Saying that Taiwanese people are increasingly dissatisfied with local media reporting, a new radio program was launched yesterday to teach people how to be smart listeners, viewers and readers who are able to analyze what they are are being told.
The man behind the program is Kuan Chung-hsiang (
"Many people detest the stuff fed to them by local media, but they don't know how to deal with it," said Kuan, the producer and initiator of the radio program WatchMedia," which made its debut Sunday on the GreenPeace Broadcasting Station.
"We would like to teach the audiences how to be smarter when they are watching the TV news or reading the newspaper," Kuan said.
In a poll conducted by the Broadcasting Development Fund regarding the performance of local TV news programs covering the SARS epidemic, nearly 45 percent of the respondents thought TV news reporting had "failed to be objective," while 63 percent of those surveyed thought that the media in Taiwan should be "better supervised."
"Taiwan media always offer the same thing, especially the TV news," said Jasmine Hsu (
"There are always fighting and stereotyped stories. It's very annoying," Hsu said.
"The problem is, we have too many TV news stations," Kuan said.
"With the mainstream media's domination and commercial interests, it is very hard to read or watch the different programs with interesting topics in this country," he said.
A group of Internet surfers from KO-Media, a homepage for those not satisfied with the mainstream press in Taiwan, are planning a demonstration in September.
"There is no fairness and justice in the arena constructed by local TV stations," Kuan said.
"Take the Hualien County commissioner by-election for example: ETTV, the sponsor of the candidates' policy debate, didn't even invite Green Party candidate Chi Shu-ing (
In his program, Kuan tries to teach his audiences how to watch and read the news with a different viewpoint.
"One of our slogan's is: `WatchMedia, -- we try to lead you to a multi-dimensional world,'" he said.
"We don't want people listening to our program only to scold the local media, but we want them to know how to criticize the press with knowledge," Kuan said.
"In our program next week, we try to explore the relationship between local culture and Taiwan Thunder Fire, which was once the hottest TV drama series here," he said.
"But we don't want to make our programs sound like lectures. Instead, we will do the analysis over a piece of jazz or non-mainstream music," he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,