Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Taiwan, the Ma Government Wants the Media to Serve it

Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

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.

Freedom House lowers Taiwan’s press ranking

Taipei Times

Taiwan continued to drop down the list of countries with a free press, a new global study on press freedom shows.

In a survey released on Monday by the Washington-based think tank Freedom House, Taiwan ranked 48th in the world in press freedom last year. It ranked 47th in 2009 and 43rd in 2008.

The nation scored a total of 24 negative points compared with 23 in 2009 and 20 in each of the previous three years.

Taiwan’s competitiveness is fading

Tung Chen-yuan 童振源

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has accused the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government of restricting cross-strait trade exchanges, saying that this resulted in a sharp increase in Taiwanese investment in China and cross-strait trade. However, since Taiwan and China signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), Taiwanese businesspeople have shown a renewed willingness to return to Taiwan, Ma said, adding that this has caused cross-strait trade as a proportion of overall trade to decrease.

The truth is that after three years under the Ma administration, Taiwanese investment in China has surged, the number of Taiwanese businesspeople returning home has been limited, foreign investment has dropped and Taiwanese capital has flooded out.

Osama bin Laden killed by a US raid in Pakistan

Taipei Times

Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite US forces yesterday, then quickly buried at sea in a stunning finale to a furtive decade on the run.

Long believed to be hiding in caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a costly, custom-built hideout not far from a Pakistani military academy. The stunning news of his death prompted relief and euphoria outside the White House and around the globe, yet also fears of terrorist reprisals against the US and its allies.

“Justice has been done,” US President Barack Obama said in a dramatic announcement at the White House.

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