Taiwan's hard-won public television broadcasting network now faces a grave threat of a thinly veiled direct takeover by President Ma Ying-jeou's rightist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government.
The autonomy of the Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation (PTSF) has been under intense pressure since Ma took office in May 2008 as KMT lawmakers have pushed to remove incumbent PTSF Board Chairman Cheng Tung-liao and PTSF General Manager Vivian Feng, who were appointed under the former Democratic Progressive Party government, before their three-year contracts expire on Dec. 31 this year.
Besides offending KMT lawmakers through her defense of the editorial and managerial independence of the public television network, Feng is undoubtedly "guilty" of expanding the quality, viewership and influence of an autonomous public media voice just as the KMT is trying to muzzle state-owned but legally independent media such as the Central News Agency and Radio Taiwan International.
Since October 2008, the KMT - controlled legislature has engineered three revisions to the Public Television Organization Law to expand the size of the board for stacking by KMT lawmakers and other sycophants, but has been frustrated in efforts to wrest complete control over its board due to the lack of credibility in removing a successful management team and Ma's own eroding public confidence.
The most recent takeover attempt was frustrated in January when the Taipei District Court filed an injunction against eight directors appointed by then Government Information Office Minister and now KMT spokesman Su Chun-pin last summer in response to a suit by the PTSF chairman maintaining that the eight had been appointed in a "flawed" process.
Indeed, on Dec. 10, 2009, the Control Yuan had issued a demand to the GIO for a "correction" as Su had appointed the new directors and realized their ratification by a legislatively recommended review committee without informing the opposition Democratic Progressive Party legislative caucus of its right to recommend three new members.
The GIO later retaliated by filing its own injunction against Cheng and other PTSF directors for "illegally" holding a meeting without a quorum that was accepted by the Taipei District Court April 19.
Ironically, the issuance of the two injunctions has now reduced the number of functioning directors to five persons, who cannot hold a legal meeting without notification from the now suspended board chairman.
The GIO has apparently now instructed the five remaining directors to convene a meeting, which would also be of questionable legality, which would ask the GIO to take PTSF into receivership.
For their part, Cheng and other suspended PTSF directors filed a civil lawsuits Tuesday to the Taiwan District Court for a cessation of the April 19 injunction and filed an appeal to Taiwan High Court asking it to overturn the lower court's decision.
Moreover, Cheng called on the GIO to "retract its black hand" and cease its drive to turn Taiwan's hard-won public media into just another "state" owned media.
Return to legality
This unseemly conflict has already imposed grave harm on the public media in Taiwan and the working rights of journalists and other employees in the public television group.
Up to now, the tussle has been conducted through legal channels, but a decision by the GIO to take the PTSF into receivership would manifest the intervention of the KMT-controlled state apparatus into the control and management of a previously legally independent public media.
The consequences of this action to Taiwan's media freedom and the international reputation of the Ma administration would be profoundly negative.
A GIO takeover, however "packaged," would mark the reversal of decades of media reform efforts aimed at freeing the Taiwan news media from control from the KMT party - state.
The chilling effects would also not be limited to the Taiwan Public Television and its Hakka and Indigenous affiliates but would also affect the far larger terrestrial China Television Service and extend a cloud of uncertainty over the future of CTS and its considerable property assets.
A direct takeover of Taiwan's public television network by the GIO would undoubtedly also spark a precipitous plunge in Taiwan's international ratings in press freedom and human rights, which have already sagged since President Ma took office in May 2008.
There is a simple and legal way out of this morass, namely return to the requirements of the Public Television Law for the board to reflect the public will as represented by the composition of the Legislative Yuan.
First, the GIO should ask the Taipei District Court to cancel the April 19 injunction and restore the rights of PTFS Board Chairman Cheng Tung-liao and the seven fully legally appointed directors and thus restore the normal functioning of the public television network.
Secondly, the GIO should accept the correction issued by the Control Yuan last December, ask the KMT and DPP legislative caucuses to appoint new members to a new 15-member PTSB board selection review committee and then nominate and confirm eight new directors.
We urge new GIO Minister Chiang Chi-chen to gracefully accept this solution and respect the legal independence of Taiwan's public media.
Source: Taiwan News Online 2010/04/28
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