The U.S. State Department’s human rights report released last week noted in the section on Taiwan that there are no credible reports that the Taiwanese authorities restrict media freedom, but that the People’s Republic of China exerts influence over Taiwan’s media parent companies through their interests in China, and that to punish media outlets perceived to be too critical of Beijing authorities, China will adopt stricter checks on journalists from those outlets when they enter the country. Observers say Taiwan’s high level of press freedom but low level of trust, with fake news flooding mainstream and social media, and China’s exploitation of this weakness to influence Taiwanese politics through the media, is a threat to Taiwan’s democracy.
Chinese Pressure to Influence Taiwan’s Media
The U.S. State Department released its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights on March 30, and in the section on civil liberties, freedom of speech and press, it mentions that officials in the People’s Republic of China “influenced Taiwan’s media parent companies through pressure on their business interests in China. Taiwanese journalists say they have faced difficulties in publishing content critical of the People’s Republic of China and claim that PRC authorities have pressured Taiwanese companies with operations in China to refrain from advertising in Taiwanese media outlets that publish such content. To punish Taiwanese media outlets deemed too critical of the PRC’s policies or actions, the PRC applies stricter checks on the entry of journalists from those outlets, or denies them entry. People’s Republic of China actors have also conducted cyberattacks on the computers and cell phones of Taiwanese journalists.”
In 2019, Want China Group, which has significant operations in the People’s Republic of China, sued Kathrin Hille, a Taiwan-based reporter for the Financial Times, for criminal defamation, “in apparent retaliation for a story she wrote exposing coordination between Want Want Group’s Taiwan media and the Chinese State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office, the report said. ” The report also mentions that Reporters Without Borders called the legal action by the WantChina Group “an abuse of defamation lawsuit” against a journalist who reported credibly.
Defamation Case Against Jacqueline Silva Dropped
In the State Department’s 2020 Human Rights Report, the defamation case against Xi Jialin was still “pending,” but the case was recently dismissed.
The case arose from a July 17, 2019, report by Xi Jialin that two TV stations owned by the Wangzhong Group, Zhongtian TV and China TV (CTV), had reported extensively on Korea Yu in recent years, creating a strong “Korean Wave” that was instrumental in helping him win the Kaohsiung mayoral election in November 2018. The report cited Wang Zhong Group’s
They [the Taiwan Affairs Office] call every day,” said a reporter for the Want China Group’s China Times Daily, as quoted in the report. They don’t get involved in everything, and their concern is mainly cross-strait relations and China-related topics. They have a say in the angle of the story and can interfere with the front page editorial”.
China Times and China Sky TV then issued a statement, alleging that the Financial Times report was “malicious and false news,” and filed a lawsuit against Xi Jialin at the Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office for defamation.
In a statement, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office, also said in response to Xi’s report that the Want China Media Group was taking orders from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office in terms of news gathering, that the report was a “fabrication and ulterior motive” and that the DPP government was “fabricating rumors through foreign media. The DPP government is “concocting rumors through foreign media.
Shortly after Xi’s report, Reuters also reported in August 2019 that the Chinese government had paid several Taiwanese media outlets to publish “positive articles” about Beijing, such as stories touting the government’s plans to attract Taiwanese businesses, which were presented as general news but were actually stories paid for by China. According to the report, the Communist Party’s Taiwan Affairs Office has set up special companies to act as intermediaries with the Taiwanese media, and this bribery has allegedly been going on for several years.
Want China Group’s case against Xi Jialin was withdrawn earlier this year for unknown reasons, and the Taipei District Attorney’s Office issued a decision not to prosecute on March 11.
The case’s withdrawal drew the attention of some U.S. sources and the media community, with U.S.-Taiwan Business Association President Rupert Han tweeting that the withdrawal of Want Want China Times Group’s “false charges” against Shi Jia-Lin was good news and that “Shi Jia-Lin’s reporting on Taiwan has generally been very good and worthy of support. “
The Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club (TFCC), of which Shi Jia-Lin was the president, issued a statement welcoming the news. The statement said the case should never have been brought in the first place and that Shih was simply reporting on matters of public interest. “This is an example of how Taiwanese law can intimidate media professionals with defamation charges,” the sorority said, calling on the Taiwanese government to ensure that journalists in Taiwan are able to work without such intimidating situations.
CTS News Channel Photo Exchange Controversy
Taiwanese media reported that Want China Group withdrew its lawsuit earlier this year for reasons that were not clear. Previously, in December last year, Want China Group’s Zhongtian News Channel was denied a license renewal by Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) for repeated violations of the law, sparking great controversy as the opposition Kuomintang party accused the ruling DPP government of infringing on press freedom in an attempt to silence the media with a chilling effect. However, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a non-governmental organization that has been a voice for press freedom worldwide, said in a statement that the NCC’s ruling did not infringe on press freedom.
RSF’s statement came as a surprise to many when Cedric Alviani, executive director of the organization’s East Asia office, explained RSF’s position on the CTS News photo exchange during a video discussion on “Defending Media Freedom in Taiwan” at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in mid-March. He also mentioned the challenges to media freedom in Taiwan.
Evian said that Reporters Without Borders did make an “unusual” assessment in the CTS News case, and that because the organization’s standards are consistent around the world, the same standards apply to Taiwan as they do elsewhere. “The point we’re making is, what is the purpose of Reporters Without Borders? It’s freedom of information. Information means facts, news facts, not freedom of opinion or freedom to express speech.”
Freedom of the press should be regulated
He said that if CTS News had been an opinion channel, or a political channel or a religious channel, he doesn’t think the NCC would see any problem with its operation, “The problem is that it is a news channel, and news channels are supposed to report facts, not the opinions of media owners, not the opinions of a political camp” So when it repeatedly fails to report facts, it is not doing what a news channel is supposed to do, or it is disguising information in order to serve a political camp, and it has become a propaganda channel rather than a news channel.
It’s not that the NCC’s ruling against Zhongtian is meant to clamp down on speech, but that it’s punishing a news channel that should be reporting factual information,” said Ai Wei’ang. “It’s clear that the NCC has failed to fulfill this mission several times, and Taiwan somehow always uses the Western freedom of the press as an excuse.”
“Freedom of the press does not mean there are no norms.” Every democracy needs to regulate the media in the public interest, just as every economy does, or else it becomes the law of the jungle, or else it gives the media owners power, which is unacceptable,” said Ai Wei-ang.
Ai Wei-Ang pointed out that Taiwan’s press freedom ranked 43rd in Reporters Without Borders’ 2020 “World Press Freedom” ranking, one place back from 42 in 2019, which is still a good level of press freedom, but Taiwan’s press trust is only 24 percent, which is very low in a democracy. “This has become a major threat to Taiwan’s democracy because China is taking advantage of this weakness and trying to influence Taiwan’s politics through the media.”
Low Trust in the Press as a Threat to Democracy
According to the Digital News Report, a 2020 survey of 40 countries and regions conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, while China continues to exert economic and political pressure on some media outlets, Taiwan’s media environment remains one of the freest and most competitive in Asia, but Taiwan’s trust in news ( However, Taiwan’s trust in news ( trust in news) is only 24%, ranking 3rd from the bottom among 40 countries and regions in the world, only higher than France and South Korea.
The report notes that Taiwan’s low trust in news is due to the fact that “Taiwanese people are often exposed to disinformation in both mainstream and social media,” and that among media brands, the most trusted is public television, the least trusted is CTS News, and “networks with strong ties to mainland China are usually less trusted. the less trust.”
Although the Taiwanese people do not trust the media, Ai Wei-Ang also said that Taiwan’s media owners have no intention of changing the system because the media can support specific political figures, and political figures, when they have power, do not demand reform of the media that helped them get power. For this reason, Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly called on the Taiwanese government and legislators to do a better job of regulating the media, because it is not in the interest of the people is not beneficial, “When media owners are abusing their media freedom, neither party is doing the people any good, it is a threat to Taiwan’s democracy.”
Taiwan at the Forefront of China’s Influence
Kharis Templeman, a Hoover Institution fellow and program manager for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region, said Taiwan has been at the forefront of the expansion of influence in the Communist-ruled People’s Republic of China, which has long used Taiwan’s media to change the narrative about China, and that industries and businesses in many countries have been subject to Many countries’ industries and corporations have been pressured by the CCP to change their public statements or behavior regarding China, and in fact there is currently an influence campaign against the BBC, but Taiwan has been early and often under such pressure, “far earlier than the rest of the world was alerted to China’s influence campaign and the threat it poses to the media. “
He said that when Taiwan’s local elections in 2018 and the presidential and legislative elections in 2020 came around, Taiwan was very concerned that the CCP might use pro-China media to support its preferred candidates and to divide and smear those it did not like, and the main suspect among these pro-China media was CTS TV and its sister channel CTV, the latter of which is still on the air.
The NCC’s reasons for denying the CTS News channel a license renewal were related to its inaccurate or unbalanced political coverage, which the NCC said lacked transparency in CTS’s news commentary and ownership, especially during these two elections, Keeley said.
NCC Chairman Chen Yao-xiang said that Zhongtian’s violations were clear and that its biggest problem was “external interference “The seven members of the committee unanimously decided to reject CTS’s application for license renewal.
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