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`Lack of professionalism'found in recent coverage

Many readers found news coverage of the SARS outbreak in March and April to be too sensational, negative and misleading, according to a media survey scheduled to be released by the Foundation for the Advancement of Media Excellence (新聞公害防治基金會) today.

The survey, administered by the foundation and conducted by the Focus Survey Research (山水民意研究公司) on May 2, questioned 1,093 adults nationwide about their views on the newspaper coverage in March and April.

The 94-page report found that while 44 percent of the respondents said that they were satisfied with the papers' coverage and about 40 percent said they were dissatisfied.

Among those dissatisfied, 65 percent said that they were dissatisfied because they found the coverage too sensational; 29 percent said it was too negative; 17 percent said the media failed to provide necessary information; and 16 percent said the information was misleading.

According to Lu Shih-hsiang (盧世祥), executive director of the foundation, although the foundation won the contract to conduct the NT$950,000 project, they eventually decided to turn down the funding because of the controversy the project had caused.

"We'll continue to do the project as planned, while we're still desperately looking for sponsors," Lu said.

The Government Information Office (GIO) had originally contracted the foundation to evaluate the performance of the nation's six mainstream Chinese-language newspapers.

The foundation was to look into the papers' news coverage from page one to page four from the perspective of justice, objectivity, appropriateness and accuracy. Results of the evaluation were to be released every two months.

Although the GIO claimed that the practice has been going on since the KMT era, several media companies have berated the government for what they called a violation of their freedom of speech.

To quell the outcry, the Cabinet later announced that it would ask the foundation to "adjust" the controversial items in the evaluation report.

The GIO also put the brakes on a NT$3 million plan to finance another private organization to study the basic structural elements of the print media industry.

Study items were to include the circulation volume, circulation area, manpower and financial resources of the nation's newspapers and magazines. It was also to look at the impact that the nation's accession to the WTO has had on the print media.

Using two stories as case studies, the report highlighted three main flaws in the how the media covered the outbreak: false reporting, exaggeration and sensationalizing, and invasion of privacy and inappropriate labeling of SARS victims.

"These three flaws were attributed to the lack of journalistic professionalism," the report said.

One of the stories examined was a report about water contamination in the Huachung Public Housing Complex in Taipei. The story was a report about a "Mayday" letter supposedly issued by health-care workers at the Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei, part of which was sealed off because of the mass transmission of SARS.

Both of the reports later proved to be false.
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