On its front page, a newspaper shows images of a car crash in which a mayor's wife is badly injured; a TV reporter in cahoots with a local gangster who is threatening another gangster writes the story as an exclusive; an article accuses a government official of corruption, but cites an unnamed source - it turns out the information is untrue.
These are some examples of reporting that have given rise to criticism of Taiwan's media and accusations of titillation, innuendo and inaccuracy. The media's partisan polarization compounds the problem. And the recent growth in media outlets in Taiwan isn't matched by increased training of journalists, especially in ethics.
In a recent opinion piece, National Taiwan University journalism professor Flora Chang (張錦華) lamented journalism students' lack of interest in courses on ethics. "Media ethics is a wasteland in this country," she wrote.
Doreen Weisenhaus has a different take. In an interview with the Taipei Times the night before lecturing at the Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation (龍應台文化基金會), she suggested making the study of ethics mandatory for journalism students.
"If you don't make [ethics classes] mandatory then you are out of the norm - if you want to be an internationally ranked journalism school," she said.
Weisenhaus, who has worked as a reporter and editor at the New York Times, is now director of the Media Law Project at the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong.
Ethics, she said, is among the least popular but most important classes for journalism students because it underlies a reporter's creditability. Although teaching ethics alone will not guarantee improved media, without it, improvement is impossible.
Before relocating to Asia, Weisenhaus, a law graduate, was editor-in-chief of the National Law Journal, where she led award-winning coverage of the death penalty and environmental racism. She was then appointed as the first editor to cover legal issues at The New York Times Magazine. After that she became city editor and oversaw criminal justice and the courts, labor and the workplace, local business, finance and immigration.
In 2000, she took a one-year leave of absence to help train students throughout Asia to work for the local and international press, and to raise international standards of reporting.
What began as a one-year sabbatical turned into a seven-year stay in Hong Kong. In her book, Hong Kong Media Law: A Guide for Journalists and Media Professionals, she highlights media issues such as defamation, court reporting, access to information, official secrets, reporting restrictions, and more. It is a ground-breaking resource for journalists interested in reporting and law in Hong Kong and China.
Her time spent in Hong Kong made her realize that the region is developing the way "Eastern Europe was 15 years earlier."
She said the explosion of political, cultural, legal development was "just too tasty to pass up."
In addition to the momentous changes of Asia's politics and law, Weisenhaus cites two issues that compelled her to remain in Hong Kong.
The first was SARS. "Often, media can be tested by major events and they rise to the challenge and become more responsible," Weisenhaus said. But by all accounts the media failed in its duty to inform citizens about the disease because Beijing withheld crucial information.
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