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Want Want plans new
title with Fujian Daily Group
By J. Michael Cole and Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter and Staff
writer
Amid growing fears of monopolization and Chinese influence on local media, the
Want Want China Times Group (旺旺中時集團) plans to launch a new magazine next month
in cooperation with the Fujian Daily Group, which is affiliated with the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP).
According to Media News Online, which is published by the School of
Communications at Ming Chuan University, the first issue of Media Plus (兩岸傳媒), a
magazine focusing on cross-strait media and cultural affairs, will be launched
in Taiwan next month, with reporters and financing coming from both sides of the
Taiwan Strait. The magazine is to be published in traditional characters in
Taiwan and simplified characters in China.
A trial issue was published earlier this month to pave the way for the
magazine’s official launch, said Wang Cho-chung (王綽中), the periodical’s
editor-in-chief.
Last month’s trial issue of Media Plus was sent free to professors of mass
communication, journalists and people working in advertising and culturally
innovative industries, said Wang, who is also editor-in-chief of the
Chinese-language Want Daily — also owned by the Want Want China Times Group.
The two media groups began cooperating in October last year when a pilot journal
published under the same Chinese title, but using the name Cross-strait Media in
English, was launched.
Media Plus will have 32 people working in four departments. While Wang will
serve as the editorial head of the publication, veteran journalist Pan Kang (潘罡)
will be the deputy editor-in-chief.
In an effort to supply readers with firsthand information concerning China’s
media and cultural industries, the magazine will also have four reporters in
China: Lu Su-mei (盧素梅) in Haixi, Qinghai Province; Lin Tsung-sheng (林琮盛) in
Beijing; Sung Ting-yi (宋丁儀) in Shanghai and Chen Man-nung (陳曼儂) in Changsha,
Hunan Province.
The publication has thus far produced two versions of its trial issue and
undergone a name change from Prime Media to Media Plus.
“The title Media Plus represents the publication’s aim of providing its readers
with the latest on cross-strait media and cultural industries, as well as
conveying the magazine’s content giving ‘plus information,’” Wang said.
However, in addition to “plus information,” readers in Taiwan could be getting a
dose of propaganda as well. The Fujian Daily Group, which operates a number of
television, radio and print media outlets, has close ties to the CCP and has
promoted “reunification” with Taiwan for more than six decades.
There has been growing opposition in Taiwan in recent months to acquisitions by
the Want Want China Times Group of various media outlets, including the cable TV
operations of China Network Systems (CNS, 中嘉網路) in a NT$76 billion (US$2.52
billion) deal, and the group’s being part of a consortium bidding for the Next
Media Group’s Taiwanese outlets. These include Next Magazine and the Apple
Daily, long known for its critical stance on the CCP.
Behind the group lies controversial chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), a Taiwan-born
billionaire who made his fortune in China. His detractors have accused him of
downplaying China’s human rights violations, denying that the events at
Tiananmen Square in June 1989 constituted a massacre and of saying that the two
sides of the Taiwan Strait could not be “reunited” soon enough.
Tsai has also been accused of using his media empire to assail those opposed to
his media acquisitions, sparking a series of resignations at his TV and print
outlets. If the Next Media deal gets the go-ahead from regulatory agencies,
Tsai’s empire could control as much as 45 percent of Taiwan’s print media, a
proportion critics say is dangerously high.
Mattel Hsu (許建榮), a doctoral candidate in political science at Monash University
in Melbourne, Australia, who closely follows media developments in Taiwan, said
that while Tsai’s group was not the first to cooperate with official Chinese
newspapers, this could be the first time the Chinese government would provide
capital toward a publication intended for the Taiwanese market.
Previous cross-strait cooperation in the media sector, such as that between the
Greater Kaohsiung-based Commons Daily and the Straits Herald — also part of the
Fujian Daily Group — had been limited to the sharing of news sources, Hsu said.
When cooperation between the Commons Daily and the Herald began, the Web site of
the formerly pro-independence newspaper was no longer blocked in China, Hsu
added.
Inquiries by the Taipei Times to government agencies seem to indicate that
Chinese injections of capital in the domestic print media market might fall
through the cracks, with one agency after another claiming that regulating print
media was not their responsibility.
An official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which absorbed the now-defunct
Government Information Office last year, told the Taipei Times that after
consulting with staff at the ministry, the consensus was that the Financial
Supervisory Commission (FSC) was in charge of regulating investment in print
media.
However, when approached for comment, FSC Secretary-General Chen Yuh-chang (陳裕璋)
said the commission was in charge of supervising banks, insurers, securities and
fund houses, and that media firms fall under the jurisdiction of the National
Communications Commission (NCC), with the Investment Commission under the
Ministry of Economic Affairs perhaps also playing a role if foreign investments
are involved.
An Investment Commission spokesman said he had never heard of the publication,
which meant the commission was not in charge of reviewing the plan.
Meanwhile, NCC spokesperson Yu Hsiao-cheng (虞孝成) said print media was no longer
regulated by the Publication Act (出版法), which was abolished in 1999, adding that
the NCC was only in charge of supervising broadcast media.
Under laws guaranteeing freedom of speech, Tsai has every right to publish such
a magazine, Yu said.
Additional reporting by Crystal Hsu and Shelley Shan
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