Live broadcasts of legislative meetings were launched on April 8.
In theory, at least, this means that issues aired in the legislature would be made completely open and transparent, and that members of the public would be able to monitor what happens in the chamber in real time. That being said, there is still a huge difference between how visible a given committee or individual legislator is, because of the sheer amount of information being made available.
For example, the Apple Daily has a live broadcast, and online media platform Watchout has an interactive interface classified by issues, legislative caucuses and individual legislators’ positions on certain issues. It is a mammoth achievement, but despite the accessibility of the broadcasts, people will simply not devote much of their limited time to watching them, and the media are, for the short term at least, going to continue setting the agenda and making or breaking political figures, even more so than before.
And yet, the live broadcasts are significant in another way: that they would put an end to the political shows that politicians used to put on for the public’s benefit. Politicians used to try to stir up controversy to receive some exposure. It was a spectacle benefiting the politicians and the media, but not in a good way. With the live broadcasts, people should think of how they can reduce such a phenomenon, and how they can curtail the media’s ability to make or break political figures.
The first thing to do is to increase the public’s ability to understand public policies. Some people suggest that during legislative recess, policy debate programs should be broadcast like in some other nations. However, C-Span, a US public television network, has for many years produced programs on public affairs for educational purposes, but they were neither popular nor influential, proving that it is difficult for traditional public policy programs to engage the public.
In the future, when funding for legislative broadcasts are confirmed, the money can be used to bolster the way people use the Internet, that arriviste media format, instead of producing more political debate programs.
For example, a budget can be allocated to the production of programs in the style of Taiwan Bar, an online video channel employing humorous comic strips and dialogues to present Taiwanese history. The money could be used to produce large numbers of episodes, explaining difficult public policies in ways to make them easier to understand by the public, and making them widely available through the Internet and social media. If they become popular, they would not go unnoticed by traditional media outlets, which would then make them available to non-Internet users.
Moreover, the government can establish a comprehensive audiovisual database of legislative proceedings which can be divided into categories, for example, according to the five government branches; legislative committees — including the Procedure Committee and the Constitutional Amendment Committee; comments by individual lawmakers; and the acts; all of which would then be made searchable.
The legislative database is not well-organized. Hopefully, after it is organized, it would enable the public to directly monitor legislative proceedings and fact-check the remarks made by politicians, making politics more accountable and curtailing the media’s sway over setting the agenda and its ability to make or break politicians.
Lillian Wang is a professor at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Journalism.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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