Chung Kuo Television Company Chairman Lin Sheng-fen "Hong Chun-pei Culture and Education Foundation" Public Welfare Lecture

(Taiwan Business News) Taiwan's media chaos is often one of the things people criticize. On February 15, the Hong Chun-pei Culture and Education Foundation and Taiwan Business News invited Chung Kuo Television Company Chairman Lin Sheng-fen to speak on "Multicultural Social Progress" at the Zhongshan Lecture Hall of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Chairman Lin drew on his many years of experience in journalism, communication and media management to discuss multiculturalism, and the audience benefited greatly.

Chung Kuo Television Company Chairman Lin Sheng-fen said that Taiwan's special geographical location has formed a multicultural society. From the lifting of martial law, the full re-election of the Legislative Yuan, the rotation of political parties, and the opening of cross-strait relations, through these turbulent times Taiwan has experienced dramatic ups and downs like a "fantastical voyage."

Chung Kuo Television Company Chairman Lin Sheng-fen Public Welfare Lecture: Media Chaos, Taiwan's Fantastical Voyage

In 1989 the newspaper ban was lifted, and rapid changes occurred in the political, social and economic spheres. Newspapers added pages, and electronic media were subsequently opened up, drastically changing the media ecology. In this environment, Taiwan society was like a winged horse breaking free of its bonds, and the media ecology developed toward freedom and openness. In 1990, the opening of radio and television, both cable and terrestrial, marked the beginning of media chaos.

The post-martial-law media could be described with the two words "many" and "chaotic." Especially with the economic downturn in the past two years, media operations have generally faced difficulties. Media professional autonomy can only bow to the giant spirit of the market, and the phenomenon of news becoming advertising has become increasingly serious.

Chung Kuo Television Company Chairman Lin Sheng-fen said that Taiwan has more television stations than other major world powers can match, and this is also a source of the chaos. Many media outlets are a normal phenomenon of a free marketplace of opinions. Because there are many media outlets, even if each has its own position, it does not hinder the pluralistic presentation of news and opinions. They can balance each other, compete fairly, and provide the broad audience with the right to choose information.

The lifting of the newspaper ban once gave Taiwan society and its media such an opportunity, to establish a pluralistic, open, and unbiased public sphere. Unfortunately, although Taiwan has many media outlets, today's media chaos in Taiwan indeed gives people an extremely negative impression. These media outlets only seek short-term gains and focus only on sensationalism. Everything is profit-oriented. There is no meaningful and in-depth international news, and there is a lack of in-depth analysis and reporting on Taiwan's political and economic situation and future development. A single incidental event, or a fight involving entertainers, can be reported endlessly for a week. Add to that those omniscient, omnipotent so-called pundits, and the chaos follows.

In the West, everyone regards the media as the so-called fourth estate alongside the executive, legislative and judicial branches, playing the positive role of supervising the government and expressing public opinion. The ideal is indeed lofty, and past empirical experience also shows that many media outlets have indeed played a role. The New York Times reporting against the Vietnam War and The Washington Post exposing Watergate are stories everyone knows well. In this era when everyone is a media person and everyone can break news, perhaps in some incidents such as fake oil and food safety issues, the media have fulfilled their supervisory responsibility.

But in today's Taiwan, one sees only negative, unbalanced reports and commentary. Positive news is as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. Everyone focuses only on competing for their own small niche audience, ignoring the overall interests of society. Government officials and certain policies certainly have aspects worthy of criticism and review, but malicious accusations three times a day would daze even the smartest person. In the end, everyone across Taiwan seems to have gone mad. No wonder some people say Taiwan's media are one of the three major sources of social chaos.

In addition, with the arrival of the era of new online media, the public can obtain more instant information through the internet, but in-depth and verified reporting has increasingly decreased. Lin Sheng-fen said that the education reform that began in 1988 actually bears great responsibility. A series of education reform measures brought major changes in laws and regulations, teaching staff, curricula, teaching, textbooks, and finance, making it arguably the most dramatically changing stage in Taiwan's educational history. Because education reform involves a very wide range of areas, it has been widely discussed by all sectors of society, and because there are many controversies, it has received mixed evaluations from all quarters since its implementation.

The rigid education reform system and its inability to meet social demands is one of the most controversial points. In particular, students' academic pressure cannot be relieved: parents and students still find ways to compete in order to squeeze into ideal schools, and the unhealthy trend of cram schooling still exists. Some parents even send their children to all kinds of talent classes so that they can stand out in the second stage of the screening test. Beyond their original coursework, students have added many burdens, and the pressure of advancing to higher schools has increased rather than decreased. In the long run, this cultivates rigid talent that only knows how to "take exams," is "out of touch with the real world," "narrow in outlook," "lacking in humanistic literacy," and "unthinking," and Taiwan's media and culture thus move further into a vortex of emptiness.

From the economic perspective, Taiwan is inevitably drawn into the wave of globalization. Industrial hollowing-out, relocation abroad, the replacement of labor by technology, and the mainland's magnetic effect have transformed the relationship from dependence to competition. "Money" interest issues, such as advertising fees and management costs, are key factors making it increasingly difficult for today's media to survive.

Therefore, television stations must rely on ratings, and news must conform to sensationalism and sex appeal in order to attract the broad audience. Taiwan's humanistic literacy, the profit interests of media operations, and overall structural issues of globalization all make media chaos an unsolvable problem.

Chung Kuo Television Company Chairman Lin Sheng-fen believes that the government's role is quite important. The media's dereliction of duty, incompetence and misconduct must also rely on media self-discipline and audience self-awareness. Taiwan still has the advantage of refinement, but it still must rely on the efforts and integration of everyone, including the government.

Hu Shi once said: "Tolerance is more important than freedom." Taiwan's media, in the name of press freedom, practice "manufacturing news." The profits brought by ratings have replaced news truth. Lin Sheng-fen finally suggested that the government should create appropriate supporting measures to supervise the media, so that the media bear the journalistic responsibility they should bear.

Hong Chun-pei Culture and Education Foundation 103rd Year Public Welfare Lecture