Taiwan ranked 43rd in this year’s World Press Freedom Index published yesterday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), down one notch from the previous year.
Despite the regression, Taiwan is one of just four countries in the Asia-Pacific region to fall in the “good” and “fairly good” categories of the index, following New Zealand (9th), Australia (26th) and South Korea (42nd).
In its analysis on press freedom in Taiwan, the RSF said that political interference “is rare and less tolerated, but Taiwan’s journalists are suffering from a very polarized media environment dominated by sensationalism and the pursuit of profit.”
“Although President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said she wants to continue developing press freedom in Taiwan, few concrete measures have been taken to improve journalistic editorial independence and encourage the media to raise the quality of public debate,” RSF said.
It said that Beijing is exploiting this weakness by putting pressure on Taiwanese media owners, who often have business interests in China.
“Beijing is also suspected of orchestrating online disinformation campaigns — a threat that could lead to questionable retaliatory measures by Taiwan, such as refusing visas to Chinese journalists regarded as hostile,” the RSF said.
China ranked 177th, as it “never stops enhancing its system of information hyper-control and persecution of dissident journalists and bloggers,” RSF East Asia Bureau director Cedric Alviani said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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