The Kaohsiung City Government recently worked through the night under the protection of barbed-wire barriers and hundreds of police officers to dismantle a statue of late dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and remove his name from its cultural center. The media, meanwhile, broadcast images of the physical clashes between police officers and protesters, but failed to provide any analysis of the event.
When a similar controversy arose as police dispersed demonstrators protesting the closing of the Lo Sheng (Happy Life) Sanatorium in Taipei County, the media provided similarly biased and sensationalized reporting of the incident.
Whether controversy leads a society to progress or regress is contingent on how it is resolved -- by democratic means and appropriate procedures -- or counterproductive ones.
One of the principal functions of the news media should be to provide a platform for rational and fair discussion of such incidents. By their very nature, societies encounter conflicts, and Taiwan is no exception. It is therefore important that the media rise to the challenge and provide the necessary channels for discussion. This could help the public find common ground and prevent future problems, both of which are helpful in settling controversy and reaching a resolution that society as a whole finds acceptable.
Taiwan Public Television, for example, should be commended for its coverage of the sanatorium incident by choosing to run programs promoting public dialogue.
Unfortunately, the media have a tendency to do the opposite.
When reporting on the removal of Chiang statues or the sanatorium, to use two recent examples, the media sacrificed their role as a public instrument by focusing only on scenes of conflict. The incidents themselves should only be the tip of the iceberg in reporting. Every day, many things happen in the nation, but because they aren't related to elections, unification, independence, the media choose to ignore them.
For example, during the critical period when the fate of the aforementioned sanatorium was still being decided, political TV programs should have invited patients and organizations opposed to the closing, as well as heads of relevant central and local government agencies, to participate in a public discussion on the program. But this didn't happen.
To remedy this, some corrective measures are in order:
As the National Communications Commission (NCC) is charged with overseeing commercial broadcast media, it should ensure that broadcast media and political talk shows offer balanced coverage of major community and public issues.
In some countries, TV stations must report to supervisory government organizations every three months on their handling of important news in order to have their licenses renewed. Sadly, the situation here is different, hence the failure by all the 24-hour news channels to provide constructive debate on issues that matter.
The NCC should fully implement the Broadcasting and Television Law (
Police officers responded violently to the group of reporters covering the removal of protesters in front of the sanatorium on March 11. Such violence is uncalled for and the mainstream media should jointly condemn the police's action.
This incident clearly demonstrates that the Assembly and Parade Law (
Lo Shih-hung is the founder of the Campaign for Media Reform. Chad Liu is an assistant professor in the department of communications at National Chung Cheng University.
Translated by Marc Langer
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