Solutions to News Media Chaos in Taiwan
I. Introduction
In this ever-changing era, thanks to the rapid development of technology, the speed of information-transferring and efficiency could attain the best result. If we press the “reload” button again, different information appears, and we read them all of a sudden. With the rise of news media, we as the audience can receive first-hand information through different news providers. However, nowadays, people are eager to obtain the news instantly, and many reporters pay no effort to get the scoop to attract the maximum number of audiences, which makes media chaos become another severe problem. In brief, the term “media chaos” refers to the phenomenon that the media uses ways that are against the media ethic, to increase the ratings or circulation. As stated by Teun A. van Dijk in Power and the News Media, media power is generally symbolic and persuasive, in the sense that the media primarily have the potential to control to some extent the minds of readers or viewers. Since the news media chaos is dire and non-negligible, the government should take necessary measures to restrict this negative phenomenon.
II. The Problem
More and more countries are aware of the seriousness of this chaos, and thus take the initiative to resolve this issue. MediaWise, a project which is affiliated with well-known journalism school The Poynter Institute, had been launched to promote the importance of fact checking. In addition to giving lectures on campus, the institute invites celebrities to take part in this project to endorse the importance of media literacy education. In terms of media chaos in Taiwan, after lifting martial laws in 1987, more and more media outlets spring up in Taiwan, but they are afraid of losing their audience due to their unadorned writing skills. For several years, media chaos in Taiwan has deteriorated. Unconfirmed information and inappropriate content blurred the audience’s eyesight. The news with controversy gradually appeared, and even the Los Angeles Times reported this turmoil as “They cannot handle the truth.” According to the report conducted by Oxford University (year), only 24% of Taiwanese thought that they can trust news reports most of the time. It shows that most people distrust the media and are generally dissatisfied with institutions in Taiwan and perhaps because of the bankruptcy of their work ethic. Due to this widespread phenomenon that can cause media chaos, it seems vital to examine this issue and provide some resolutions. We propose three possible solutions to eliminate media chaos in Taiwan.
III. Solution 1
One of the most cogent solutions to this difficulty is legislation. Our survey, based on the answers from 123 respondents, indicated that 26.4% of them thought that legislation is the most effective way to tackle the media chaos in Taiwan (see Figure 2). As one of the respondents commented, “The government must enact strict laws to regulate the media.” We must set up a designating authority for censoring the content before the news comes into the public . However, Dr. Ting-ming Lai, the chairman of MediaWatch, opposes this solution owing to the infringement of the freedom of the press. The censorship system may contribute to the impartiality of report content. The eligibility criteria would have dramatically changed based on party rotation. In addition, the media never belongs to a certain party. Media is responsible to uncover the truth and supervise the authority objectively, the excessive intervention of public power will inevitably harm the freedom of the press. That is to say, in the long run, it is not a fundamental and feasible solution to the media chaos in Taiwan.
IV. Solution 2
Another solution is the idea of media self-regulation and others-regulation. Media self-regulation, as stated by What Media Self-Regulation(2016), refers to ”the process by which the journalists or media professionals take charge of their own industry. Self-regulation is a pledge by quality-conscious media professionals to maintain a dialogue with the public.” Others-regulation, conversely, refers to the action taken by the non-governmental organizations that act as a supervisor to the media. According to the result of our survey , 22% of the respondents think allowing opportunities for the public and institutions and the media will be beneficial (see figure 2). Besides, 15.4% of participants think media self-regulation will be helpful. From the interview of a famous media professional, Mrs. Xu, Sheng-Mei in Taiwan, said that many TV stations won’t modify their strategy even if many people complain to the station. As long as they can have a higher rating, they do not actually care about the content itself. (胡乃文, 2012) In addition, media self-regulation and others-regulation do not work well in Taiwan because the media will only be fined under the circumstances when they cross National Communications Commission’s red line — giving a talk of low value, such as the exaggerated content or the defamation ones. Nonetheless, how to define whether the content itself is a low-valued one or not is difficult. In other words, as long as the audiences think what they are watching is reasonable and many people are interested in it, the media itself can do whatever they want because of the freedom of the press. In addition, when we ask the respondents what actions they will take when seeing fake news, only 4.1% of them will report to the competent authority (see figure 3). In other words, though we all know the existence of fake news, most people in our society still do nothing to change the current situation.
V. Solution 3
In our opinions, media literacy education seems to be the best solution to this chaos. As we can see in Figure 2, most people agree that media literacy education will be the best solution. According to the professor, Chieh-Hua, Lu, in National Dong Hwa University, the reason why we should promote media literacy education is because media has already turned out to be the “second curriculum” for the children, except the regular school education. As stated by Mei-Mei, Wu in Literacy and Literacy Education in Digital Era (2004), there are 4 stages of media literacy education. The first stage is one’s personal ability to use media wisely, and the second stage is about critical thinking and observing the information conducted by the media. Next, the third stage is to analyze the meaning of the media's hidden message, which the goal of the audience is to get information and knowledge from different accesses of media. Last but not least, the fourth stage is the ability to promote media and its activities and its relationship with the whole society. We aim to use these strategies to change some problematic social issues, and to make our living quality better. According to the White Paper of Media Literacy Education’s Policy, which was published by the Ministry of Education ( MOE) in Taiwan in 2002, media literacy education aims to make the public have the ability of critical thinking when facing a huge amount of media messages. Besides, the residents also need to rethink the position of themselves as audiences, and analyze the mass media and its effects. Being promoted over years, however, when we researchers ask the participants whether they think today’s media literacy education in Taiwan is sufficient, about 74% of people believe the answer is definitely negative (see Figure 4). The first reason why this program does not work well is because of the dispersion of resources and lacking teaching materials. Next, though everyone thinks it extremely important, media literacy education actually does not be included in our 12-year basic education curriculum guidelines. Interestingly, many respondents mentioned in our survey that the government should strengthen the part of schooling since elementary school. On the contrary, one responded that “we should focus on the intergenerational education of media literacy because the elders are the group that is most affected by the mass media” (see Appendix 1 for full trans). Whatever ages to teach or to be focused on first, it seems like that everyone here in our survey makes a consensus— media literacy education is important without a doubt, and everyone in their age should receive this kind of literacy education.
VI. Conclusion
To sum up, in our research, we come up with three possible solutions to media chaos: legislation, media self-regulation and others-regulation, and most important of all, media literacy education. Not only the media themselves but also the audiences should strengthen their ability of media literacy, which can help make an improvement in nowadays chaotic media environment. Media literacy education is important, but we believe that audiences can always do more and better. According to one of the respondents, he said if the audiences build up their ability of media literacy, they can help to decide which mass media to get information from (see Appendix 2 for full trans). In this way, those media who do not have sufficient audiences will gradually be eliminated by the market. In a nutshell, we, the audiences, should always think about whether it is the truth or what is the hidden message of the media, so as not to play right into the media’s hands.
References
Ministry of Education (2002) White Paper of Media Literacy Education’s Policy, Taiwan
Van Dijk T.A. (1995) Power and the News Media.
Retrieved from: http://www.discourses.org/OldArticles/Power%20and%20the%20news%20media.pdf
What Media Self-Regulation?. (2016, Mar 20). Retrieved from http://studymoose.com/what-media-self-regulation-essay
胡乃文 (2012): 喀報 cast net : 自律與他律 破除談話亂象.
Retrieved from: https://castnet.nctu.edu.tw/index.php/castnet/article/4535?issueID=177
呂傑華 (n/d): To teach or not to teach? - 教育與媒體. 東華大學, 17(96)
吳美美. (2004). 資訊素養與媒體素養-數位時代的素養與素養教育. 台灣教育, 54(629).
Sources
N. Nic (2020): Executive Summary and Key Findings of the 2020 Report.
Retrieved from:https://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2020/overview-key-findings-2020/
新聞人(2009): NCC開罰惹議 自由與自律失衡恐成媒體亂象. Retrieved from: http://www.newspeople.com.tw/npro-190908-01/
Appendices
(The following translations are from Chinese To English.)
Appendix 1
