said we could," the BBC producer said.
"Oh. Okay. Anyway, let's go look at a knife factory," a government official replied.
The debate quickly degenerated into a shouting match, and to be frank, I was loath to intervene. I had, after all, come to Kinmen specifically to lend what small assistance I could to the BBC film crew.
But they were leaving the next day. I live in Taipei, and must work with government officials regularly. It wasn't in my best interest to damage the relationships I had built up in the course of my stay over 30 seconds of footage in a TV documentary.
Soon, both parties boarded separate vans, and I stood in the middle as each side watched to see who I would choose.
In the end, I got in the van with the BBC team, knowing that it would take an excruciating night of KTV and drinking gaoliang to mollify the government folk.
The point of this tale is that none of this is particularly surprising to anyone who works with the creaking, outdated monstrosity that is Taiwan's official propaganda ministry: the GIO.
Nothing Personal
None of my complaints are personal: all of the GIO officials with whom I have worked are good people who sincerely do their best in a difficult job. And the BBC team I was working with has experience filming under much more trying conditions than they encountered in Taiwan. The breakdown that occurred was more a question of divergent goals than individual malice.
It is natural for governments to go to great lengths to shape their image in the international media. And any competent media outlet does its best to see behind this veil of government spin.
But there has to be a better way for Taiwan to get its voice heard than through the incredibly restrictive processes that the GIO employs.
Part of the problem is that, although martial law ended in 1987, most Taiwanese politicians and media outlets view news as a partisan affair that must be controlled by the establishment. There is little tradition of what Thomas Carlyle referred to as the "Fourth Estate" -- media with an independent, objective and supervisory role.
This is why the bulk of domestic news in Taiwan -- in any language -- is driven by press conferences, while the remainder is devoted to sensational fluff such as bus wrecks and domestic arguments. Journalists are encouraged to play the game, join the club and toe the line -- or be left in the cold with no access.
This occurs everywhere. But in Taiwan it is especially pronounced and is reflected in the quality and depth of local news coverage.
However, the problem is much worse than this. The pan-green and the pan-blue camps make little distinction between local and international media. Foreign journalists are viewed as tools to be manipulated for political advantage. The Ministry of Justice even has special agents tasked with determining the political alignment of these journalists.
This provincial view of the international media's role is detrimental to the nation's interests.
Since Taiwan's future as a de facto independent state relies on an expectation of international assistance if China gets rowdy, it is essential that people outside the country have as nuanced and accurate a view as possible of what is happening here.
This is not accomplished by treating journalists as though they were a tour group, to be shown the sights by an affable guide who will keep them away from anything too controversial.
A Compelling Story
Certainly Taiwan has everything to gain by putting its message out for everyone to see. Most international journalists are sympathetic to Taiwan's plight -- it is a compelling story, after all: a small, relatively prosperous democratic state that has overcome a bloody and totalitarian past, whose existence is threatened by an up-and-coming authoritarian giant.
Taiwan should not be afraid of showing the world what it is and how far it has come.
So why doesn't it try harder to tell its story? Why do major news wires such as Reuters run stories with headlines that look as though they were written by the Political Warfare Bureau of the People's Liberation Army? For example, the headline of a story Reuters ran on Aug. 4 reads, "Can Taiwan Chen's provocation of China be stopped?"
Presenting such an obvious bias in a news story is the result of shoddy, sensationalistic journalism, as well as carelessness on behalf of the editor. But some of the blame for such material must also be placed on the government's -- the GIO's -- lack of sophistication when it comes to promoting and explaining Taiwan's policies. That this kind of bias -- or more charitably, naivete -- proceeds unchallenged indicates a complete misunderstanding of regional events by the people at Reuters.
The Reuters article is hardly an isolated case of Taiwan's policies being misrepresented. Last month, on Nov. 22, Agence France-Presse (AFP) ran a story with the following lead:
"In a move likely to anger China, Taiwan's president has vowed to push through a new constitution describing the island as an independent state and threatened to hold a referendum on Taiwan's future."
But President Chen Shui-bian (
This is a far cry from holding a referendum on independence. And Chen has promised time and time again not to address issues of sovereignty in a new constitution.
Reportedly, the fault in this case was not with the AFP journalist in Taipei but an overzealous editor in Hong Kong. That the editor did not realize how inflammatory his or her misrepresentation of Chen's comments was is disheartening.
Finally, take the example of CNN when it was covering the presidential election. On election night, the network spent more time showing "man on the street" interviews with pedestrians in Beijing talking about Taiwan than it showed of Mike Chinoy, standing in front of the Grand Hotel, explaining that this was Taiwan's third democratic election of a head of state.
Accepting Reality
Of course, when it comes to international news about Taiwan, what everyone really cares about is cross-strait relations. People care about China's rise far more than they do about Taiwan's democratization. That is the reality, and if the GIO will not adapt to that reality, Taiwan is in trouble.
Media outlets, not to mention foreign governments, must understand that Taiwan is not "provoking" anybody. But they clearly don't, so one can only ask: "What use is the GIO at all?"
There is no easy solution to Taiwan's image problem.
But a good start would be to abolish the GIO, as Chen has repeatedly promised to do in the past, should the pan-greens win a legislative majority.
The government might even consider hiring two or three public relations firms to do something more substantial than put up posters in Brooklyn bus stops explaining that Taiwan wants to join the UN.
The Chen administration must do better than this, or the message that the world gets is that Taiwan is a wacky little place where legislators assault each other with fried chicken legs, where semiconductors are made and which "Beijing views as a renegade province."
It must do better, or people will continue to believe Beijing's line that Taiwan is on a wild, drunken quest to provoke a war.
It may seem absurd that a desire for self-determination and a peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences can be cast as villainous, but clearly it can.
Just ask Reuters.
Mac William Bishop is a journalist based in Taipei. Comments or queries may be sent to mwbtaiwan@hotmail.com.
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