As countries celebrate World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the tightening press environment in Asia shows no sign of easing, but rather the epidemic has given authoritarian governments, including the Chinese Communist Party, an excuse to expand their powers to restrict press freedom. Critics say that despite this, Taiwan, which has been attacked by the Chinese Communist authorities for disinformation, has maintained a high level of press freedom in the Asian region due to the cooperation of both the government and the opposition, and has opened up its press to journalists who have fled the Communist Party, making it a model for press freedom in the Asia-Pacific region.
The United Nations designated May 3 as World Press Freedom Day in 1993 to raise awareness of press freedom and remind governments to respect and promote the right to freedom of expression. In recent years, however, the suppression of press freedom in non-democratic countries in the Asia-Pacific region on the grounds of epidemics has become increasingly serious.
Taiwan is hailed as a model of press freedom in Asia
“In its “2021 World Press Freedom Index” report, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) noted that the top three countries with the highest freedom index are all in Northern Europe. Taiwan ranked 43rd, 2nd in Asia after South Korea, while China ranked 4th from the bottom out of 180 countries.
Commentators say that in recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has used new technologies and its online army to develop not only domestic online censorship, surveillance, and community internal propaganda on an unprecedented scale, but also to spread censorship and disinformation globally, with Taiwan, which has the highest linguistic and cultural commonality with mainland China, being one of the regions that suffer the most from the infiltration of Chinese disinformation.
Despite this, Taiwan has been praised for maintaining a high level of press freedom in the Asia-Pacific region, and in 2017, when the RSF opened its first Asian headquarters in Taipei, it said, “Taiwan was chosen not only for its central location and ease of administration, but also because it is the best in Asia in our annual Press Freedom Index rankings.” RSF noted that authoritarian regimes in the Asia-Pacific region have used the epidemic to control information in a totalitarian manner and have become more sophisticated in their methods, while the behavior of the few true democracies in the region shows that press freedom is the best remedy against disinformation.
Cedric Alviani, RSF’s East Asia office director
In an interview with the Voice of America, Cedric Alviani, RSF’s East Asia office director, said, “The fact is that there are very few real democracies in East Asia, so Taiwan is not only a model of press freedom, but also the best example of how to counter China’s manipulation of press freedom. The RSF also considered Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Hong Kong when establishing foreign media headquarters in East Asia, but since freedom of expression in Hong Kong is interfered with by Beijing, media headquarters must have full protection of the rule of law. Therefore, Taiwan, which is linguistically and culturally closest to China, became the best choice.”
Taiwan Welcomes Journalists Fleeing China
Financial Times reporter Eleanor Olcott reported this month that the mass exodus of journalists from China to Taiwan has become a good opportunity to raise Taiwan’s profile and gain international support. She said many journalists have fled to Taiwan, which enjoys freedom of the press, after being troubled and even threatened in China for articles criticizing the Chinese government’s human rights abuses against the Uighurs in Xinjiang and its mishandling of the new coronavirus outbreak. John Sudworth, a BBC correspondent based in Beijing, China, is one example.
A spokesman for Taiwan’s presidential office tweeted (Twitter) on March 31 this year, “Very welcome to Taiwan and believe in staying in our free democracy and being comfortable to continue the important work, including exposing the stories that those in power are trying to hide from the world.”
In response, Ai Wei-Ang said, “We are asking the government of the Republic of China to provide a better environment and services for the international media so that they can work in Taiwan with stability. With Taiwan’s geographical proximity to China, its familiarity with the Chinese situation and its high degree of press freedom, we believe Taiwan will be a very ideal base for international media and NGOs in the future.”
Epidemic prevention achievements reflect Taiwan’s freedom of the press
This year, the RSF singled out at least 10 countries that have used epidemic prevention as an excuse to censor speech and political propaganda, impeding freedom of the press and information. Analysts say that Taiwan has not taken advantage of the epidemic to expand government power, but instead has demonstrated its press freedom with its success in preventing the epidemic.
Chiu Chia-Yi, CEO of the Foundation for Excellence in Journalism (Photo courtesy: Chiu Chia-Yi)
Chiu Chiayi, CEO of the Taiwan Excellence in Journalism Foundation, told VOA: “Taiwan’s success in preventing the epidemic is a very good counter-evidence. This is because our media is basically free and not controlled by the government. Some people were speaking before saying, “Are you hiding confirmed or death figures? But anyone who lives in Taiwan knows that’s impossible because whenever the government does something like that, someone will immediately go and kick it out, it’s absolutely impossible for it to be hidden.”
She said that Taiwan’s performance proves that a democratic society and mechanism, through the people’s trust in the government and effective communication throughout the society, can totally achieve successful epidemic prevention.
In addition, the press conference of the central epidemic command center and the official community also played a role in the dissemination of information on epidemic prevention. Wang Tai Li, a professor at the Institute of Journalism at National Taiwan University, told Voice of America, “Whenever there are more important changes (in the epidemic), there will be press conferences. The central epidemic command center learned how to use social media to communicate with the public. We will find that the central outbreak command center also has a lot of small editors who will make a lot of pictures to pass directly to the people and have them retweet them.”
The government and the private sector work together to deal with false information
Taiwan Democracy Lab Director Shen Boyang (Photo courtesy:Shen Boyang Facebook)
In an interview with Voice of America, Taiwan Democracy Lab Director Shen Boyang said that China has been spreading all kinds of disinformation with the tone of “democracy is a failure” after Taiwan’s election and the outbreak of the New Crown virus in an attempt to divide Taiwan society, and recently there has been a pattern of “localization Recently, a “localization” mode of communication has emerged, using Taiwanese people in Taiwan’s social media to release a large amount of disinformation favorable to China. In response, Taiwan has adopted a division of labor between the government and the private sector to deal with the situation.
The government has told everyone that this disinformation is now a serious problem, and while everyone is aware of the problem, instead many of those operating are civic groups,” Shen Boyang said. Because there are many citizen groups, people will go to their own trusted citizen groups to dispel rumors, so it is more decentralized approach. I think this approach is an advantage for Taiwan now, because it is less likely to fall into the mold of the government trying to dispel rumors.”
Lin Zong-hong, researcher at the Academia Sinica School of Social Sciences in Taiwan (Photo courtesy: Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
Taiwan was the most attacked place in the world by disinformation from 2018 to 2019, but the situation has eased since last year, according to Lin Tsung-hong, a researcher at the Academia Sinica’s School of Social Sciences. For example, those who spread false information about the epidemic can be punished according to the law, as well as the deterrent effect can be achieved through investigations due to the adoption of anti-infiltration-related national security decrees.
However, he cautioned that whenever there is an election, infiltration of false information will return. He said: “Of course, after the election, it will soon be discovered that the source of these messages, that is, the producer, quickly disappeared, and it is obvious that there are foreign forces to finance the formation of a large-scale information war of disinformation. This is also the future may have to face information attacks, Taiwan society should pay attention to. Because it must be linked with the election, such as the referendum or local elections together, will be linked with these cycles, the timing of its attack is specific.”
Commentators say that a democratic society is bound to face elections, and party politics has caused problems with Taiwan’s media in terms of impartiality and objectivity.
There is still room for improvement in the institutional structure
Taiwan’s Excellence in Journalism Award Foundation CEO Chiu Chia-Yi said that after the lifting of restrictions in 1988, Taiwan’s media has been blossoming, but after private capital investment and commercial business models entered the media, the underlying structure of the media has gradually become problematic. Due to market competition, the media tends to be conglomerate in terms of capital, and because of the characteristics of democratic politics, the media tends to be partisan in terms of political attitude.
She said, “Of course partisanship can also be said to be a kind of pluralism, but partisan pluralism has a hidden worry, namely the problem of polarization. So the media in Taiwan now is polarized, in the sense that it is either blue or green, and it seems difficult to have what is called an impartial, objective and relatively unbiased media in politics.” According to Chiu, these two points have become the breakthroughs for the infiltration of red power, while causing the greatest damage to the cornerstone of Taiwan’s democracy.
Last November, Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) passed a resolution rejecting Zhongtian News’ application for license renewal, citing multiple violations, making it the first case since the era of cable television in Taiwan. And then Zhongtian’s original channel switched to a public broadcasting medium, causing much discussion. The commissioners’ meeting determined that the internal control and self-regulatory mechanism of CTS News was dysfunctional and harmful to internal news autonomy.
Tai-Li Wang, professor at the Institute of Journalism, National Taiwan University (Photo courtesy:Tai-Li Wang)
After the license change was not passed, the channel was replaced by the Public Broadcasting Group within four months,” said Tai-Li Wang. Supporters of the Public Broadcasting Group believe that this is a way to improve Taiwan from being so polarized, that the so-called Public Broadcasting Group is colorless and has no aggregation problems, and that it is a news TV channel that belongs to all people, and that it might improve the quality of news in Taiwan.”
Ai Wei-Ang believes that improving the media environment is the last mile to Taiwan’s democracy: “Most Taiwanese media belong to large consortia, which hold dominant power over the choice of news, which can cause commercial interests to influence and generate more demand to stimulate sensational issues, making the quality of media lower.”
RSF, along with many international media, expects the ROC government to discipline media owners in terms of decree and enforcement, so that the news can serve the public in a fairer and more impartial manner. Ai Wei-Ang is convinced that Taiwan has the potential to enter the top 20 of the highest global press freedom index. However, he stresses that Taiwan should gradually achieve full media independence and more actively invite international media and NGOs in, so that the international community has a better chance of recognizing that Taiwan is no less progressive than Hong Kong or other advanced Asia-Pacific countries, and is a place that offers a high degree of freedom and rule of law.
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