A report released yesterday by a local media watchdog group has branded Formosa TV (FTV) and Sanlih E-Television (SET-TV) as two broadcasters that show obvious political bias in election news coverage favoring the pan-green camp.
The report was part of a campaign against “TV bias” launched by the Chinese Communication Society (中華傳播學會).
It was based on an analysis of news reports aired between 7pm and 8pm every night by 10 television stations including FTV, SET, TTV, CTS, CTV, PTS, CtiTV, EBC, TVBS and Eranews, on the Nov. 27 special municipal elections.
A total of 545 news stories on the elections were broadcast from Nov. 1 to Nov. 17, the report said.
According to Chuang Po-chung (莊伯仲), director of Chinese Culture University’s Department of Journalism, who was a major initiator of the campaign, the analysis reveals a conspicuous preference for the pan-green camp by FTV and SET.
FTV and SET had more negative reports about Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidates than the other stations, 90 percent of which targeted Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), said Weber Lai (賴祥蔚), director of National Taiwan University of the Arts’ Department of Radio and Television.
By comparison, the two stations did not adopt an equally strict standard to scrutinize Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Lai said.
Of the 66 news stories about Hau during the period, 48 were negative. Most of the negative stories were produced by FTV and SET, the report said.
There were 39 stories about DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), 34 of which were positive, it said, adding that of these positive stories, 16 were by FTV and 10 by SET.
The impartiality of the media watchdog group, however, has been called into question by some bloggers, who said its members have close ties to the pan-blue camp.
Chuang is a former member of the KMT’s presidential election campaign online taskforce and was recommended by the KMT in 2008 to serve as a committee member to screen the Public Television Service’s board of directors.
Lai, meanwhile, formerly served as special assistance to UFO Radio chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) and was previously nominated by the New Party as a National Assembly candidate.
Earlier this month, KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) accused FTV, SET-TV and the Chinese-language **Liberty Times** (the **Taipei Times**’ sister paper) of holding extreme stances and attacking the KMT viciously in their news coverage. She nicknamed the three media outlets as “San-min-zi,” which sounds similar to the Chinese word for “sandwich.”
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