DPP renews vow to reform media

The DPP, seeking to honor its longtime pledge to free the media from political influence, said yesterday it will make fresh attempts to force party officials to abandon their stakes in media organizations.

But senior DPP lawmaker Trong Chai (蔡同榮), who owns Formosa Television (民視), one of the country's four terrestrial TV stations, warned against any drastic measures to achieve that end.

He said the government should first relinquish its stakes in two other terrestrial TV stations, Chinese Television System (CTV, 華視) and Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV, 台視).

According to DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), the party's Central Standing Committee will take up the issue of media reform in its meeting on Tuesday.

Lee said it has been one of the party's major planks to eliminate political influence from the media, especially terrestrial TV stations.

"The DPP has never abandoned this goal," he told reporters. "It was also a key promise of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in the 2000 campaign."

Last October, the Campaign for TV Democracy, a civic group, issued a condemnation of the DPP government for failing to take concrete steps to reform the media.

It suggested the Chen administration turn TTV, CTS and the Public Television Service into a public TV group and push for legal revisions that bar political parties and their members from owning or running media organizations.

Saying they understand the task is formidable and laborious, the activists called on the government to establish a timetable for reform.

Lee said the effort to make members divest their interests in media organizations was moving at too slow a pace.

Besides Chai, DPP lawmaker Chang Chun-hung (張俊宏) chairs the board of directors at Global TV, a local cable company.

Lee said he understood that the desire to break the monopoly of the electronic media by the former KMT administration prompted his DPP colleagues to run TV stations of their own.

By so doing, they hoped to better inform the people and end biased news reporting that played a crucial role in entrenching one-party rule, Lee said.

"It took Chai tremendous time and energy to establish Formosa TV in the hope that news reports in the nation would be more balanced and diversified," he said. "It is time to reconsider the strategy now that the media are no longer a government monopoly."

The KMT, though swept from power, has managed to maintain its dominance over the China Television Company (中視), among other media assets.

Lee said the DPP will ask its lawmakers to push through broadcasting rules that obligate all political parties and their officials to release or sell their shares in broadcasting enterprises.

A bill toward that end passed its first reading in the previous legislative session. It proposes barring party officials from owning stakes in TV companies.

Later in the day, Chai told reporters the government should adopt an incremental approach to the matter to avoid what he called widespread political repercussions.

He contended it is more urgent for political parties to withdraw their capital from TV companies before steps may be taken to regulate individuals.

The government, if serious about regulating the media, should dispose of its CTS and TTV shares first, Chai said, adding that he has respected professionalism when running Formosa TV.