After confrontation and violence in the Legislative Yuan, the Organic Law of the National Communications Commission (國家通訊傳播委肙會組織法) was finally passed. However, before the political clamor it caused has had a chance to subside, the government and commercial interests are set to lock horns.
Because political parties will have the right to nominate commission members in proportion to the number of seats they have in the legislature, political interests will inevitably creep into the commission.
The NCC will control the procedures governing the broadcast media industry, and supervise the content of broadcasts.
Naturally, this kind of control brings with it huge business implications, which commercial interests are unlikely to ignore. The legislation governing the NCC does not address the issue of the potential influence of these commercial interests on the commission. This constitutes a huge loophole in the law as it stands.
According to Article 4 of the Organic Law, the commission is to be composed of 13 members with either an academic background or practical experience in the fields of telecommunications, information technology, broadcasting, law, finance and economics. There are no restrictions regarding party affiliation, but commission members cannot have been in public office, had a full-time position in a political party or acted as a consultant to a political party for three years prior to taking up their post.
But these restrictions also provide a great opportunity for people from industry who are not bound by any restrictions other than a post-employment "revolving door" restrictions. There are some who might say that a business background puts people in a strong position to understand the communications industry.
But how are we to make sure that commercial interests, and their representatives on the committee, will make decisions with the public interest in mind? And, in fact, is this not precisely the reasoning behind the insistence on maintaining the independence of committee members?
Here we can usefully employ the example of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US, which is supposed to prevent commercial interests from having too much influence on communications and broadcasting policy. In 2003 the FCC attempted to relax media restrictions despite public outcry.
Its tenacity on the issue was explained by the fact that the FCC had, for a long time, been tied up intricately with the interests of certain financial groups. Influential media and marketing companies had been working hard lobbying both the FCC and Congress and using their financial weight to influence the right people.
Former FCC chairman Michael Powell promoted relaxing rules on media ownership during his term. It was a well-known fact that Powell had close links with the media. One of his senior legal advisors was Susan Eid, a former lobbyist for MediaOne Group. Powell also had close ties with fellow Republican commissioner Kathleen Abernathy, serving along with her in senior media positions.
Their responsibilities were related to federal management over the operations of these industries. While still in the industry, Abernathy worked as a consultant to former FCC commissioners. Both Powell and Abernathy voted for relaxing media regulations when the issue came up for review.
FCC commissioners have taken advantage of the hospitality of the media industry. According to a survey by US public interest groups, between 1995 and 2003, FCC officials spent US$28 million on travel and entertainment. Most of this money was provided by the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors.
It is no surprise that Powell was one of the chief benefactors of this media largesse. When Powell led the charge to amend the legislation, the FCC came under strenuous lobbying from the four major networks. FCC officials took part in closed-door meetings with media and government officials on 71 separate occasions. Powell was unwilling to listen to the voice of public opinion.
Ultimately, consumer and media-reform groups opposed to the amendments only managed to obtain five meetings with officials, forcing these civic groups to adopt grassroots mobilization, submitting a petition with 520,000 signatures to the Congress.
The movement to relax ownership rules for media networks was only defeated through a legal challenge in the courts. The whole process highlighted the extent to which the FCC was in the media industry's pocket.
In Taiwan, our new broadcasting regulatory authority is only now getting off the ground. Will it act any differently than the Government Information Office? Will it remember the lessons of the FCC's lack of neutrality and betrayal of public trust?
Both the government and the opposition must be sure to take into account public opinion in the operations of the NCC. And when nominating committee members, should consider those candidates' professional neutrality. Commissioners should be indifferent to personal advantage, so that the NCC does not become a tool of the media industry.
Hung Chen-ling is an assistant professor at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Paul Cooper and Ian Bartholomew
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS