For some reason beyond our understanding the DPP suddenly has a bee in its bonnet about getting political influence out of the media. In particular it seems to be embarrassed by the sterling work that Legislator Trong Chai (蔡同榮) has done with Formosa TV to redress the absurd imbalance and quite obvious bias in the media's coverage of political affairs.
Anyone who remembers the runup to the 1996 presidential election will know how bad things used to be. The nightly flagship news programs on the three terrestrial TV channels, at that time controlled by the KMT, the ministry of defense and the Taiwan Provincial Government, devoted six minutes a night to Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) himself and another four minutes to other KMT news. The DPP, at the time going through a complicated series of primaries to select its candidate, got precisely no time whatsoever. As far as the media were concerned it was still a one-party state. Even the KMT admitted, in private, to being embarrassed.
Things have changed. For a start, Formosa TV was launched with an obvious bias toward the green camp. Then the KMT lost the election and so two of the three old terrestrials fell into the DPP's hands. The government now controls two terrestrials, the KMT one and Trong Chai and a gaggle of green-camp sympathizers a fourth. On top of this there are the cable and satellite channels: DPP lawmaker Chang Chun-hung (張俊宏) chairs the board of directors at Global TV, while TVBS has always been recognized as a mouthpiece for the more radically pro-China part of the blue camp. That there are clear political influences at work in broadcast media does not mean that there are not a plethora of opinions on offer. We are no longer force-fed only hagiography of the leader of the ruling party as the content of our nightly news programs, and a good thing too.
So it is puzzling why the DPP should suddenly revive the idea of "getting political influence out of the media." In the old days it wanted this because political influence was one-sided. These days that is not the case, on top of which, as TVBS demonstrates, lack of overt control by a particular political group does not make for editorial neutrality. An even better example of this is the print media, where any paper in existence before the lifting of martial law -- which means two out of the big three -- received its license because its publisher was a politically safe crony of the Chiang regime, a heritage which is still quite obvious in those newspapers' editorial content. Yet these are, of course, private companies, and whatever their editorial line is, it is not assumed on the orders of a political party.
Though it grieves us to say this, PFP lawmaker Shen Chih-hwei (沈智慧) -- who herself is the chairwoman of a radio station -- might be right when she accuses the government of reviving interest in this electoral promise to get politicians and political parties out of the media because it is one promise the DPP might actually be able to deliver on. The record of achievement is so thin that what we might now be seeing is the deliberate targeting of something assured of great public support -- whether or not it is justified -- and probably easy to push through the legislature, allowing the government to chalk up at least one success as the presidential election campaign opens. If this is the government's idea it is probably mistaken. The KMT will never give up control of CTV voluntarily. And in this legislature it cannot be compelled. And if it won't, why should Trong Chai get out of Formosa TV?
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