(Links i dette indlæg er på engelsk, medmindre andet er angivet)
I de seneste år har flere af de taiwanske mediemedarbejdere været bekymret over at pressefriheden er blevet undermineret siden ophævelsen af den militære undtagelsestilstand i 1987. Faktisk har Taiwans placering på Freedom House's årlige rapport om pressefrihed været faldende siden 2008.
Ud over den “integrerede markedsføringsskik“, der maskerer reklamer som nyheder og gør journalistiske artikler mindre pålidelige, har den kinesiske regering udvidet sin indflydelse på det taiwanske offentlige rum gennem opkøb af nyhedsindustrien.
Det kinesiske fastlands indflydelse
D. 7. maj 2012, blev der afholdt en offentlig høring, da gruppen Want Want China Times planlagde at opkøbe den andenstørste kabel-station i Taiwan. Siden den taiwanske forretningsmand Tsai Eng-Meng købte mediegruppen China Times, en af de mest indflydelsesrige aviser i Taiwan, i november 2008, er der efterfølgende sket en ændring af den redaktionelle politik [zh] i forhold til blødgøring af kritikken rettet mod Ma-administrationen, Beijing, eller forbedringer af bånd på tværs af Taiwanstrædet.
Mere end 50 samfundsvidenskabelige og journalistikprofessorer i Taiwan tilmeldte sig ‘Afvis China Times Kampagnen‘ [zh] i februar 2012, som reaktion på Tsai's interview med Washington Post, i hvilket han hævdede at Massakren på den Himmelske Freds Plads [da] ikke fandt sted.
Kampagnens erklæring pointerede at:
In fact, since Mr. Tsai purchased China Times, a large number of “self-censorship” incidents to “erase words that are critical of China” have taken place and the knowledge community has been very critical of such practice. Mr. Tsai obtains his capital from China and has turned into a media tycoon. His interview in the Washington Post which praised the authoritative mainland Chinese government is repressive towards the development of democracy and human rights in China. Such ridiculous comment has also proven our worries that the Chinese government has control over Taiwanese media, our public opinion and our citizens’ rights to truthful reports.
Den yderligere udvidelse af Want Want China Times fra trykt medie til kabel-tv har uden tvivl også alarmeret mange taiwanere. Tsai har faktisk indrømmet i den seneste offentlige høring, at han har modtaget penge fra myndighederne af det kinesiske fastland for at udgive “nyheder” der udbreder en positiv forestilling om Kinas fastland. Hans forsvar var imidlertid at “integreret markedsføring” er blevet en normal praksis i Taiwan og at der ikke er nogen grund til at forhindre China Times i at følge den.
Professor i journalistik, Chang Chin-hwa, pointerede at sådanne politiske reklamer er en potentiel trussel mod den nationale sikkerhed, via en rapport fra ‘Afvis China Times’ [zh]-kampagnens hjemmeside:
Professor Chang Chin-hwa is worried and reminds the public that “not only our government is buying news, now the People Republic of China (PRC) is buying news in Taiwan”. She urged the Control Yuan member Frank Wu to start an investigation and condemn such practices, “in this incident, the China Times is the prime suspect. Want Want China Times takes the money, however, it not only sells its own news, but helps other newspapers to sell their news! The Control Yuan has already pointed out [in 2010] that such practice has affected the professionalism in journalism and posed threat to our national security.”
Integreret markedsføring
Problemet med “integreret markedføring” er i årevis blevet kritiseret af mange mediemedarbejdere. I 2010 sagde en erfaren journalist, Dennis Huang (黃哲斌), sit job på China Times op og startede en online protest [zh] mod integreret markedsføring:
Yesterday I left China Times, where I have worked for 16 years and 5 months. It is more and more difficult to focus on my personal interests and pretend not to see the ugly truth that the embedded advertisement (cloaked as news) gradually invades more and more pages in the newspapers. News becomes a kind of good that we can calculate its value by counting the number of words. Trashy news releases are sent to the editors one by one, and the editors are told, ‘this is embedded marketing and we cannot change any word in it.’ Later, they invade the pages for ‘real’ news like aliens, and those articles written by hard-working reporters are shortened or thrown away. Both reporters and their supervisors are given the responsibility for selling news, so they need to ask the interviewees shamelessly for budgets and embedded marketing.
I believe that there is something in your life not for sale. For example, the trust of my readers, professional judgment, my conscience, my integrity, the reputation of a newspaper company, and the freedom to decide whether to write or not. However, the embedded marketing destroys all of them and takes them away. It makes news a piece of cheap merchandise on a shelf.
In various kinds of embedded marketing, the most arguable one is government sponsored news. The government pays the media with taxpayers’ hard earned money. I like to put it like this: ‘the government puts its left hand into our pocket to get the money to bribe the media, and then it can extend its right hand into our brain.’ …[By doing so] the government does not need to defend its policy or communicate with the citizens. Now the government is so lazy that it does not want to write its own propaganda. They just need to buy up the news. This is the most tedious and obscene kind of media control.