Wu Ping-hai (
But Wu's video camera has recorded a footage from a wide range of events, documenting the personal stories of ordinary people and the issues that concern local communities.
Wu posts short documentaries on peopo.org, an online citizen news platform started recently by the Taiwan Broadcasting System.
Two of his films document the study of farmland tree frogs, a species only found in Taiwan, and the experiences of foreign spouses learning Mandarin in Meinung Township (美濃), Kaohsiung County.
Wu was one of more than 700 citizen journalists who have contributed to community news coverage since the creation of the platform in April.
They have generated more than 2,200 news stories over the past three months.
They cover many noteworthy events or phenomena in local communities, such as changes being made at the flood-prone Pa-Chang Creek (
Wu told the seminar yesterday that he was aware that other online platforms also allow people to upload videos, but he said that footage of environmental protection or minority issues often disappears into a massive database and remains unnoticed.
To ensure the quality of stories, the Web site's administrators have asked would-be contributers to submit a formal application before posting reports and footage.
Like Wu, most of the contributors do not have any formal training in journalism. Some said they did not know how to edit a film before deciding to take up citizen journalism.
But a lack of filming experience has not prevented contributors from producing some excellent reports.
A citizen journalist nicknamed "A-mao" (
They filmed historical sites and conversations, including their meeting with an 84-year-old man who had been drafted into the Japanese Army during World War II.
"The experience made me realize that Taiwan is not as bad as it seems on TV," A-mao told the seminar.
"Some things just need to be done soon," he said. "You can always choose to do these things later, but the people or the things you want to shoot sometimes can't wait that long."
For another citizen journalist, "Claudia," her goal is to report on important local issues.
"I could never become a TV anchor with my looks and my bad pronunciation of Mandarin and Taiwanese," she said.
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