Executive Yuan spokesman Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said he would be available to journalists 24 hours a day after he was criticized for saying that he would only answer media queries through the Cabinet’s media group on the social networking app Line and urging reporters not to raise questions elsewhere to protect his quality of life and ease his workload.
“To avoid [media outlets] from making a scoop, to lower my workload and maintain my quality of life, I will no longer answer queries from media outlets individually. If you have any questions, please raise it in our Line group for the media. I will answer them to be fair to everyone else,” Tung said in a statement sent at 11:10pm on Saturday via the Executive Yuan’s official Line group for the media.
“I hope this model would work better for all and if you have a better suggestion, you can raise it here and we can discuss it,” he wrote.
Photo: Lee Hsin-fang, Taipei Times
The statement triggered uproar among journalists, with many reporting the story as breaking news.
“If a government spokesperson would only answer questions via Line, why is he getting paid so much?” a newspaper reporter surnamed Chen (陳) said.
“He can ask [reporters] not to disturb him after a certain hour at night, but how can he not want to answer individual telephone calls during working hours? This has nothing to do with quality of life, it is him having bad quality of work,” Chen said.
“If [Tung] needs a break, he can find a deputy to rotate with him, is that hard? Members of the media rotate shifts too,” a TV reporter surnamed Tsai (蔡) said. “Moreover, if something big happened, would he just ignore it for his quality of life?”
Tung yesterday defended his remarks, saying that he merely wanted to explore different ways of interacting with members of the media, adding that some media outlets took his statement out of context.
He said he has discussed the issue with a number of reporters and understood the way they work, adding that he would keep the original lines of communication open by keeping his mobile phone switched on 24 hours a day.
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