It has been a few weeks since the scandal surrounding the use of illegal additives in food products broke and the initial firestorm has all but died down now that the owner of one of the offending companies has been indicted.
The indictment and lengthy sentences sought by prosecutors may have calmed those baying for blood, but unfortunately it will not stop the media from continuing to run a series of outlandish and frankly spurious claims about the people and chemicals involved in the affair.
The panic caused by the plasticizer brought out the worst in Taiwan’s media, which have a reputation for scraping the bottom of the barrel. However, some of the rumors and untruths media outlets have peddled recently involved them actually breaking through the bottom of the barrel, after which they just kept on digging.
At the height of the food scare, we were treated to a string of revelations about the family who owned one of the companies charged with using illegal additives.
In the kind of nonsensical rant that often passes for news analysis on these fine shores, Chen Feng-hsin (陳鳳馨) stated on TVBS’ 2100 flagship talk show that even though the son of the owner of one of the companies involved had defended his father’s products, he also never drank pearl milk tea or drinks from convenience stores — a claim that was later debunked.
Another talking head ridiculously suggested that the large amount of plastic shoes found at one of the factories meant that the company had probably been making plasticizers by using the shoes as raw material.
However, the craziness did not stop there.
Last week, Next TV anchor Tsai Chin-yu (蔡沁瑜) said she suspected her young daughter’s leukemia was the result of plasticizers and plastic compounds contained in the large amount of microwave meals she had consumed during her pregnancy. It did not matter that a doctor had told her that there was absolutely no possibility of a link between the two — she remained convinced.
What is that saying about journalists not becoming part of the story?
When you thought it could not get any worse, the Apple Daily reported earlier this week that in February a Taichung mother gave birth to a premature baby with an unusually small penis. It took four months, and of course the specious claims linked to the plasticizer scandal, for her to figure out the reason for her son’s miniscule manhood: She drank bubble tea almost every day during her pregnancy. Eureka!
It seems the plasticizer scandal has brought long--standing insecurities among certain sections of the male populace bubbling back to the surface.
Both the Apple Daily and CTV have run stories questioning whether the long-term use of illegal plasticizers in Taiwan and its alleged side effects on reproductive organs are responsible for — according to their “information” — the nation’s average penis size being 6mm shorter than their Western counterparts. There has even been talk of conducting a study to investigate this.
Let’s hope the “news” does not spark a global bout of intercontinental plasticizer--provoked penis envy.
And where, you may ask, were those guardians of media standards, the fine, upstanding members of the National Communications Commission, while all this sub-standard, scientifically--challenged reporting was going on?
My guess is that they were at home in front of the mirror with a tape measure.
Joe Doufu is a Taipei-based satirist.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past