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EDITORIAL: Want Want
media group is a cancer
The controversy that has surrounded the involvement of US professors in a
campaign opposing media monopolization in the past week served as a reminder —
inadvertently so for the principal target of the campaign — that while Chinese
influence in the nation’s media is of major concern, reprehensible behavior at
home is equally problematic.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Noam Chomsky probably
never knew that when he accepted an invitation by a young Taiwanese to have his
picture taken with a placard opposing media monopolization in Taiwan, he would
get sucked into the vortex of cross-strait politics.
Whether, as he claims, he was unaware of the China angle, is secondary. What
matters is that the reaction by the Want Want China Times Group once again
showed how vicious and totalitarian its outlets can get when the group or its
chairman, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), face criticism.
The group is a repeat offender, orchestrating print media and the airwaves it
controls to launch ad hominem abuse against whoever stands in its way. It spares
no one, dedicating entire pages in its newspapers and hours on its news and TV
talk shows crucifying media watchdogs, government employees, professors and
young students. It bends the truth, fabricates information, mistranslates
comments or uses them out of context, threatens lawsuits, insults and resorts to
systematic character assassination.
It also unleashed vile minions, such as CtiTV Washington bureau chief John Zang
(臧國華), to interview the MIT professor — the same Zang who, in early 2009,
literally stalked former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) daughter, Chen
Hsing-yu (陳幸妤), when she was in New York, forcing hotel management where she was
staying to expel him and necessitating the intervention of umbrella-touting
Taiwanese-Americans to protect her.
The above incidents alone — and they are rife — are sufficient to demonstrate
that Tsai’s media empire will not engage in responsible journalism, a key
component of any healthy democratic system. The group needs not even receive
money from China through illegal adverts, or fail to report on China’s rampant
human rights abuses (the China Times’ fate since Tsai acquired it), for it to
act as a cancer in the nation’s media environment. Its despicable behavior alone
makes it clear that a greater role for Tsai’s media empire will cause severe
harm to the nation’s democratic fabric and the quality of its journalism.
This aspect of the group has not received the attention it deserves, but it
should.
If approval of its acquisition of cable television channels and, as part of a
consortium, of Next Media’s outlets in Taiwan is solely contingent on
demonstrating that it does not receive money from China, or if the acquisitions
are dealt with purely along financial lines, then chances are they will go
through and Tsai will increase his control of the entire media spectrum. As
such, greater emphasis should be placed on the inability of the outlets
controlled by Tsai to act responsibly and to contribute to, rather than poison,
the nation’s media.
Some could counter that the group’s behavior is defensible under freedom of
speech and that it ultimately makes a contribution to pluralism. That argument
misses the point: Freedom of speech is both a right and a responsibility, and
its greatest value derives from the ability to strike a balance between those
two imperatives.
A media empire that uses its immense power to launch sustained attacks on
individuals whose only fault is to worry about the future of their nation is
not, by any yardstick, a responsible media actor.
The Want Want China Times Group does not need China’s assistance to behave like
an authoritarian bully. It already is one.
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