Media reform activists and supporting civic groups yesterday launched the Alliance Against Placement Marketing in News and vowed to fight what they called an “unethical practice.”
Although it has long been a practice by government to pay news media to publish or air positive reports on certain policies, the issue did not receive public attention until last month, when former Chinese-language China Times reporter Dennis Huang (黃哲斌) exposed almost everything he knows about such practices on his blog immediately after he resigned from the newspaper.
Despite suddenly becoming famous and receiving numerous requests for interviews and invitations to speak about the issue at universities, Huang told the inaugural press conference of the alliance in Taipei he was actually “a nobody.”
“I may have taken a step forward ahead of many people, but the problem can only be eliminated if everyone joins forces and keeps an eye on both the government and media organizations,” he said.
Excellent Journalism Award Foundation executive director Eve Chiu (邱家宜) said the -practice of producing pseudo news had changed the media environment in a negative way.
“In the past, mainstream media were willing to report on public issues, but now as it becomes common for government institutions pay to buy news reports, things have changed,” she told the news conference. “Nowadays, news outlets may be reluctant to report on some government policies if they are not paid for it.”
Chiu highlighted the seriousness of the problem of government advertorials with an example published in CommonWealth Magazine.
While reading reports on the council’s policies, the article said, Council of Labor Affairs Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) allegedly turned around and asked her aides: “How come there’s a report about the new policy? Did we pay for it?”
Media Watch chairman Kuan Chung-hsiang (管中祥), for his part, said he had already collected “concrete evidence” of news report purchases by government.
“We will soon make the evidence public,” Kuan said. “We also invite the public to join us in a march to protest against the government and certain news organizations.”
While the alliance now focuses on government placement marketing, Kuan said they would also deal with such marketing by private firms in future.
He said that if media organizations repeatedly failed to distinguish between news reports and advertising, “they would eventually become the ones who suffer the consequences because readers or viewers will not trust them anymore.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) also spoke against media placement by the government, saying that after an internal discussion, it had decided to “review and reflect” on the practice, which made its debut under the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
“Many aspects of buying advertorials can give people an uneasy feeling,” DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said in a statement. “Media freedom can be undermined when the media has to cooperate with a client like the government, especially when it becomes one of its largest customers.”
The DPP would support a ban on the government buying advertorials related to political or policy decisions, she said, adding that the ban should be extended to include state-run corporations or funds.
“If the DPP regains power, we will not resort to this practice,” she said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY VINCENT Y. CHAO
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