A media watchdog group and public health experts yesterday complained that the Taiwanese media's coverage of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) had caused unnecessary panic.
The Broadcasting Development Fund (BDF) yesterday invited journalists, media professionals and scientists to evaluate the local media's performance in dealing with the outbreak.
"Just like the coverage on most of the news incidents, the media's coverage provided lots of information without most crucial and basic information," said Lu Shih-xiang (
Local coverage began March 14, the day that a China-based Taiwanese businessman and his wife were admitted to National Taiwan University Hospital. They were the first suspected cases of SARS in the country.
As most of the media urged the public to wear face masks as a protection measures, such masks have become a hot commodity and there were reports about them being sold out in many stores. To the scientists attending yesterday's conference, such stories were just sensationalistic.
In yesterday's discussion, Lin Reuy-shiung (
"Only infected individuals have to wear masks -- to avoid further spreading a virus. The illness is really not as dangerous as the media reported. As a expert, I think the media just wants to scare the public," Lin said.
"The media has the responsibility to provide basic data and the latest developments in their coverage, but Taiwan's media has failed to do so," Lu said.
The experts also criticized some media organizations politicizing the story.
They noted that some pro-unification media groups had avoided questioning the Chinese authorities' efforts to downplay the illness in China, while some media organizations' had high-lighted the quarrel between the central government and the Taipei City Government over quarantine efforts.
Citing an editorial in the March 31 edition of the Asian Wall Street Journal, Lu criticized those media organizations' who were hesitant to condemn the China's performance, but were more than willing to attack the actions of Taiwan's government.
However, at least one expert attending the forum was willing to give the local media the benefit of the doubt.
"How different societies handle the illness reflect their own cultures. Taiwan's media has much to learn compared to Western countries, but its performance is actually fine when we compared it with China, Singapore, Hong Kong and other Asian countries," said Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), a public health professor at National Taiwan University.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching