but opinions are free.” We feel duty-bound to point out facts have been distorted to form biased opinions by some fellow journalists in Taipei. One case in point is a commentary that appeared in an English-language paper of late. It charged the Kuomintang with controlling the media and the National Communications Commission, but no facts were cited to substantiate the accusation. The KMT was maligned.
First of all, the author compared the KMT to the Chinese Communist Party, which still places the press under its thumb. He pointed to the KMT press control during the February 28 Incident of 1947, and justified SET TV’s fabrication of footage by claiming it had to be used because of a lack of real documentary records, which the then-ruling party must have destroyed. The fact is that the incident was reported by correspondents that Chinese news organizations had stationed in Taiwan. The CCP used reports from Taipei to blast the KMT for oppressing the people of Taiwan, and to urge them to rise up. No pictures were taken, because there were no reporters who had any chance to take any shots. The KMT couldn’t destroy non-existent evidence.
Another episode cited is the closing of an underground radio station by the commission. Ocean Voice Radio, “devoted to Taiwan’s normalization,” claimed it had not intended to broadcast illegally and had applied several times for a license, only to be refused. No one knows how many underground radio stations there are in Taiwan, and all of them have to be closed, but most of them are in operation simply because the Government Information Office (GIO) lets them do so for reasons known only to itself.
Still another is the failure of the GIO, which is claimed to be controlled by the KMT, to close the TVBS cable channel. In fact, the GIO had tried in vain to revoke the TV station’s license. TVBS was declared a persona non grata by Lee Teng-hui for repeatedly exposing scandals involving his KMT government. TVBS may be fully owned by foreign investors, but certainly it isn’t under KMT control.
Besides, the commentary claims the commission is still monopolizing and controlling the media. The GIO isn’t under KMT control, either. A commissioner, suspended by Premier Su Tseng-chang, was an appointee of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Moreover, the commission can only regulate electronic media. Print media are under nobody’s control.
Yes, the KMT exercised press control in Taiwan. It doesn’t and can’t anymore. While it did, the KMT didn’t dare undertake pre-publication censorship, which the DPP government openly imposed on Today magazine in 2005 by raiding its offices and seizing an unpublished edition that exposed the slush fund kept by the National Security Bureau.
