The Taipei Times ran a few good editorials yesterday.
The TT's editorial "KMT caucus has tricks new and old" provides a overview of just how the KMT have lived up to their promises of "cooperating" with the other smaller parties. On a side note, the article also mentioned that KMT legislator-at-large Chiu Yi (邱毅) is now a member of the Judiciary committee. Ironic isn't it? The guy who led a mob charge against the police in Kaohsiung now gets to amend/kill bills relating to judicial affairs. Seriously, I pity whatever judge that has to rule on his cases. I also loved the way this article ended with such a dry line.
Then theres another piece titled "Media failing on international news" that comments on some of the flaws of Taiwan's media. The article does a nice job of pointing out how the news we get in Taiwan isn't very international. In fact the international news that we do get is often something whimsical, like the results of a hotdog eating contest or swimming contest for pigs. No wonder TV interviews and polls show that the average Taiwanese knows very little on currant global affairs.
There are also many other problems associated with Taiwan's media besides being too limited in it's coverage. In general, Taiwan's media is just screwed up in far too many ways. Many media outlets are shamelessly pro-KMT, yet they try to pass themselves off as being neutral. Come on, if your shows and news coverage all show a KMT slant then are you really a neutral media company?
The sad thing is that many people actually believe in the stories and opinion polls published by those pro-blue media. And we all know how reliable polls done by the pro-blue media is. Sigh.
I think the problem behind Taiwan's media woes lies in two general areas. Firstly, there is far too much political interference. Many pro-blue media deliberately try to shape their news presentation in such a way that benefits the KMT and their allies. For example, the United Daily News might offer a page covering what Ma Ying-Jeou biking that day along with a big photo of him, while only offering a small article on the stalled arms budget in the Legislative Yuan. They might also choose to use specific diction and quotes to slant stories their way.
Secondly, there is a notable lack of ethics among media producers and journalists. I highly doubt the qulifications of a journalist who majored in say, ancient Chinese classics. This lack of professionalism results in that journalists would feel nothing wrong with writing biased articles. Some even go as far as to cook up an entire story themselves, as in the case of the gangster who threatened people in a self filmed video that was aired on TVBS. Problems like this will continue to abound untill the standards are raised.
One way to solve this problem is for the DPP to have more of an influence in the media. Despite the fact that I wish the media would be free from political interference, in the short run this appears to be impossible to accomplish. Thus in order to fight against the KMT's media machine, the DPP also needs dedicated media outlets of it's own to counter the influence of the KMT media.
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This is an absurdly biased commentary that you write. It is true that there is media bias, in fact, it is true in every single nation-state that has more than a state controlled media outlet. For you to limit the scope to only the KMT is incredibly naive and biased.
Just so you know, the DPP is just as biased. In the past 8 years, there have been at least 2 television programs of a political commentary nature that have been shut down by the government, most notably Huo Shien Shuang Jiao. No one is denying the bias of the media, but it is wrong of you to specify it only as a KMT phenomena.
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