The case of former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) overseas bank accounts and alleged money laundering continues to unfold. While the print and electronic media are having a field day reporting the case in every detail, readers and viewers are finding that the more information they receive, the harder it gets to separate fact from fiction.
While everyone agrees that we need to fight corruption, democracy cannot function without the rule of law. Freedom of the press is important, but reporting must respect the legal process. A legal investigation requires painstaking collection and scientific checking of the evidence, and the same is true of newsgathering. Reckless reporting with scant regard for the facts in not acceptable.
For example, a few days ago Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Cheng-yuan (蔡正元) declared that it would soon be “game over” for Chen, while fellow KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) said Far Eastern Group chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) was suspected of bribery in the Sogo voucher scandal, although he was later acquitted.
Partisan media immediately took up the allegations without bothering to check the facts, forcing Hsu to call a press conference to clarify the matter, after which he went straight to the courts to sue his accusers for libel. This is not the only time that individuals or companies have been accused by name.
Financial groups Taishin Holdings, Hua Nan Holdings and Taiwan International Securities Group have all been named, prompting sharp drops in their share prices. Let’s face it — if all these reports that are flying about were true, surely there would be enough evidence by now to have Chen arrested and up on trial. Why, then, is the case still at the investigation stage, with no prosecution initiated so far?
Clearly, the prosecutors handling the case do not yet have enough evidence to take it to the next stage. The media, however, thinking themselves to be free of such constraints, often conduct their reporting and commentary with heavy political bias, provoking excessive antagonism and division in society.
Ignoring journalistic standards and forgetting the golden rule of getting to the truth, the media rush to report each and every snippet of “news” they can get their hands on, without first making sure of the facts.
They fuel the rumor mill by recklessly printing and broadcasting anonymous information, using language like “reportedly” or “it has been revealed.” As Ralph Negrine, director of research at the department of journalism at the University of Sheffield in the UK, has pointed out, this kind of anonymous reporting of unsubstantiated facts puts media at risk of losing the confidence of their readers and viewers.
At the same time, the media has failed to grasp the meaning behind Special Investigation Panel prosecutor Chu Chao-liang’s (朱朝亮) comments that “payments made for an audience with the royal family are beyond the reach of the law” and “if the rule of law is not robust enough, we can only apologize to the public.”
The 1996 Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法) defines “money laundering” as wealth or property derived from serious criminal activity. Chen can only be convicted, therefore, if the funds transferred to his overseas accounts are proven to be the proceeds of criminal activity.
The same applies to any so-called middlemen involved in the case. Since Taiwan has no law making it a criminal offence for public officials to refuse to account for dubious income, Chen cannot be forced to explain where his overseas funds came from, and the investigators must find evidence that the funds are criminal in origin — no easy task.
This does not entitle the media to grasp at straws and feed off each other’s dubious “news.” They, too, need to respect the proper investigative procedure and legal norms.
If they race to report news first without checking whether it is true or not, or even make up stories based on flimsy evidence, they will not be helping to get to the bottom of the case. On the contrary, they will be responsible for hindering it.
At the same time, government officials, prosecutors, political pundits and legislators who keep popping up in the media with their leaks, exposes and subjective comments also play their part in fueling the rumor mill.
Above all, it is when news reporting and commentary get mixed up together that it becomes impossible to separate fact from fiction. Several versions of each story appear and each person is left to come to his own conclusion. How can the public trust the media when rumor keeps morphing into “news?”
Jacqui Banaszynski, a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, once said that you need to get news, but above all you need to get accurate news. Putting accuracy first — in other words, truth — is the golden rule.
News reporting is not a matter of discussing right and wrong — just of telling things as they are. As to commentary, although there is room for varying opinions, those opinions can only be considered fair and equitable if they are based on truthful reports. Otherwise, the debate will depart from the truth and only serve to mislead the public.
As a well-known professor of media studies once said, what we need is reporting that can stand up to assessment and investigation. Otherwise, the very source of public opinion will be polluted and society will be misled in its judgments — a tragedy indeed.
Lu I-ming is the former publisher and president of Taiwan Shin Sheng Daily News.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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