Media professionals speak out

Senior professionals said yesterday that they hoped the government would carry out media reform plans starting next Monday and promise to stop interfering with the media.

TV hosts Clara Chou (周玉蔻) and Yang Hsien-hung (楊憲宏), whose programs have been criticized for speaking out against government officials, said that they hoped the government would create enough free space for the media.

"If there is no media, then there is no successful democracy," Yang said.

Yang that the media has been waiting five years for the government to change media policies, but instead, many TV stations have become a "tool of the government."

Chou that one of her TV programs on TTV was canceled earlier this month without prior notice from the station.

This happened after she criticized Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and interviewed Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on her program, Chou said.

"This is not the first time a TV station has tried to stop me from criticizing certain government officials," she said.

The first time her work was interfered with was when the authorities at CTS asked her to cut out part of an episode where she quoted criticisms from Chinese-language newspapers regarding the management of CTS, Chou said.

After her TTV show was stopped, nobody would admit to who gave the order to cancel the program, she said. But she felt that the government had manipulated the decision, she said.

"Media reforms should be carried out according to concrete plans," Chou said. "Responsibilities are often shirked and in the end nobody steps up to the plate."

Chou that an executive at the TV station even asked her to pledge her support for him in exchange for restarting her show.

In response, Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Pasuya Yao (姚文智) said that his office had no connection with the station's decision to cancel Chou's program and had not interfered in any way.

Yang that it took so long for him and Chou to speak out because they did not want the focus of the conference to be on the canceling of Chou's show.

Instead, he said, it should illustrate the failure of the government's policies.

"We [the media] have waited long enough. We have been suppressed since the KMT era, and now even with the DPP in charge, nothing has changed," he said.

Yang that he was also worried about the quality of National Communications Commission nominees since none of them had "experience" in producing programs.

He said that all political parties should consider nominating only experienced media professionals to the commission.