The Government Information Office (GIO) sunday announced its decision to revoke the licenses of seven cable-TV channels. This move by the GIO is directed at keeping the chaotic situation in media circles in check. Although the GIO's decision is not going to engender instant results, it has at least responded positively to calls for "containing the chaotic and disorganized circumstances of the media."
The Legislative Yuan and the media have long been considered the two major culprits responsible for the nation's increasing social maladies. The GIO's rejection of the cable-TV license renewal applications is just the first step toward reforming the media. There is still much to be done by the government, the public and media proprietors alike.
Taiwan, which covers an area of a mere 36,000km2 with a population of 23 million people, currently has more than 100 cable-TV channels to choose from. Such a high number is definitely a global miracle, symbolizing the freedom and diversity of the media in Taiwan, but also representing the vicious competition resulting from media saturation.
The growing number of TV channels only results in shrinking revenues. Besides, with limited production expenditures, the quality of TV programs cannot help but deteriorate as most of the producers can only make do with whatever is available. What's worse, most of the TV networks only seek to follow media crazes and plagiarize the ideas behind more successful or popular programs on other networks.
Although there are numerous news channels, most of them only follow or reproduce the contents of the print media, rather than creating something unique or distinctive. This has a lot to do with unprofessional journalists and inadequate training. In addition, the use of Satellite News Gathering (SNG) broadcast services has also been abused, leading to news coverage being sensationalized and the public mood becoming easily agitated. Although there are a lot of programs featuring talk shows with political topics, they are mostly ideology-driven, with the host and the guests often engaging in political bickering and unable to come to any agreement.
Undaunted, the GIO has finally decided who retains the right to run TV networks and whose licenses have to be revoked. Media outlets with unrenewed licenses are very likely to accuse the government of trampling press freedom. However, it is the existing law that empowers the GIO to exercise this right. Over the years, media outlets in Taiwan have been reluctant to practice self-discipline and stick with journalistic principles.
Media management is an important social project. In a country that enjoys press freedom, the government's responsibility is to build a healthy and organized media environment. But after the over-excessive opening up of the nation's media, it will take a lot of effort for media outlets to adjust themselves and conform to established rules or practices. The priority for the government should be establishing a mechanism for approving and/or renewing licenses to run a media outlet. This is an unavoidable responsibility of the GIO or the National Communications Commission.
Both the government agencies governing TV channels and radio stations as well as media-monitoring groups should create a database for a long-standing supervision program. All the data collected could act as a reference for administrative management for either rewards or punishments, or the withdrawal of licenses.
The seven cable TV channels that failed to retain or renew their licenses signaled a warning from the government to Taiwan's media circles. Through this decision by the government, we genuinely hope that media proprietors or managers can adopt criteria for dealing with news coverage or programs in a professional and self-disciplined manner to win the support of the general public.
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
RSS