Politicians from the green camp have been fighting among themselves since the legislature failed to pass amendments to the Broadcasting and Television Law (廣播電視法), the Cable Television Law (有線廣播電視法) and the Satellite Broadcasting Law (衛星廣播電視法).
The strongest reason for members of the green camp to object to the withdrawal of party and government elite from media operations is that pro-independence media have to exist in order to confront pro-unification, China-funded media in Taiwan.
Perhaps such logic is not absolutely wrong. Various political and social movements in history also had their own publications. For example, Vladimir Lenin founded Iskra (The Spark) newspaper in 1900 to promote communist revolution. When the tangwai (outside the KMT) movement began, it used magazines as a promotional tool. To launch a movement, you need publicity; to publicize, you need the media.
Such movement-driven media will not disappear. Groups that need these movement-driven media are mostly those that have not yet realized their ideals. They have not yet taken control of society's mainstream mechanisms. Their ideas are not mainstream either. Hence, this kind of media are usually alternative media with very limited circulation.
Once a revolution has succeeded, those movement-driven media may no longer have much room to survive -- unless all the media are tightly controlled, just like those in totalitarian countries. Since the policies the movement advocates have become the social consensus, how much different will movement-driven media be compared to other media? If the movement talks about its own doctrines all the time, normal citizens in society will never read such propaganda everyday.
When the DPP was founded, it published a weekly newspaper, the Democratic Progressive News. Although the publication was called a newspaper, its circulation was limited. It also failed to provide more useful information to readers than other mainstream newspapers did. As a result, the newspaper closed down.
Various political stances and values do exist among the mainstream media in Taiwan today. But even for the media that recognize the DPP's ideals, their operations follow market logic, not just a political one. Thus, competition, survival and profits are the real tests they face. After an alternative political group becomes mainstream, its propaganda methods also change. Just look at the DPP government's generous commercial budget for the pro-DPP media in recent years, or the party's various conferences that were massively covered by the media. This shows that the DPP government does not need its own media.
Similarly, when the DPP elite runs a media organization by itself, it will not operate it according to its political logic. For instance, what are the differences between the prime-time soap operas of Formosa Television and those of other local TV stations? Will the media operated by DPP members advertise for the DPP government for free out of their shared political ideals? The answer is no. Rather, they just want to gain a larger commercial-government connections.
The DPP is no longer a fringe group that stirs up street movements. Using political logic to defend the party and government elite's refusal to withdraw from media operations does not make sense. The real motive of the party and government elite is to gain personal benefit through political power. If the green camp's elite wants to achieve its political ideals, why doesn't it publish a newspaper again? Will DPP Legislator Trong Chai (
Ku Er-teh is a freelance writer.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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