For a government accused by opposition and rights advocates of reverting to an authoritarian past, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been surprisingly inept at image control, a situation all the more strange given the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) strong ties with the media.
Starting with the barbed wire and barricades that preceded the arrival in Taiwan of Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), then continuing with police clashes with demonstrators protesting against the visit, critics of the KMT government were given plenty of ammunition to advance claims that the Ma administration is whittling away at democratic principles and what exists of due process.
Other faux pas — such as Ma walking away from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) deputy caucus whip Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) as she lay on the ground, and KMT legislators crowing over the detention of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) without charge last Tuesday — also blemished the government’s image and raised questions about its ability to maintain a facade of respectability.
What could have been passed off as carelessness shifted to incompetence on the night of Chen Shui-bian’s arrest, with prosecutors gratuitously handcuffing the former president and failing to foresee that the media-savvy Chen would turn the occasion into a classic camera moment. Minutes later, images of a handcuffed former president shouting injustice and political persecution were circulated around the world, threatening to downgrade Taiwan’s image to that of a banana republic.
Many people overseas were oblivious to the mass demonstrations and clashes that accompanied Chen Yunlin’s visit, but few have not seen the final pictures of the former president before he was taken away. The impact of that image — and the worrying questions it raises about the KMT administration — cannot be underestimated.
If the KMT’s detractors are justified in fearing a slide toward authoritarianism, image is the next thing the party must work on. And there are signs that the authorities are becoming more sensitive to the ability of reporters and photographers to access all areas.
After several days on a presumed hunger strike, the former president was taken from his detention center in Taipei County to hospital for a checkup. Once again, the media rushed to broadcast images of an emaciated and perhaps ailing former leader, which — added to other images of hunger-striking DPP leaders — would have infuriated DPP supporters and fueled tensions.
The wait was anti-climactic. The former president was barely visible. As a precaution, and against the longstanding practice of parading patients before the media both outside and inside hospital grounds, the ambulance backed into the building, from where Chen was unloaded, depriving the throng of crucial images and leaving it with bland pictures of ambulances, police cars and people milling around.
It is extremely unlikely that this transpired out of respect for the former president’s privacy or his rights as a likely defendant.
Media outlets have benefited from callous disregard for the dignity of ordinary people and the rights of defendants for many years. The irony is that Chen Shui-bian’s protest has offered the authorities an object lesson in image management that may well result in more regulation — and not necessarily for the better. With the National Communications Commission shutting down unlicensed radio stations rather than engaging the issue of how the media compromise the rights of people in its stories, it can be assumed that changes will take place with politics strictly in mind.
An outrageous dismissal of the exemplary Taiwanese fight against COVID-19 has been perpetrated by the EU. There is no excuse. I presume that everyone who reads the Taipei Times knows that the EU has excluded Taiwan from its so-called “safe list,” which permits citizens unhindered travel to and from the countries of the EU. As the EU does not feel that it needs to explain the character of this exclusive list, perhaps we should examine it ourselves in some detail. There are 14 nations on the list that have been chosen as safe countries of origin and safe countries of destination for
Filmmakers in Taiwan used to struggle when it came to telling a story that could resonate internationally. Things started to change when the 2017 drama series The Teenage Psychic (通靈少女), a collaboration between HBO Asia and Taiwanese Public Television Service (PTS), became a huge hit not just locally, but also internationally. The coming-of-age story was adapted from the 2013 PTS-produced short film The Busy Young Psychic (神算). Entirely filmed in Taiwan, the Mandarin-language series even made it on HBO’s streaming platforms in the US. It is proof that a well-told Taiwanese story can absolutely win the hearts and minds of hard-to-please
Drugged with sedatives, handcuffed and wearing a bright orange prison tunic, British fraud investigator and former journalist Peter Humphrey was escorted by warders into an interrogation room filled with reporters, locked inside a steel cage and fastened to a metal “tiger chair.” Humphrey recalls: “I was completely surrounded by officers, dazed, manacled and with cameras pointing at me through the bars. I was fighting for my life like a caged animal. It was horrifying.” Footage from the interrogation was later artfully edited to give the appearance of a confession and broadcast on Chinese state media. While this might sound like an
The US House of Representatives on July 1 passed by unanimous consent a bipartisan bill that would penalize Chinese officials who implement Beijing’s new national security legislation in Hong Kong, as well as banks that do business with them. The following day, the US Senate unanimously passed the bill, which was later sent to the White House, where it awaits US President Donald Trump’s signature. The bill does not spell out what the sanctions would look like and Trump has yet to sign it into law, but Reuters on Thursday last week reported that five major Chinese state lenders are considering
RSS