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Taiwan is in need of
a brand new media order
By Chiu Hei-yuan £®ü·½
Eighteen years ago, the Taipei Society published a book that sought to
deconstruct broadcast and television media. In addition to detailing the ways in
which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) then controlled the media, it made an
important call for the establishment of a new media order.
However, almost two decades later, broadcast and television media remain a
shambles, corporations now monopolize the media on behalf of the KMT and program
content is poor and biased.
Despite the establishment of the National Communications Commission (NCC),
broadcast and television media norms are still in a terrible state and there is
barely a new order at all.
Today, these media forms, especially television, have become impediments to
progress and in some instances a force capable of eroding democracy.
According to a survey conducted by the World Values Survey Association, Taiwan
ranked lowest out of the 48 nations surveyed when it came to public trust in
television. National Communications Commission Chairperson Su Herng (ĬôÁ) has
analyzed the broadcast and television media in the past, but the work she has
done since becoming head of the commission leaves much to be desired.
The commission now kowtows to corporations and the KMT and has shown itself to
be almost powerless when it comes to establishing a new order for the media.
During the Martial Law era, the KMT controlled the media with the aim of
maintaining its authoritarian regime. Corporations now monopolize the media to
secure their profits. None of this is done with the public interest in mind.
As a result, media professionalism and its related ethics are brushed aside and
political and commercial profits have severely damaged the public and
professional nature of Taiwanese media.
In recent years, corporations have monopolized the sector. Such corporations own
free-to-air and cable satellite television stations and control everything from
systems to content. Moreover, they have even set up multimedia corporations,
sectors of which used to work together in an integrated way to control both up
and downstream elements of the industry.
What is worse is that apart from utilizing a high degree of operating leverage
to make ill-gotten commercial gains, they openly ignore professionalism and
ethics while manipulating the content of programs to achieve their political
goals.
The government has done almost nothing to stop this deterioration of television.
It has not only failed to build a system to facilitate the establishment of a
new order for the media, but has shown itself incapable of correcting the
inappropriate behavior that is often exhibited within the industry.
This is mainly because the government does not have an overall policy to
establish a better system for national media and communications, but also
because the commission has no way of safeguarding its supposed role as an
independent agency.
In conclusion, it is clear that both the government¡¦s overall policies and the
operation of the commission as an independent agency have not been based on the
core principle of the ¡§public¡¨ interest and that both ignore the spirit of
public participation.
Chiu Hei-yuan is a research fellow at Academia Sinica¡¦s Institute of
Sociology.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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