Ever since the National Communications Commission (NCC) was founded, its legality has been called into question, and the Council of Grand Justices recently determined that the Organic Law of the National Communications Commission (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) was unconstitutional.
Given this situation, it is only to be expected that the NCC will try to strengthen its legitimacy. It is to be hoped that the commission will not follow the old habit of "public relations ethics."
By this I mean the method often used by our politicians whereby they try to establish an unassailably moral and ethical image for themselves, and then rely on this image in their relations with the public to win support, legitimize their own actions and cover up a bad political record. They try to build this image of morality by, for example, campaigning against pornography, turning such inextinguishable social phenomena into a never ending source of support for their moral posturing.
Many of the commission's actions may go unnoticed by the general public, which makes it difficult to build public support for the group. Recently, however, it seems to have initiated a controversial campaign against sex on TV, which is simply a review system in disguise. Only a few days ago, it put the knife to nine TV shows and issued fines from NT$100,000 to NT$350,000, in almost every instance because the shows were said to contain sexual innuendo, vulgarities and so forth.
In open societies, however, sex should not be banned from TV. The different movie ratings -- G, P, PG and R -- should also be relaxed in step with the changing of the times to avoid promoting hypocrisy, since that would only stop the younger generation from discussing sex in a responsible manner.
It is very easy to portray sex as vulgar. Vulgarity, however, is a concept heavily loaded with class prejudice. The interests of the lower classes are easily labeled "vulgar." This is meant to explain why the commission as a new and rising organization should be very cautious in its "anti-pornography" activities.
The fact that the commission's anti-pornography actions have occured precisely when its legitimacy is being questioned makes it difficult not to wonder if it is in fact engaging in public relations ethics to reinforce its legitimacy.
Ning Yin-bin is a professor in the National Central University Graduate Insitute of Philosophy.
Translated by Perry Svensson
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS