For nearly a week, Taiwan's cable stations have been flooded the nation with news related to China's bid to host the Olympic games. But few, in their zeal to celebrate China's victory, gave balanced coverage of Beijing's bid. Media critics and journalists say that instead, they focused almost exclusively on the raw emotion of the event.
The reasons for this are varied, but most of all it's thought to be a result of the nature of Taiwan's complex relationship with its neighbor, a growing interest in China's media market and a desire to "massage" Taiwan's coverage.
"It's an important international affair, but under the influence of competition and the over-arching influence of the western media, the issue's coverage was overblown," Pan Tsu-yin (潘祖蔭), deputy manager of the Chinese Television System's news department.
Taiwan's five 24-hour news channels used over 30 percent of their air time per hour on Beijing's Olympic bid on Friday. TVBS-N even held a 24-hour countdown prior to the International Olympic Committee's first vote.
Hu Yu-wei (
"With these complicated concerns, Taiwan's media could not cover the story the same way as the international media covered the event, which showed both positive and negative perspectives," Hu said.
An executive editor with Media Watch, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was understandable that Taiwan's media has given so much attention to the event, but he wondered why these television channels covered the story with so little concern for news balance.
"If Beijing wins the Olympic bid, the result is crucial to the cross-strait relationship, but the point is how these cable channels covered this issue. They spent most of time covering the excitement from Beijing and Hong Kong, but rarely mentioned human rights issues and other weaknesses of China," he said, "mostly because of their business ties [with China]."
But Ma Yung-jen (馬詠仁), deputy general manager of ETTV's news department, said its coverage of the story was more positive because there was no reason to make Beijing look bad.
"We covered the issue with concern for Taiwan' s economic interests, and [with the thought that] audiences shouldn't link the event to nationalism. Taiwan would get no benefit from criticizing China, and we shouldn't judge Beijing's weaknesses using Taiwanese standards," Ma said.
Wang Cheng-chung (
"We covered the Olympic bid issue with equal distribution to every city and tried to reflect the realities. We spent more airtime on Beijing because we were gambling on Beijing. If Paris or Toronto were odds-on favorites to win, we would try our best to cover these two cities just like we covered Beijing," Wang said.
The Media Watch editor, however, felt that Wang and Ma's accounts were influenced by the television station's desire to break into the China market.
"In an effort to be allowed to circulate or broadcast in China, most Taiwanese media have tried very hard to please the Chinese government. This attitude, however, could in the end damage the interests of Taiwan," he said.
Taiwanese media groups have long had an eye on China's communications market. TVBS reportedly has had the most success thus far.
The executive director of TVBS, Kei Fu-hung (葛福鴻), recently established a TV network, Asia Plus (東風電視台), in Shanghai and started to broadcast there last October. Since the government strictly controls news broadcasting, the channel offers entertainment programming, but not news.
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