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EDITORIAL: Stop
shooting the messenger
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are
being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing,” Malcolm X
once said.
It is amazing how quickly focus can be shifted by just one media report, as in
the case of the frenzy surrounding National Tsing Hua University student Chen
Wei-ting (陳為廷) over the past few days.
Chen, a participant in the recent student protests against the takeover of Next
Media Group’s four Taiwanese outlets involving the pro-China, Taiwan-based Want
Want China Times Group, was invited by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
lawmakers to attend the legislative Education and Culture Committee meeting on
Monday for a special session.
Rather than focusing on the real issue — concern about freedom of speech on
campus after an e-mail from the Ministry of Education asked universities to
“show concern” for and investigate students who took part in the protests — one
media outlet on Tuesday dedicated its front page and another full page to
slamming Chen for accusing Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) of
incompetence, hypocrisy and lying about his support for the student movement. A
number of pan-blue politicians jumped on the bandwagon and said Chen had no
manners.
The blatant double standards of the pan-blue camp are dumbfounding. After all,
in September 2006, amid a campaign by red-clad protesters to oust then-president
Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the DPP, sixth-grader Chen Tso-fei (陳昨非) was hailed by
certain media outlets and pan-blue politicians for criticizing Chen Shui-bian in
a poem he recited at the protest. No one from the pan-blue camp chided Chen
Tso-fei for not showing respect to the president. However, let a minister in the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government be criticized by a student and see
how fast the pan-blue attack dogs come out.
Several pan-blue lawmakers also criticized Chen Wei-ting for intervening in
legislative operations. They apparently forgot that Article 67 of the
Constitution clearly states: “the legislature may set up various committees and
such committees may invite government officials and concerned private persons to
be present at their meetings to answer questions.”
Those who have been quick to condemn Chen Wei-ting for his accusations against
Chiang have forgotten the big picture. Those who have not been following the
protests against the Next Media buyout closely and have only seen a few seconds
of a video clip in a news broadcast might form the opinion that Chen Wei-ting
was acting rudely and being hard on Chiang. However, if they took a few more
minutes to examine the whole issue from the beginning, putting themselves in
protesters’ shoes and looking at what they encountered — Chiang’s failure to
answer the students’ call to show up at the protest, the heavy deployment of
riot police at the protests and the ministry’s e-mail, to name but a few — then
they might be more understanding of the exasperation Chen Wei-ting felt.
It is hard to remain silent in the face of arrogance, but manners are not really
the point here — it is the public’s concern over the creation of media
monopolies.
Perhaps some media outlets are trying to demonize Chen Wei-ting and his fellow
protesters in a bid to draw attention away from the real issues at hand. If that
is the case, their efforts have backfired, at least among the nation’s young
people, who are continuing to come forward to support efforts to block media
monopolies.
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