For more than a decade, Taiwanese have been calling for political groups to pull out of the media. Despite the fact that, back in 2003, amendments to the Radio and Television Act (
The inability of political parties and media outlets to disassociate themselves from each other deserves a reprimand.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai's (
Looking back, since Taiwan allowed the opening of the fourth wireless TV station in 1994, followed by cable and satellite TV, the quantity of TV channels has increased substantially.
But the media do not represent the full spectrum of political views. Rather, everything is either green or blue. In the wireless TV market, the chairman of FTV also happened to be a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator. CTV shares, meanwhile, were reluctantly transferred from the KMT to a pro-KMT newspaper owner, resulting in a cross-media conglomerate with complete disregard for regulations.
In satellite TV, various news channels have allied themselves with political parties and have served as enthusiastic cheerleaders for everything from internal party elections, presidential elections, important legal cases and public demonstrations.
The law clearly states that parties and politicians are not allowed to invest in or operate media outlets. But that is only at the most basic level. Politics and media are still making passes at one another. Not only should politicians not interfere with the media, but the media should also know its own limits.
While the media reforms engendered a great deal of interest, the supposedly freer media have become increasingly partisan. This is not only the result of the ideology of the owners and managers in charge of media corporations, but also commercial considerations.
No wonder former Eastern Broadcasting Co chairman Gary Wang (
TV stations are still stuck in the morass of pan-blue and pan-green affiliations. This threatens to undermine the freedoms that democratization has brought and skirts the media's responsibility to serve as the public conscience.
Many people who are well informed on the situation have run out of patience and have tried to give rise to a third force.
The media should show self-restraint, as should parties and politicians. Taiwan already forbids political forces to interfere with the media or public education. If parties and politicians are concerned with the development of the media, then in the lead-up to the elections they should make a commitment to fashion an environment that favors reasonable control over commercial TV channels and grant public channels sufficient resources to successfully develop without the need to rely on political parties.
The public and commercial media outlets must be allowed to compete over quality and the media industry should accept its social responsibilities. For their part, politicians should be prevented at all costs from meddling in the media for short-term gain.
Hung Chen-ling is an assistant professor at National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Journalism.
Translated by Angela Hong and Anna Stiggelbout
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