The media's willfulness had a deadly outcome, or so some charged, when the daughter of television star Pai Ping-ping was kidnapped a few years ago. The singer criticized the media for following the family in cars, vans and helicopters, even hounding it during the ransom drop.
"Were you helping me or hurting me?" Pai asked at a news conference.
When her daughter was found dead, the accusations grew more pointed. "Reporters are guilty!" screamed placards hoisted by neighbors around Pai's house.
Journalists showed little remorse, citing pressure from their editors.
"If you fail to get this story, jumping from the 14th floor is too good for you," an editor at the United Daily News was quoted -- in a well-cited essay on media reform -- as saying during a meeting on the newspaper's 14th floor. "You should climb up to at least the 20th floor and jump from there."
In a market of 23 million people, Taiwan has six 24-hour television news channels, 4,185 magazines, 172 radio stations, 135 cable TV channels, 2,524 newspapers and 977 domestic news agencies, the government says. The desperate struggle for ratings results in stories on sex, murder, corruption and kidnappings and not much else, critics charge.
Kuan Chung-hsiang, a journalism professor at Shih Hsin University in Taipei, recounted that one of his top students landed a job at a local TV station but quit a few months later. She'd been told to wear a short skirt and to walk over a hidden camera positioned in a drain for an "investigative" piece about how hidden cameras all over Taiwan were secretly recording lewd scenes. The station couldn't find videos of lewd scenes, so it was staging one.
When the former student strongly objected, Kuan said, her boss asked her, "Do you want conscience or do you want ratings?"
Part of the Taiwanese media's character reflects its evolution, what some refer to as the transition from lapdog to mad dog. Until 1988, major newspapers and TV stations served as government mouthpieces controlled by the ruling Nationalist Party, which had maintained an iron grip for decades.
Less government control has led to privatization, but several important stations are still owned by political parties. In a polarized society where politics is a blood sport -- fistfights in the legislature were not uncommon up until a few years ago -- media objectivity is spotty at best.
