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Policies can encourage more media discipline

The outcry over the decision by TVBS and nine other cable TV stations to broadcast a fabricated video of a gangster threatening his former boss may have unexpected positive consequences.

In the debate that has followed the incident, many so-called "media experts" have said that any form of self-discipline that might have been practised by the media in Taiwan has disappeared and that government controls have failed.

I believe, however, that government media policies can encourage media self-discipline, or, to put it more succinctly, that without appropriate media policies, the media will not have the stable environment required to be able to develop self-discipline.

An examination of media policies in Germany, France and the UK may help to clarify things.

Surveys have show that 70 percent of Germans feel that newspaper reports completely or almost completely reflect the actual situation, while 74 percent feel that TV news reports do so.

In France, 47 percent believe in the accuracy of newspapers and 49 percent in TV news, but in the UK the figures are 49 and 85.

The statistics indicate that the Germans trust the media the most, the French distrust the media the most and that in the UK, there is a huge difference between the public's trust in newspapers and TV news.

One explanation for the variation in trust in the media could be that Germans are credulous, the French are skeptical and the British sometimes credulous and sometimes skeptical. While this explanation plays heavily on national stereotypes, it also contains some truth.

If, however, we want to be more scientific in our approach, we need to question whether the British "sometimes" can be objectively defined.

The answer is "yes," because the UK's newspaper and television markets are structurally very different.

The newspapers' paparazzi style of prying into the private lives of celebrities is a reflection of the UK's lack of proactive newspaper policies. At least, the British government does not intervene in newspaper operations to the same degree that other European governments do.

On the other hand, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was the world's first public broadcasting organization. Although the company has its shortcomings, its operations are effective and it is relentless in supervising its stations in both the private and public sectors.

British government media policy not only regulates the BBC, it also imposes strict regulations on advertising revenues received by private stations such as ITV, the UK's first private station. The British government imposes corporate taxes and a special license tax on ITV.

When Channel 4, the UK's second privately funded public service channel, went on air in late 1982, ITV took charge of all the new station's advertising. While this practice was ended in 1999, ITV will continue to be taxed until 2010.

The UK's policies cannot be reproduced in Taiwan, but looking at the examples of Germany, France and the UK clearly shows us that appropriate government policies regulating television news create room for self-discipline.

In Taiwan, the executive and legislative branches are too slack in their regulation of the media at the same time that the public places an overly high degree of trust in television news.

These problems are interrelated. I hope that the Cabinet will consider the interests of the public and ask the Government Information Office and the National Communications Commission to cooperate to create a national television policy that deserves the public's trust.

Feng Chien-san is a professor in the Department of Journalism at National Chengchi University.

Translated by Daniel Cheng
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