Access to news sources

As a matter of fact, Matthews was made a propagandist for Castro, but the important point we wish to make is that Ambassador Gardner and President Batista did not try to interfere with the reporter's freedom of access to news sources.

Edgar Snow was given such freedom to write about Mao Zedong in Yenan as an agrarian reformer during the Second World War. Chiang Kai-shek, who did what he could to destroy Mao in vain, did not stop the American journalist from interviewing the man who later styled himself as the Great Helmsman of China. Of course, Snow was duped like Matthews.

But a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker, who perhaps doesn't know what freedom of the press is, is trying to prevent Radio Taiwan International (RTI) from interviewing a number of Communist leaders in Beijing. Chen Ting-chi, a woman legislator, took the administration to task the other day for subsidizing RTI, a national broadcasting station which she alleged is directing Chinese Communist propaganda at the people of Taiwan. RTI, she insisted, should propagandize Taiwan's government policies, rather than acting as a propagandist for the People's Republic. She worked herself up to such a pitch as to tear a page out of the annual budget estimate of the Government Information Office (GIO) on which she was supposed to deliberate at a Legislative Yuan committee meeting. She didn't give Su Jun-bin, GIO director-general, a chance to answer her diatribe of questions. She charged the government with “currying favor” with the Chinese leaders by letting RTI air exclusive interviews.

Su told the press after his encounter with the lawmaker that the GIO cannot tell RTI, or any other government-supported national media for that matter, what to do or what not to do. The only guidelines for them, he pointed out, are to maintain their independence and uphold the dignity of the country. The guidelines have to be followed by all media as well, of course.

Has any Chinese media in Taipei asked for an interview with President Ma Ying-jeou?

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