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Hsieh fumes over `false report'

Students protest at the Legislative Yuan yesterday over the recent decision by the Ministry of Education to cut the number of places at teacher-training institutes from 3,815 to 135. The students accused the ministry of ignoring student needs. The sign reads ``No more places in teacher-training institutes: Our future vanishes in an instant.'' PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday complained at length about the media making "false reports" about him.

"There is only one real story. I am so sorry that the press cannot fix its own problems and continue to report inaccurate information even after it is corrected," he said.

Hsieh's complaint was part of his speech that opened the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.

Cabinet Spokesman Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) kept the issue alive at a press conference after the meeting.

"The Cabinet considers this matter to be highly regrettable. The media continues to repeat the same mistakes even after we have issued corrections. This is not right," Cho said. "False reporting is no different to the faked [video] in Taipei City Councilor Mike Wang's (王育誠) bogus accusation that local restaurants were re-cooking mortuary food and selling it to unknowing customers."

The premier's complaint was referring to a Chinese-language newspaper's report on Monday that claimed Hsieh had suggested "stray teachers" (unemployed teachers) may want to become police officers instead because the police force is suffering a serious shortage of personnel.

"How would it be possible for me to come up with such a stupid suggestion?" Hsieh asked.

According to Cho, what the premier really meant was that the police and the Ministry of Education should work together to help solve each other's problems.

The Taiwan Police College is trying to recruit more rookie officers, while the ministry is trying to reduce the total number of qualified teachers looking to fill available positions.

"The premier was actually suggesting taking advantage of these extra vacant facilities [and personnel] to recruit more police officers," Cho said.

The offending story was written by Lee Shun-te (李順德), a senior political affairs reporter at the Chinese-language United Daily News.

Lee said that he did not understand why Hsieh and Cho were being so defensive. He said he was simply doing his job in citing a press release on the Cabinet's Web site.

Lee said that the press release was issued by the Government Information Office (GIO), and included a summary of Hsieh's conversation during the Cabinet meeting. Press releases are ordinarily endorsed by superior officers before being published.

"I do not understand how such information can be `wrong,'" Lee said. "In addition, I did not mean to attack the premier personally or anything like that. Not at all."
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