Cable broadcaster CTi News has been at the center of a political debate for a number of years, which can be roughly split into two themes: One is that CTi News peddles fake news, the other is that it has become a mouthpiece for Chinese “united front” propaganda in Taiwan.
If CTi News was only guilty of the former, it could be argued that its operating license should be renewed. It is the latter that should be fatal for the media organization.
In some cases, there is no absolute distinction between genuine and fake news — it can sometimes be relative. Prior to the Apollo moon landings, there were still several flat Earth societies in London that publicly advocated that the Earth was flat.
Some would argue that since they were peddling fake news, these societies should have been proscribed by the then-British government, so why were they not? Since they were not advocating violence, such as blowing up NASA or assassinating astronauts, they did not present a public threat.
Once the first Apollo mission landed on the moon and photographs of our planet were beamed back to Earth, the membership of flat Earth societies naturally plummeted, but it was not a result of government involvement.
Science works in the same way: Hypotheses are advanced and tested to obtain the truth.
If the spherical Earth hypothesis was not allowed to be tested and challenged, people today might still believe, as the ancient Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy did, that Earth is perfectly round, rather than elliptical.
“Fake news” that does not cause public harm can be accommodated within the bounds of free speech.
If someone said: “The South Korean boy band BTS is outstanding” — is this true or false? Depending on whether you are a fan, your answer could be either, yet whether deemed to be true or false, the assertion obviously does not threaten public safety — at the very worst, it might offend the feelings of the band’s detractors.
Unfortunately, for several months leading up to January’s presidential and legislative elections, CTi News broadcast wall-to-wall coverage that unquestioningly extolled the virtues of now-ousted Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) — the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate.
This was not a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other, or a subjective interpretation of the truth: It was an overt information war waged by an enemy country against our democracy.
Han is a politician who was actively aided by Red China’s media outlets on the eve of his recall as mayor. Red China conducts military exercises targeting Taiwan on a daily basis.
Freedom is based on the principle of not infringing on the freedom of others. Constantly praising someone clearly favored by an enemy nation is tantamount to welcoming an invasion by that enemy with open arms.
When that happens, anyone — regardless of whether they watch CTi News — would be peppered by the enemy’s missiles and bullets, and they would lose all their freedoms.
How can anyone defend that kind of “freedom of expression?”
Behind the debate over CTi News’ license renewal lies an important principle: Where should the limits to the freedom of expression be drawn in a liberal democracy?
Free speech should certainly not be curtailed to prevent offending the sensibilities of some or even the airing of ideas that fly in the face of modern science, but it should be curtailed when it infringes on the freedom of expression of others.
Jimway Chang holds a master’s degree from National Tsing Hua University’s Institute of History.
Translated by Edward Jones
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