Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

As a result of the rosy pictures and clever slogans that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government frequently feeds the public, more often than not failing to substantiate them, many members of the public now have a clearer grasp of the notion of “politics as performance art.”

A look at the recent act put on by Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) in the presence of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), however, has taken it to a new level, as the public played witness to a blatant show of brown-nosing that appears to be prevalent among government officials in the Ma administration.

Taiwan has recently been facing media problems where the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is using its pan-blue media to run pro-KMT ad-verts as actual news stories. Other pan-blue media are publishing items straight from Xinhua News, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) news organ as if they are regular news. As Freedom House has noted, the press freedom in Taiwan has continued to drop since Ma Ying-jeou became president. Yet, once again, Taiwan faces another situation where it appears that not only does the horse not know how long his face is, but those who serve the horse do not either. In fact they seem to be trying to force the public to accept the fact that the horse really has a short face. What are we talking about? The case involves how a reporter for SET-TV exposed a fake pro-Ma PR scheme. Instead of being praised for good journalism, the reporter and his TV station are being criticized for exposing the truth.