On Monday, veteran reporter Huang Je-bing (黃哲斌) resigned from the newspaper where he had worked for more than 16 years. If a journalist wants to quit his job, who is to stop him? Normally such an event would be no more remarkable than a rain shower.
However, Huang’s announcement of his resignation stirred up a big commotion only a day after he posted it on his blog, which registered nearly 100,000 visitors. The story was also quoted and reposted countless times. Why? Because Huang told the truth when few journalists would have dared to do so. Huang’s heartfelt explanation of why he resigned reads as follows: “Taiwanese newspapers are ahead of the world trend for paid promotional news. Since my ideas about this job seem outdated, I am resigning and going home.”
The first thing this media veteran did after quitting the service was to start a start up a petition against the practice of government at various levels spending public funds to get policies promoted in the news media.
Within one day, 1,078 groups and individuals had signed the petition. Among the signatures can be found the names of Taiwanese media studies department heads and professors. There are also media studies students worrying about their first job, media workers and many, many readers, viewers and listeners.
“How is this different from the communist system they have in China?” “Government manipulating the media … that’s really going too far.” “What’s the difference between the government buying media outlets and election candidates who pay for votes?” “When will I be able to stop having to guess what’s news and what’s advertising in the papers?” “If the media can’t survive without selling out, let them go to the wall! The way they’re going is a complete distortion of its reason for existence.” “I’ve been upset about this for a long time.” “Why do we need to sign for something to be done that should have been done long ago?”
These are just some of the great variety of comments people have posted along with their signatures. Some are puzzled, other angry, but what they have in common is a modest, but determined, voice demanding that news reporting should not be for sale.
Freedom of news reporting and a duty to monitor the government — these notions are the basic ABCs of the news. However, these concepts have long since given way to a cozy symbiosis between government, business and the media.
When government buys space or slots in the news, it is even more harmful than when business does it, because in doing so it gets a monopoly on the opportunity to talk about public policy, while shrinking the space for discussion of other viewpoints. That gives it influence over how people make political decisions. You can’t have a real democracy when people have the wool pulled over their eyes.
In some respects, political information may be considered beneficial to the public, and it is hard to prove that government has bought over the media. Probably for these reasons, while departments responsible for overseeing the media have in recent years imposed many fines for embedded marketing, the content in question is nearly always commercial product promotion, and there has never been a case of punishment for policy promotion by the government.
The heartfelt words of a veteran media worker have once again shown up the collective degenerate state of Taiwanese media and politics. This incident has once more exposed the difficult position in which media workers find themselves.
Once more it has provoked dissatisfaction among the reading and listening public, and once more it has shown the power of the Internet as a channel of communication. But how can this power be turned into a remedy that can make things better?
Apart from signing petitions, we need to call on the media’s conscience and press those in government to keep their promises. Let’s not forget that in 2008, during the campaign that led to their election as president and vice president, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) signed a pledge to oppose embedded marketing. What has become of that promise now?
Perhaps the way to fix this problem for good would be to follow the example of the US, Canada and other countries by passing legislation that clearly prohibits governments at all levels from setting aside inappropriate budgets for buying over the media.
Hung Chen-ling is an assistant professor at the National Taiwan University Graduate Institute of Journalism.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
RSS