The Independence of Editing Right Is Put to the Test With Kuomintang Back in Power
April 2009
In Taiwan, the relationship between public service broadcasters and the ruling party is becoming a sensitive issue. Taiwan’s pubic broadcasting began in 1998 when the Public Television Service Foundation (PTS) started broadcasts. Over the recent ten years, PTS have been highly evaluated by media experts for its quality programs and political neutrality although their audience ratings stayed low. Initially, the station operated a small-scale service with annual budget of about four billion yen and with only one channel, but PTS has expanded the service by integrating the Chinese Television System (CTS), originally a commercial broadcaster, in 2006, and ethnic channels, Hakka TV and Indigenous TV, as well as an international channel, the Taiwan Macroview TV, in 2007 to form the Taiwan Broadcasting System (TBS), whose analogue service alone had five channels back then. However, in May 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou’s Kuomintang came back to power. Since then, the new administration, which had been critical about the “bloated” public broadcasting as the opposition, has been increasing the pressure on public broadcasters. At the Legislative Yuan, the government decided to “freeze” half the amount of the budget for PTS, the leading player of the TBS group, for a long term. (“Freeze” here means they did not exactly cut the budget but temporarily discontinued the implementation of half of the budget). This article introduces the history and current state of Taiwanese public service broadcasting and analyzes how the relationships between the ruling party and public broadcasters as well as between the government and the media in Taiwan have changed since Kuomintang took office, based on field study conducted in November 2008.
Many in the media attribute the escalation of the new administration’s interference on TBS, which started soon after its inauguration, to Kuomintang’s intention of strengthening media control, which was symbolized by the appointment of Kuomintang officials as executives of the Central News Agency (CNA) and the Radio Taiwan International (RTI). Looking at the history and cultural background, Taiwan once was ruled by Kuomintang’s one-party authoritarian system for a long time. Even when the Democratic Progressive Party took office, it was a minority government. However, Kuomintang have regained not only the presidency but also overwhelming power with three-quarters of the parliamentary seats. Given these conditions, it is likely Taiwan’s public broadcasters and the media as a whole will have to keep facing challenging situations for a while. We need to carefully watch how the things develop to prevent freedom of the press from retrogressing in a democratized Taiwan.