Although none other than President Chen Shui-bian (
"Just like many parents, I am worried about the TV channels broadcasting so much information about killings, suicides, and arson," the president said in a speech to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Taiwan Television Enterprise last Sunday.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"We hope that the media can strike a balance in its reporting between positive and negative, speed and depth ? local and international," Chen said.
With cable TV stations operating 24 hours a day, so-called "social news" now dominates the stations' output. Cable news channels broadcast at least 30 minutes of social news every hour, including coverage of road accidents, fires, thefts, even domestic disputes despite criticism from scholars and some media employees.
Lost opportunity
"After the martial law era ended, Taiwan missed the opportunity to create a media environment focused on the analysis and discussion of issues, creating instead a current totally commercialized and sensationalized media," said Ping Lu (
Ping Lu added that since Taiwan's media does not invest in extensive coverage of international news or in-depth coverage of major local stories, it chooses instead to focus on the minutiae of local society, "most of which doesn't even count as news."
Chang Fu-chin (
"Taiwan doesn't generate enough news to fill the space created by its 24-hour cable news channels. With the pressure to fill space, anything new is considered news," Chang said.
"There should be a standard by which to judge whether to broadcast social news. Social news should not just be about the personal issues of a particular family or individual, but should have some significance for society," he said.
Managers of the news channels, however, objected to the assertion that they broadcast too much social news.
"We don't think we broadcast too much social news. The amount of social news is not much more than that of other categories of news in our average of 400 daily news bulletins," said Wang Cheng-chung (
"Social news does not necessarily make society look negative. It really depends on how you look at it. It reflects what's going on in society."
Taiwan has five 24-hour news channels: TVBS, Power TV, Formosa TV, Eastern TV and Sanlih TV. There are also four terrestrial TV stations broadcasting about 4 hours of news per day, while another cable channel, GALA TV, will start broadcasting news next week.
Social news became the staple of Taiwanese news broadcasts in 1997, after the kidnap and murder of Pai Hsiao-yen (
In light of their "success," they continued to try to recreate the format by homing in on private tragedies such as suicides and suicide attempts, unusual romances -- such as one between a 19-year-old man and a 51 year-old woman -- and on members of the public cursing when stopped by police officers.
Five years on, however, opinion polls -- though not TV ratings -- have suggested that viewers are starting to object to this kind of reporting.
TTV and CTS have taken such surveys seriously enough to seek to minimize the broadcasting of trivia and to focus on news coverage accompanied by analysis and discussion. The ratings, however, show audience appetites for trivia to be undiminished.
Attention deficit
"Taiwan's audiences have been trained to be impatient. They like things that stimulate their senses rather than topics for discussion," said Chiu Yueh (
"Broadcasting less social news and emphasizing analysis and discussion has been a difficult choice for us, especially because of commercial concerns," Chiu said.
Cho Mei-ling (
Ping Lu said that Taiwan audiences "have become used to being made to feel slightly disturbed. Social news is very easy to watch. We don't need to think about it, and we don't get too emotional about it."
Scholars concurred that with the channels' neck-and-neck competition in the current sluggish economy, concerns about ratings will continue to prevent them from changing the nature of their output. But they don't expect to see viewers switching off on a grand scale either.
"TV news bulletins have become more like variety shows in Taiwan. Most of the audience doesn't feel particularly excited by variety shows, but they watch them anyway, which is exactly the same attitude that prevents them from quitting watching TV news," Ping Lu said.
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