Action News sparks controversy

Animated clips fuel debate on media freedom

New York Times, December 9, 2009

Taipei, Taiwan -- A young man slaps his grandfather to the floor, bloodying him. Another slices off his girlfriend’s hair with a knife after she says she wants to break up with him.

A group of junior high students bullies a girl — beating her, forcing her to strip to her underwear and then snapping pictures with their cellphones.

Animations depicting such events, mixed with video and still photos, are typical “Action News” clips on the Web site of the Apple Daily, Taiwan’s most widely read newspaper. One such clip — about Tiger Woods — recently took the Internet by storm, prompting a mix of ridicule and awe in the United States. But in Taiwan, the clips have provoked a debate over media freedoms and responsibility, and government regulation.

Child welfare groups and media watchdogs have protested outside the Apple Daily’s offices. The Taipei city government fined Apple Daily $31,000 for failing to shield youth from the sensational, and often violent, content.

The Taiwanese government is among the first in the world to grapple with how to regulate such free-wheeling — some say irresponsible — new media products. The young democracy is especially wary of any controls on the news media, given four decades of censorship under the Kuomintang government.

Even as regulators review the Web animation, they are grappling with plans by Apple Daily’s parent, Next Media, which is based in Hong Kong, to expand into television. The group wants to open five TV stations in Taiwan, using segments from the same animation studio that helps produce Action News.

“While we believe print media still has a role, we think the importance of graphics and the digital world is going to increase more and more,” the Next Media chief executive, Chu Wah-Hui, said by telephone from Hong Kong.

On Wednesday, the Taiwanese telecommunications regulator rejected Next Media’s applications for news and variety channel licenses, saying the sample clips the company had submitted violated its “core values,” including a legal requirement that broadcasters “uphold human dignity.” It said the company was free to apply again.

Tseng Shiann-kang, a spokesman for the National Communications Commission, said officials were consulting with experts on the use of animation in online and TV news reports. “Some reports may be false and could create misunderstandings,” Mr. Tseng said. While Apple Daily’s newspaper and other publications have used cartoon depictions of crimes and accidents for years, he said moving animation “has a bigger effect” on viewers. “We need to strictly review such content, especially for news and children’s programs,” Mr. Tseng said.

Taipei officials said much the same thing when they banned Apple Daily’s newspaper in schools and libraries until the telecommunications regulator and the Ministry of Interior were satisfied it had sufficiently classified and restricted its content. Readers with cellphone cameras can snap a code on the paper’s front page to view Action News videos.

Rose Chao, a spokeswoman for the Taipei city government, insisted that it supported freedom of the news media. “The core of the issue is to protect children and adolescents,” she said. What Apple Daily has done “is to package sex crimes with animation under the name of news, and this might endanger the hearts and minds of children and adolescents.”

The initial furor over the animated clips quieted down after Apple Daily issued a public apology, changed some of its content, and put a “restricted” notice on some videos. However, any user merely has to click a button saying "I am at least 18 years old" to access that content.

Leon Chuang, of the Association of Taiwan Journalists, which participated in the protest against Apple Daily, said his group isn’t “completely” opposed to Action News, and its members think Taipei went too far in banning the newspaper from schools and libraries. But he said the group opposes animated clips of crimes or accidents involving minors.

“It’s like they’re being hurt a second time,” said Mr. Chuang. “For us, we oppose this part -- and we don’t think there’s any news value.”

When the controversy erupted, Apple Daily threatened legal action against the Taipei government and accused it of violating media freedoms. But it has since softened its tone. Mr. Chu said that, in response to the outcry, Action News would no longer use animated segments in news reports involving children.

"We were probably a little too excited by the technology and the ability to do what we couldn’t do before, and we went overboard,” he said. “We apologized.”

But he dismissed the suggestion that Apple Daily was playing fast and loose with the facts, saying Action News shares the same reporting limitations as any news-gathering outfit. “We’re not pretending that this is exactly what happened,” said Mr. Chu. “We’re just using visual images to present what we believe, to the best of the journalist’s ability, to have happened.”

Next Media is no stranger to controversy. The Taiwanese government raided the offices of the island’s edition in 2002 after a report alleging that Taiwan had maintained a secret, multimillion-dollar “slush fund” to woo foreign allies.

Original site

Black and white and 'red' all over?

A US report has sparked concerns about China's increasing influence over Taiwan's media.

Global Post, May 10, 2009

TAIPEI — Many Taiwanese look up to the United States, and are hyper-sensitive to any American criticism.

So when the U.S. group Freedom House released its recent report on press freedom, it launched a round of hand-wringing. The reason: Freedom House downgraded Taiwan's press freedom ranking, to 43 from 32 last year. Last year it rated Taiwan's media as Asia's "freest" — this year that honor went to Japan. (See the report here .)

More dramatically, Freedom House docked neighboring Hong Kong's press to "partly free" from "free," due to what it described as increased Chinese influence over the territory's media.

Journalists I spoke to were puzzled by some of Freedom House's conclusions about Taiwan.

But on one point, everyone seems to agree: China's influence over Taiwan's media is growing — and if it's not careful, the media here could share Hong Kong's fate.

"If Taiwan's media cannot resist penetration by China, Taiwan will before long go the same way as Hong Kong," Leon Chuang, chairman of the Association of Taiwan Journalists, wrote in a recent editorial.

Freedom House's report calls out the island and two other countries for knuckle-rapping: "Declines in Israel, Italy and Taiwan illustrate that established democracies with traditionally open media are not immune to restricting media freedom."

The poor grades from Freedom House were also particularly stinging here because Taiwan's freewheeling media is key part of the island's political success story: from heavy-handed autocracy to vibrant democracy.

“The decline shows there is room for improvement,” a government spokesman reportedly said, promising to study ways to improve.

Freedom House cited "allegations of increased official pressure on editorial content" and "harassment of reporters trying to cover news events" as reasons for Taiwan's lower score.

It didn't specifically mention growing Chinese influence. But in an e-mail, Freedom House's Asia Researcher Sarah Cook told me, "It’s a dynamic that has appeared in Hong Kong and caused concern, so it’s one of the things we will be trying to watch [in Taiwan] in 2009."

Hong Kong's media moguls are drawing ever closer to Beijing. Wrote the group: "Of particular concern [was] the appointment of 10 owners of Hong Kong media outlets to a mainland Chinese political advisory body." (See more details here.)

Hong Kong's special arrangement upon reverting to Chinese control in 1997 was supposed to preserve the territory's liberties, including press freedoms.

But instead, much of Hong Kong's media has been bought by commercial interests who practice a high degree of self-censorship to stay on Beijing's good side and protect their stakes in mainland markets.

Now, some see the same pattern playing out in Taiwan. The most eyebrow-raising example: The recent purchase of the China Times media group by a Taiwanese rice cracker mogul with massive business interests in China, and who's seen as friendly with Beijing.

"He has a huge stake in the China market, so how could he criticize China?" asked Lo Chi-cheng, a professor at Soochow University and organizer of anti-government rallies. "No way."

(The company, billionaire Tsai Eng-meng's Want Want, did not respond to a request for comment.)

Lo said self-censorship was increasing among Taiwanese media firms with commercial interests in China. And he warned this was playing into Beijing's strategy of defusing criticism and co-opting Taiwanese.

"The news media in Taiwan has become an important tool for Beijing," Lo said. "The Kuomintang [Taiwan's current ruling party] and the Chinese Communist Party are working together to manipulate Taiwan public opinion. That's an important undercurrent that will shape Taiwan's future."

There's no "smoking gun" yet to prove Taiwan's media has begun to bend under Chinese pressure.

But there are plenty of rumors: An angry boss calls up his staff and tells them to cut out criticism of Taiwan's China-friendly president; a talk show host is told not to criticize China because the company is pushing its soap operas in the China market.

Antonio Chiang, a veteran Taiwan journalist and former government official, dismissed Freedom House's charges of harassment and government pressure. "The police are scared of reporters here, not the other way around," he said.

But he also said that growing Chinese influence was an "obvious trend." Chiang himself writes for the Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-owned newspaper known for its pro-democracy, anti-communist stance.

Apple Daily is an example of what happens to media who get on Beijing's bad side: Its reporters are usually barred from the mainland.

Chiang said it was "inevitable" that Taiwan would go the way of Hong Kong, with commercial interests white-washing coverage of China.

But he says the trend doesn't worry him too much.

"It's like climate change — what can you do?" said Chiang. "We have to adjust to the new situation. I think it's a good test for our belief in democracy, and how committed we are to our national identity."

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