Relations between Taiwan and the Philippines have been strained by the May 9 fatal shooting of fisherman Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成) by Philippine Coast Guard personnel, leaving Filipino workers in Taiwan exposed to potential fallout from the incident. It is in this context that a fabricated story posted online caused a national stir.
The story was about a restaurant owner refusing to serve a Filipino customer who was then left waiting outside for over an hour. Although the author later admitted the story was false, it resonated with the public mood in Taiwan and quickly went viral.
Many Taiwanese are angry at what they perceive as the Philippine government dragging its feet over an investigation into the shooting and in offering an official apology for the incident. It has also been criticized for failing to meet demands for compensation for Hung’s family, for its failure to punish the perpetrators and for not holding talks on a fisheries agreement with Taiwan.
Manila Economic and Cultural Office Chairman Amadeo Perez, the special envoy sent to Taiwan to extend his sympathies on behalf of the Philippine government, was even turned away by some Taipei hotels.
Nevertheless, even when relations between the two countries were at their lowest, Chang Cheng (張正), the editor-in-chief of Four Way Voice — the Chinese-language newspaper that first ran the fake story — apologized and offered his resignation when he discovered that the story had been fabricated by a journalist, surnamed Cheng (鄭), working for the Chinese-language daily Lih Pao, the Four Way Voice’s sister paper.
Chang was willing to “fall on his sword” for his lapse of judgment. He offered to resign for failing to observe a crucial aspect of the code of journalism: checking the facts.
This sense of responsibility for self-discipline within the media, during a time rife with newspaper scandals, is a rare glimmer of light.
However, Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan’s (李鴻源) instructing the police to investigate the story’s source is an affront to freedom of expression. From the beginning, when a woman, surnamed Tung (董), posted a similar story about a cafe’s refusal to serve Filipinos on her Facebook page, netizens had their suspicions as to its authenticity, provoking a search to find out more.
However, this probing was kept within the online community.
When police summoned Tung and Cheng for questioning and considered charging them with violating the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), the ghost of the White Terror era reared its ugly head. It was no surprise then that a law professor protested the involvement of the state in a debate in the public sphere by posting a similar fabricated story on his Facebook page and inviting the authorities to investigate him.
The furor surrounding the fabricated stories is a moral issue and the government should not be involving state apparatus — ostensibly to prevent people from damaging the nation’s image — or initiating criminal investigations into the matter.
If the government is right and these stories are detrimental to the nation’s image, then surely putting up signs reading “We don’t serve Filipinos” and “Please don’t shoot me” — as some stores have reportedly done — is even more damaging. Why did the government not investigate these stores?
The public seems to be blowing hot and cold over this issue. One minute there are reports of people wanting to kick Filipinos out of the country, the next one hears of “friendly Taiwan” initiatives from people wanting to show their support for Filipinos living in Taiwan.
These mood extremes are not normal.
The nation’s broadcast media should not cater to the fickle public mood with sensationalist stories aimed at boosting viewership, but should instead call on the public to remain calm, while reporting events in an objective, measured way.
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) took the stage at a protest rally on Sunday in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei in support of former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for corruption and embezzlement. Huang told the crowd that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) had sent a message of support the previous day, saying she would be traveling from the south to Taipei: If the protest continued into the evening, she had said, she would show up. The rally was due to end
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
RSS