More than a month of detective work culminated with the breathtaking and dangerous arrest on Nov. 24 of the kidnapping ring led by Lin Ming-hua (
It should come as no surprise that the media's fondness for covering crime sometimes makes it more difficult for the police to arrest suspects.
Maybe this keeps happening because the Taiwanese media are particularly interested in the tension involved in shoot-outs between police and criminals, and blood-drenched images, or maybe it is the public that is particularly fond of this kind of sensational reporting.
This abnormal state of affairs is nothing new. Eight years ago, for example, when police pursued and finally arrested Chen Chin-hsing (陳進興), the media followed the police and reported on every development in the case. With so many reporters learning about the progress of the investigation, the perpetrators were warned and escaped time and time again. Because reporters interfered with the investigation, the director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) at the time issued an order prohibiting reporters from entering the bureau to conduct interviews. The ban lasted for just three days before it was rescinded in the face of heavy pressure from the media and demands for press freedom.
An issue that really should be discussed is why calls for press freedom always use the pretext that "investigations are not being made public." Why is it then that these bloody images appear in the media? Although some people believe it is because certain reporters lack self restraint, I believe it is a question not of individuals, but rather is a function of Taiwan's media culture.
We cannot go on seeing this repeated time and again. We must find the cause of the problem, otherwise we may not be so lucky that no one is injured the next time something similar happens.
More than 10 years ago, I worked in the CIB and witnessed the excitement created by reporters fighting for news. They not only stormed into offices, but also browsed through official documents and even rummaged through desk drawers. Thinking about it today, I cannot put the blame entirely on the reporters. They were victims of the system. Had they not behaved like that, maybe they would have had problems surviving.
Maybe such scenes no longer occur, but I still worry about the power of the satellite news groups and that their reporting will cause an incident similar to the recent bullet spraying to occur again.
At the same time, I am also concerned about why the media so often seem to know when and where the police will make a raid. One possible reason is that reporters have inside information -- although I don't want to make any wild guesses as to the source of such information.
To address the danger to the lives of policemen that this reporting chaos creates, the government, police and the media must establish concrete and clear rules.
We must ask ourselves if debate is needed to let the media know where the line should be drawn and what kind of information can and cannot be immediately reported. Of course, we must not forget to train the police to let them know how to interact with the media and help them play a positive role.
Yang Yung-nane is a professor in and the director of the Department of Administrative Management at Central Police University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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