Academics sound the siren on press impartiality and boycott China Times

["Taiwan Church News" <enews@pctpress.org>]

3129 Edition

February 13~19, 2012

Headline News

Academics sound the siren on press impartiality and boycott China Times

Reported by Chiou Kuo-rong

Written by Lydia Ma

Tsai Eng-meng, chairman of the media conglomerate Want Want Group and the 
Chinese-language China Times, recently made some remarks during an interview 
with Washington Post correspondent Andrew Higgins that ignited a firestorm of 
criticism in Taiwan. Commenting on the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and the 
footage of a lone protester standing in front of a PLA tank, Tsai said, “the 
fact that the man wasn’t killed showed that reports of a massacre weren’t 
true”. Tsai also said that “China is very democratic in lots of places” , and 
“reporters are free to criticize but need to think carefully about the 
consequences before they write." 

Tsai’s comments provoked controversy and more than 60 academics and members of 
civic groups soon launched a petition to boycott the China Times. Though Tsai 
later alleged that Washington Post reporter Andrew Higgins had quoted his 
comments out of context and added that he was willing to discuss this issue 
publicly, he ducked various open letter invitations sent to him by civic groups 
and human rights groups to clarify this issue in public.

Based on Tsai’s avoidance, these academics believe that Tsai is blaming the 
Washington Post merely to shirk responsibility for his own remarks. They also 
pointed out that Tsai obviously lied about his willingness to clarify the 
matter publicly. For this reason, these academics called a press conference on 
February 7, 2012 to announce that “when China Post is no longer loyal, we 
choose to reject it” and publicly declare a boycott of the newspaper.

In their public statement, these academics said that ever since the China Times 
had been purchased by Tsai, there have been many instances where news or 
remarks critical of China were blatantly omitted. Such self-censorship within 
the China Times has already aroused suspicion among intellectuals in Taiwan and 
the latest incident is yet another proof of Beijing’s endeavor to control 
Taiwanese media and Taiwanese public opinion through Taiwanese investors who 
have reaped great profits and have great stakes in the Chinese market.

Taipei Society President Huang Kuo-chang said that the fourth estate in Taiwan 
risks losing its purpose as a protector of democracy and freedom when 
entrepreneurs who have reaped profits in China begin to censor news reports to 
influence public discourse and dim civic awareness. For this reason, he 
believed that calling a press conference to raise the alarm was necessary.

“Taiwan is like a frog being boiled in warm water,” said National Chengchi 
University professor Ku Chung-hwa, who likened this incident to the media 
version of the plasticizer food scandal. He added that the future of Taiwanese 
democracy is in real danger when reporters are punished for writing articles 
that run contrary to the likings of newspaper moguls, or when the latter begin 
to manipulate facts through reportage to influence public opinion. 

With this in mind, Ku cautioned Taiwanese to read newspaper reports with a 
grain of salt and to search the truth for themselves. He also urged consumers 
to exert some pressure on biased media outlets and protect themselves from 
being “intoxicated” by the media.

In related news, when Washington Post correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner 
Andrew Higgins was interviewed about the article he had written on Tsai and 
asked whether he had twisted Tsai’s words, Higgins replied that the Washington 
Post stood by the story. In other words, the article did not take Tsai’s 
comments out of context. 



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