A week after the Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily launched a “news in motion” section on its Web site that presents details of social news in video clips, several civic groups yesterday voiced their concerns about the new service.
The “news in motion” section — launched about a week ago — combines real footage and videos of stories with animated video clips showing details of the news event.
Each news-in-motion video clip is accompanied by background music and a voice-over recounting what happened.
In a recent story about an incident in which a man tied his girlfriend to a tree and repeatedly slapped her for over half an hour while interrogating her because he suspected she was having an affair, a news-in-motion video showed pictures of the place where it happened and gave an account of what happened.
“We’re not opposed to using graphics and animation to help the public understand the news, if this technique is used for environmental, technology, or medical news reporting,” Media Watch chairman and communications professor at National Chungcheng University, Kuang Chung-hsiang (管中祥), told the Taipei Times yesterday.
“However, the Apple Daily uses the technique mostly on news about domestic violence or sexual assault cases, which could add insult to victims’ injury,” he said.
Providing animated details about a crime to viewers would not help viewers gain a better understanding of the news, but only turns criminal cases into “movies or soap operas that provide visual excitement,” Kuang said.
Kuang also voiced concern that such animated videos could become “training videos” for criminals because people may try to imitate them.
Supporting Kuang’s view, several civic groups, including the Taiwan Association of Journalists, the Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare and the Awakening Foundation, joined a petition to protest the practice — with many other civic groups planning to join.
“We’re planning to stage a demonstration outside Apple Daily headquarters soon,” Kuang said.
Because news-in-motion video clips may be downloaded and sent to cellphones, the groups also urged the National Communications Commission (NCC) to intervene.
An Apple Daily spokesperson quoted in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) said the newspaper would respect criticism.
May Chen (陳依玫), chairwoman of the Satellite Television Broadcasting Association’s disciplinary committee, said yesterday that she had seen the clips on YouTube and was appalled by the way it handles coverage of sexual abuse or violence.
“On TV, we either freeze the frame or use mosaics when displaying footage containing violence. In crime cases, we also try to minimize coverage of details as much as possible because it can encourage copycat crimes,” Chen said.
“It [news-in-motion] is essentially an online video game under the guise of news,” she said. “It displays all the dramatic details online with hardly any supervision from the government.”
While satellite TV news channels are asked to self-regulate the news and are subject to the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法), the NCC should consider whether a similar regulation must also be imposed on animated news, given that a large percentage of Internet users are children and teenagers, Chen said.
“How the NCC should implement the regulations once they are in place is another big issue,” she said.
NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) told the Taipei Times that no specific act regulated animated news.
Currently, no communication laws regulate online content.
Because the news can also be seen on mobile phones, Chen Jeng-chang said the commission was likely to use the Telecommunication Act (電信法) to protect consumers from content that was “detrimental to public order and good morals.”
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