There has been a tremendous outbreak of hand-wringing in Taiwan recently, due to the arrival of the weekly Next magazine (壹週刊). The other media outlets have one and all decried the "paparazzi" style that Next has supposedly "introduced" to our fair country. They have been joined by numerous scholars and other worthies, who also uniformly express grave concern over the future of Taiwan's media environment. This is simply hypocrisy on a massive scale, as even a cursory survey of what Taiwan's media looked like pre-Next reveals.
First of all, Next hardly invented the tabloid weekly magazine in Taiwan. Before it hit the stands, there were already a half dozen or more superficially indistinguishable titles available at every 7-11, packed with celebrity gossip and glossy pin-up girls. Some of these were even put out by such august media companies as the China Times (
Second, how about those "high-brow" media themselves? While there are certainly a fair number of talented individual journalists around, the overall standards of even the most famous newspapers range from mediocre to abysmal. In fact, the readers of the Taipei Times, warts and all, are actually getting about the most professional coverage available in a daily newspaper.
One can speculate on the causes [any bets on "decades of pumping out KMT propaganda?"], but the results are disheartening. More often than not, "news stories" are nothing but public relations pieces. The way it works is that Politico A decides to get his/her name and face into the news, so he sends out a press release and holds a press conference. The media come, and then they copy-and-paste his press release into their articles. Chinese-literate readers can prove this to themselves by noticing the ubiquitous appearance of unattributed assertions and value judgments.
Another tried and true trick is the "highly placed official" who is so frequently cited. In the good old days, that was a special code word for leaks from KMT headquarters, so those statements might have been useful, perhaps even authoritative. But nowadays, such labels cover all manner of leaks, innuendoes and rumors.
Business reporting is just as bad or worse, as public relations firms for big companies arrange for printing of positive coverage of their clients -- essentially cheap advertisements. And this is how the celebrity gossip pages (sorry, "culture" sections) work too. Singer X's agent calls up a newspaper or magazine, and -- hey presto! -- a half-page feature on X's latest "artistic endeavor" appears. Funny how, if there is any negative gossip, it always seems to be another celebrity who is the aggrieved party, just like the politicians.
Since this is what we get from the mainstream papers, one can begin to understand how TV news gathering most closely resembles the foraging practices of African wild dogs, undeserving of further comment.
Lest one wonder whether my outrage is simply "cultural," I should point out that some perfectly fine journalism can be found in Taiwan. Most of the news and business magazines [as opposed to the tabloids, and forgetting temporarily about the recent behavior of The Journalist (新新聞) in the Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) case] are quite professional. Even on television, the 9 o'clock news on Public Television is extremely civilized, easily better than most TV news in the US.
But let's get back to Next. The first fact that needs to be mentioned is that there are actually two Nexts, because they put out two issues each week, the "entertainment" issue and the "political" issue. The former is, as the name implies, basically nothing but celebrity gossip and promos from upcoming movies. Indeed, perhaps my main criticism of Next is its annoying marketing strategy of "bundling" the two issues together -- reminds me of Microsoft!
My second criticism would be that an awful lot of gossip seems to have spread into the "politics" issue, although I admit that politicians' peccadilloes are a "gray area."
But Next is not totally useless. The main bright spot is its apparent determination to challenge authority. Now, most of that energy has thus far been spent on ruthless exposes of celebrity antics, but is that really ethically worse than regurgitating advertising dressed up as news? In the actual political realm, the Next people seem to be willing to actually go out and get stories, instead of waiting for the press releases to come in.
For example, I find it hard to be outraged that they tried to sneak reporters into the Presidential Office (although the hype surrounding the First Daughter's love life is certainly sickening -- and, note, it long predates Next), while everybody else stood around outside on live video feeds speculating. And, at least, they had the decency not to whine about "freedom of the press" after the Secret Service dumped them out and considered pressing charges!
There was an even better example a couple of weeks ago, when the speaker of the Taichung City Council led a group of fellow council members on a junket to China. Were they there to negotiate direct links? Well, apparently they were indeed engaged in "exchanges" of some sort!
As Next's intrepid reporters recorded on film, the highlight of their sojourn was massages and KTV in the company of "mainland compatriots." What I found surprising was that Next had a complete scoop -- not a single other media organization had bothered to send anybody to find out what on earth the council was doing in Shenzhen. Why not? Because none of the councilors had invited them! They therefore felt free to cavort around quite openly, confident that no reporters would be around. If not for Next, they would have been right. Who knows how many other similarly enlightening stories have gone totally unnoticed?
In fact, people in power in Taiwan can basically escape all public accountability in the media, as long as none of their enemies gets wind of it and calls a press conference to denounce them. Sure, it's nice that competition among Taiwanese politicians and parties is so free-wheeling, but shouldn't the media also play an independent, critical role, as opposed to simply recording whatever is placed in front of them? What ever happened to the ideal of the "fourth estate"?
The frightening thing about Next is not that it might degrade the media in Taiwan; it's that it might be the best investigative reporting we've got.
Bo Tedards is a political commentator based in Taipei.
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