The National Communications Commission (NCC) may well become a battlefield where political parties vie for formidable media resources rather than a fortress to safeguard press freedom, if political influence overtakes professionalism in the independent body, media experts warned yesterday.
"I do not have any confidence in its future operation whatsoever," said Dennis Peng (彭文正), associate professor in the Graduate Institute of Journalism at National Taiwan University. "It is a battleground where political parties contend for their own interests and domination."
If political parties genuinely wish to safeguard freedom of the press, Peng said they would not have violently fought each other over how the NCC's members would be selected.
"I don't think the reason they engaged in violent disputes was because they cared so much about how to find professionals to sit on the review board or NCC committee," he said. "What they are really after is who controls the majority of the committee and who gets the most out of it."
After over nearly a year of haggling and political squabbles, the pan-blue dominated legislature passed the Organic Law of the National Communications Commission (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) on Tuesday, giving the opposition pan-blue camp the upper hand in the nation's media regulation.
According to the law, the political parties are responsible for nominating 15 candidates for the NCC committee, with each party granted a number of selections in proportion to the number of seats they have in the legislature.
The premier is responsible for nominates three candidates, for a total of 18 candidates.
A separate 11-member review committee then elects 13 NCC members from the pool of 18 candidates, with three-fifths of the review committee's consent required for each candidate.
If fewer than 13 NCC members are chosen in the first round of the balloting, the consent of one-half of the review committee is needed to fill the remaining seats on the committee.
The review committee will be composed of experts recommended by the parties in a ratio that reflects their seats in the legislature.
With the passage of the law, Peng said that it not only takes over most of the responsibilities of the GIO, but also legalizes political meddling in the media industry.
"It's like the wolf may now be gone, but now here comes a tiger," he said. "The NCC will be nothing but a pan-blue controlled GIO and a voting machine."
NCC members are bound to be political appointees and will never exercise their power fairly and freely, Peng said.
Echoing Peng's opinion, Kuang Chung-hsiang (管中祥), a media professor at Shih Hsin University, said that the legislation is tantamount to legalizing political maneuvering in a nonpartisan organization.
"We might want to give political parties the benefit of the doubt, but I'm very curious to know why one of the original clauses regulating the number of NCC members that was recommended by the same party was eventually scrapped during the negotiation process," he said.
Despite his concern, Kuang endorsed the review process, which is required to be carried out in the form of a public hearing.
He, however, said that neither the public nor the media should count solely on the NCC to improve the media environment, because they are related to overall media policy.
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