Reporters Without Borders (RSF) director-general Thibaut Bruttin praised Taiwan’s free media in an interview last week, but added that work still needed to encourage more editorial independence in local newsrooms.
“Taiwan can be proud of its free media ... [but] we think it’s important to go to the next step,” Bruttin said in an interview in Taipei on Friday.
Bruttin lauded Taiwan as a “role model” for press freedom in Asia and said he hoped that it would continue to “build up its model” and “show the way to other countries in the region.”
Photo courtesy of RSF via CNA
In the 2024 World Press Freedom Index released by RSF in May, Taiwan moved up eight positions from last year to 27th in the rankings out of 180 countries and regions, and ranked second in Asia after East Timor.
“Taiwan really is one of the test cases for the robustness of journalism in the world,” he said, reflecting on the nation’s transformation from an authoritarian regime that censored information into a vibrant democracy that fights disinformation.
However, Taiwan’s free press is not without criticism, Bruttin said, calling for media reforms to address the lack of editorial independence in newsrooms, which he said had undermined the media’s credibility.
Bruttin, who visited Taiwan for the first time as the head of RSF from Monday to Friday last week to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the non-governmental organization’s Asia-Pacific office in Taipei, described the “credibility deficit” in a recent op-ed as “a real Achilles heel of Taiwanese democracy.”
“It’s good that the media is free, but freedom is not necessarily something that sums up what journalism is,” he said. “At RSF, we fight for free, independent and pluralistic media.”
Taiwan must work on preventing its journalism industry from being “weaponized” against democracy, Bruttin said, warning against “narratives that are obeying vested interests, either commercial or ideological, or geopolitical.”
He said the polarized and politicized media has resulted in a credibility crisis in journalism in Taiwan, citing the Digital News Report issued by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
The report said that in Taiwan, only 33 percent of 2,011 respondents said they trusted most news most of the time.
RSF has called on the government to increase funding for public media, adopt a “coregulation” mechanism to encourage editorial independence and provide incentives to media outlets committed to respecting journalistic ethics, among other measures.
Bruttin said RSF would continue using Taiwan as an Asia-Pacific hub for its monitoring and advocacy work in 33 countries and regions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania.
One of the main issues is to continue calling for the release of Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai (黎智英), who has been in detention since December 2020 for his alleged involvement in democracy protests that rocked the territory a year earlier.
“We need to make people aware of the fact that they are keeping locked in solitary confinement a 70-something media executive who just had one of the freest, most popular Hong Kong dailies,” he said.
Lai, 76, is facing charges of collusion with foreign powers under the draconian National Security Law introduced by Beijing in June 2020 and could face life imprisonment.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS