Rather, they use TV and press reports as tools to convince officials higher up the chain that they are working hard.
In other words, lowly ranked bureaucrats use the media to inform — or hoodwink — their superiors in order to protect their jobs. If what my informant said is true, it can be surmised that ministries pay for embedded reports to hoodwink the Cabinet, and that the Cabinet buys slots to fool the president.
Do ordinary people realize that officials are using taxpayers’ money to fool each other and everyone else? If so, and if they find this acceptable, then Taiwan is in real trouble.
I have a modest request for those in government: Please stop using embedded marketing to paint over the cracks in your policies. Civil servants should be willing to answer for their performance. The media, for their part, should remember their proper role, and media workers should ask themselves what became of the ideals they had when they chose to work in the industry.
Otherwise, there will come a time when the public loses faith in the media altogether. The democratic system will be weakened and everyone in Taiwan will suffer the consequences.
Media workers should not sell their souls in this messy potage, and media outlets should consider more than just the bottom line.
Chen Ping-hung is a professor in the Graduate Institute of Mass Communication at National Taiwan Normal University.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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