TAIPEI, Taiwan — When Sir Elton John arrived here shortly before midnight in a bright blue track suit and dark glasses, he was greeted at the airport by local reporters who jostled him, slammed cameras in his face and barked questions.
The pop star tried to hide but was soon flushed out and started yelling obscenities.
Not known for taking an insult lying down, the Taiwanese journalists yelled back. Some suggested that he consider going elsewhere.
"We'd love to get out of Taiwan if it's full of people like you. Pig! Pig!" the knighted entertainer screamed last fall.
"The television and the photographers at the airport were the rudest I have ever met, and I've been to 60 countries," John said at his piano bench at a concert a few hours later. "I'm sorry if I offended anyone in Taiwan, I didn't mean to. But to those guys, I meant every word."
Celebrity histrionics aside, Taiwan's media have the reputation of being among the most aggressive in Asia. In a region where print and broadcast reporters are often de facto cheerleaders for governments and billionaires, Taiwan's no-holds- barred journalism is alternately seen as a gutsy check on authority and the embodiment of chaos.
Concerned about the media's excesses and ability to ruin reputations and lives, reformers in and outside the industry are trying to stem the sensationalism, partisanship and corruption that characterize the business. Some argue that the media are merely a reflection of Taiwanese society, which is one of the most freewheeling in Asia.
Foreign luminaries aren't the only ones trying to hide from the island's aspiring Woodwards and Bernsteins, who've been called man-eaters, bloodsuckers and worse. Several years ago, when Taiwan's then-vice president and prime minister, Lien Chan, gave his traveling herd of reporters the slip on a trip to the Dominican Republic and secretly traveled to Ukraine, newspapers summoned all their troops to search for him.
A few months later, then-Foreign Minister John Chang pulled a similar Houdini act during a visit to South Africa. Hounded by angry reporters when he returned to Taipei after a stealth visit to Belgium, Chang defended himself with what is now known here as the "rice cooker" theory of diplomacy. Making policy while one is barraged by reporters, he said, is like trying to boil rice with someone constantly lifting the lid.
Wary of angering those who buy ink by the barrel, however, he quickly apologized and begged the scribes' forgiveness.
