The Government Information Office's (GIO) rejection of license renewals to seven cable-TV channels has brought about strong criticism from politicians and media proprietors over the past week, but academics specializing in mass communication as well as legal experts have given the move a thumbs-up.
Many see it as the beginning of a reform of a domestic mass media that has been vilified by audiences for years, and the start of a weeding-out of junk TV.
"I think the time is ripe for the government to do something to reform our mass media," Lin Yuan-hui (
"Actually, Taiwan's mass media has never really changed in nature even though martial law was lifted 17 years ago. Much of the media is still manufacturing news and stories with no sources at all," Lin said.
He said that the situation had actually become worse from increased commercial pressure.
"I believe that few people in Taiwan would disagree that the current news channels have become one of the major sources of social problems," Lin said.
"The public's toleration of fast-food news and shitty programs has reached its limit and I think the government's action was an appropriate response to public demand," he said.
The government's action also called the bluff of media operators such as Eastern Multimedia Group (EMG) president Gary Wang (王令麟), who has derided the government as a paper tiger, Lin said.
"These TV channel owners may be surprised that there was such a strong public outcry against their rubbishy news quality, but the most surprising thing is that the government would act for the public," Lin said.
"I would not object to describing the GIO's rejection of license renewal as a strategy of `executing one as a warning to a hundred,' which I think might be a necessary expedient to employ," Lin said. "Things have their order of priority and I believe the government has evaluated the advantages and disadvantages in making such a decision."
Liu Ching-yi (劉靜怡), a member of the GIO's committee in charge of reviewing TV channels' license renewal applications, said yesterday that she did not think manipulating license-renewal could really end the current malaise of the local media, but agreed that some structural control was needed at this point.
Lin is a professor at the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University specializing in information and telecommunications law.
"A democratic country would definitely avoid implementing control over contents. But if the TV channel owners, under the name of press freedom, simply ignore their social responsibilities, then this would be another matter in terms of a definition of freedom," Liu said.
Facing accusations by pan-blue legislators that the committee members were "hired academics lacking professionalism," Liu said that she had suggested the GIO make public all the records, including transcripts of verbal discussions, regarding the review process. Media proprietors' statements that they promised to improve should also be shown on the Web so that people might be able to make an informed judgment on the facts.
Liu said that those TV channels that did not obtain licenses should check how different the programs they broadcast were from the proposals they submitted to the GIO six years ago to get the licenses in the first place.
"Media outlets that did not have their licenses renewed might accuse the government of trampling press freedom. But these media proprietors -- many of them are monopolists in the TV channel market -- should examine themselves as to the degree of freedom they offer their audiences as well," Liu said.
Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), a research fellow at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Academia Sinica, said that it was a pity that the GIO's action was so widely interpreted from a political angle, which he described as understandable but not helpful.
"Although the course of the reviewing did not satisfy everyone and better prospects for the news environment are not yet assured, at least both the public and the TV channel bosses can see a mechanism for kicking out the rubbish" Hsu said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS