The spate of recent scandals involving the reporting of fake news stories in Taiwan continues to concern media observers. The constant need to pull in readers and viewers has many media outlets fabricating news stories and infringing on the privacy of citizens.
Concerned that Taiwan's media environment is deteriorating, the Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation (龍應台文化基金會) has invited three media experts to discuss their thoughts on the meaning of a responsible media in democratic societies.
"Our purpose is to emphasize the importance of creating appropriate journalism ethics," said Katherine Lee (李應平), CEO of the Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation.
That may be a tall order. Citing a US study analyzing the effectiveness of teaching news media rules and ethics, Taiwan National University journalism professor Flora Chang (張錦華) said short-term exposure to ethics may not build a solid foundation for ethical behavior, though it may improve reasoning and decision making.
She added that ethical standards could often conflict. "An over-emphasis on media ethics may limit freedom of the press, while [an emphasis on] freedom of the press may endanger national security," she said.
It is a dichotomy that Doreen Weisenhaus is fully aware off. The director of the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Center (JMSC) has written extensively on that Special Administrative Region's Basic Law, especially Article 23 - an anti-subversion clause that many observers feel has the potential to limit the freedom of Hong Kong's notoriously raucous media. Before arriving in Hong Kong, Weisenhaus was legal editor for The New York Times.
The Salon also features Hsu Lu (徐璐), a veteran Taiwanese reporter and current CEO of Chunghwa Telecom Foundation (中華電信基金會). In 1987, Hsu was one of the first reporters in Taiwan (sent by the pro-independence Independence Evening Post (自立晚報) to report in Beijing. Upon her return, the then-Chinese Nationalist government banned her from leaving Taiwan for a year.
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) spokesman, Thomas Hodges, will moderate the Salon and help field questions from the audience.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
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It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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