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Media watchdogs lambast December as a month of porn

Media watchdog organizations are calling this past December a month of pornography and violence, due to the prevalence of paparazzi-style coverage churned out by Taiwan's media.

The Taiwan Advertiser Association (TAA) released media observation reports for December and November at a press conference yesterday.

The reports were conducted under the TAA's commission by four associations, including the Taiwan Association of University Professors (TAUP), the Taiwan chapter of Ending Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking (ECPAT), the Mothers Observing Media Foundation and the Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ).

Both the ATJ and the TAUP concluded in their reports that the Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳) sex-VCD scandal in December made Taiwan's broadcast and print media organizations more sensationalist.

The ATJ's report, which focuses on TV call-in talk shows, said the programs ignore public issues in the discussions in favor of paying attention only to gossip and politicians' personal affairs.

"It's regrettable that important public issues, such as implementation of the national pension program and the constitutional amendments for creating a presidential government system, have been completely ignored by these call-in shows," the ATJ said in its report.

The ATJ specifically criticized the top-rated call-in show, the "2100 The Public Speaking Out" (2100 全民開講), spending 73 percent of its airtime on discussing DPP legislator Lin Chung-mo's (林重謨) tirade against independent legislator-elect Sisy Chen (陳文茜) and Chu Mei-feng's sex-VCD scandal.

"It's ironic for the show, especially when it looks at itself as a leading program," the report says.

The TAUP's report denounced daily newspaper reports in both November and December.

The TAUP, which acts as a newspaper watchdog group, criticized newspapers' aggressive coverage of the sex-VCD scandal for raising the gravity of the incident to a nationwide level.

"Even though Scoop Weekly was the only magazine circulating the VCD publicly, coverage by other media organizations based on commercial interests was the main factor that made the incident more significant than it is," the report said.

Also, the report criticized papers for playing the roles of police, judges and prosecutors by making judgements before all the facts were in.

In its observation on November news coverage, the report said daily newspaper reports frequently lacked confirmation of information and balance in their news reports in the run-up to the Dec. 1 legislative and local elections.

"Some newspapers and reporters expressed their stances in their reports and layouts, which made the election news unbalanced," the report says.

Meanwhile, the ECPAT report said that the search engine on the Yahoo Taiwan Web site offered the most "inappropriate information" compared with other local search engines.

The ECPAT defines "inappropriate information" as that which violates the Anti-Sexual Business Provisions for Children and Teenagers (兒童及青少年性交易防治條例) and Criminal Law.

Finally, the Mothers Observing Media Association concluded that, of the four terrestrial TV networks, CTV's entertainment shows feature the largest amount of violent and pornographic behavior as well as the most privacy violations.

The TAA was founded in May last year. It started commissioning the four associations in June to observe the media's performance.
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