A professor of labor law, commenting on the “one fixed day off and one rest day” policy on Tuesday, warned the public about “mediacracy,” or the media having control over how people perceive and appraise public policies.
While he was referring to the risk of allowing the media to set the policy agenda, Taiwan’s nonstop news has also awarded politicians room for ostentatious performances and remarks that are only corrected or evaluated — if at all — much later, when public attention has already faded.
The professor, who commented on poll results surveying perceptions of the new labor law, said that the government’s policy implementation is more like a “beauty contest”: The public tends to view it negatively when they see media coverage of a strong opposition.
The media has also been setting the tone of the policy, relating price hikes to changes to workers’ days off, he said.
Reporting, or reciting, employers’ complaints about cost increases has led the public to attribute price hikes to the policy, even though granting workers better working conditions — which requires employers’ effort — was the whole point of the amendments.
Social welfare organizations have reportedly been the hardest hit by the new law and they have complained to some business leaders, who in turn said the government was being “cruel.”
In one news report, a story by a third-grader who said the new law was going to make people “too poor to have anything to eat,” was cited.
Why is the media reporting on the possibility of the new policy leading to poor conditions for people in need if the question of why businesses are allowed to maintain their dogged practice and mentality of relying on “low personnel costs” remains unasked?
Constant updates motivated by the competition for viewers or readers has accustomed consumers to truncated and sensational or controversial news. Consumers’ habit of reading short pieces about “the latest of the latest” news has encouraged politicians to behave irresponsibly to gain media exposure, which is almost guaranteed with 24-hour media platforms needing to fill their time.
For example, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Li-shan (張麗善) called a news conference to accuse the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of arbitrarily changing a regulation in an attempt to release information on National Farmers’ Association members to candidates running for election.
Chang said the change posed the potential for personal information leaks and “blackmail and bribery,” but failed to mention that incumbent politicians already have access to such information.
It was only weeks later, when a DPP lawmaker requested that Chang recuse herself from reviewing a budget proposal, that it was revealed that Chang’s husband is the head of the association.
It is a long shot to claim that Chang’s accusation would not have been made if there was no need for constant news updates, but it would not be unreasonable to argue that her news conference to accuse the DPP of “tyranny of the majority” — a term the KMT like to throw about — might have been encouraged by the knowledge that just one short report on the event would get attention and the sympathy of her party’s supporters based on confirmation bias.
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