How well do you think the media from abroad are covering the election and its aftermath? Which journalists do you think understand the situation, and which are hopelessly tangled up in their parachutes? Biases? Inaccuracies?
Please don’t copy and paste entire stories, just relevent portions. Relevent links are always welcome.
Well, the fuckwit who writes for the NY Times is obviously biased:
[quote]President Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party, which has fanned the dangerous embers of Taiwanese nationalism in the election, and Lien Chan, the presidential candidate of the more moderate opposition Nationalist Party, each appealed for calm. Both canceled large campaign rallies scheduled for Friday evening and urged their supporters not to gather in public places.
…
The commission declared 337,297 ballots to be invalid more than 11 times President Chen’s apparent margin of victory. In a development echoing the controversy four years ago over the vote count in Florida, there was uncertainty tonight over whether polling places had followed consistent standards in declaring votes to be invalid.
A coalition of non-profit groups had called on voters to file invalid ballots, contending that the main political parties were too interested in relations with China and the concerns of the affluent, and had not paid enough attention to the plight of the poor and the disabled.
…
Mr. Lien and his vice president running mate, James Soong, did not personally raise on Friday that possibility that the shooting may cause an unfair election. But Mr. Soong, speaking after Mr. Lien Saturday night, cited uncertainty about the circumstances of the shooting as a primary reasons for the party’s decision to dispute the election results.
"This is an unfair election, a manipulated election
My old employer and nemisis, the Straits Times of Singapore has been providing terrible coverage of the election in Taiwan. All the election coverage this year reads like it has been written by Xinhua. I am glad to be working in government now rather than working for these clowns, half-wits, and PAP cronies.
When I worked there I can actually remember editorial meetings where the brass would pride themselves on their close relations to the leadership in Beijing. I can remember the foreign editor stating that “Beijing is looking at the PAP in Singapore” as an authoritarian role model. Moreover, the environment at that paper was anti-western and anti-Israel in nature. As a westerner and being 1/4 Jewish, it offended me to no end.
Top brass was also anti-Taiwan, anti-human rights, and anti-civil society. Ever notice how the ST always reports negative stories on the rest of Asia, but never on Singapore. I would like them to write more home beat stories such as how their MP’s make almost US$ 1 million year, but how the average person (outside the government and business cadre elite) lives paycheck to paycheck. Why not write a profile on their management and inform people how the head of the secret police is also on the corporate board of the newspaper. I would also like for them to write a story on how they have bankrupted and made life hell for JB Jeyaretnam, James Gomez, and other liberals, free-thinkers, and civil society people.
Personally, I think they report so negatively on the DPP because they are afraid that when LKY dies, Singapore might follow Taiwan’s lead and follow a path toward democratization. I look forward to that day and to a free press in that country. Overall their section on Asian news is piss-weak.
Chewy
The Globe and Mail in Canada called the Democratic Progressive Party the Democratic People Party (in that tense as well)…I sent them an email telling them to shape up.
The New York Times on Saturday, on their website, refers to Lien Chan as “Mr. Chan” in the second reference in the vote recall story. Guess they think his first name is Lien…
The evidence:
“This is an unfair election with a lot of question marks,” Lien Chan, the Nationalist Party candidate, told a huge crowd of supporters, while appealing for calm.
Mr. Chan cited uncertainty about what happened on Friday afternoon when President Chen was shot while riding in a motorcade through his hometown in southern Taiwan, and a very large number of invalid ballots.
ADDED LATER: The New York Times webmaster wrote to me: “Thank you for spotting that! I’ll call the web site. Goodness knows who
wrote that one in, as we’ve certainly called him Mr. Lien until now.”
CNN’s website has a poll going at the moment with the question "Was Taiwan’s election fair? When I last looked, the vote was exactly 50-50 (after a total of 11,100 votes).
www.cnn.com (bottom right of the first page)
I hate Mike Chinoy, he was totally blue camp 4 year ago, and he is not clearly saying that Lien actually have created a very dangerous situation now.
-Why not say: Lien&Soong camp have initiated and encouraged the bleu supporters to create a riot so the Communist China can come and take over
The New York Times has corrected the Mr. Chan reference to Lien Chan now online, but their new lead paragraph is strange:
“President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan was declared to have won a second term by a razor-thin margin on Saturday, but the opposition Nationalist Party called for the election to be annulled and suggested that the president might have staged an 11th-hour assassination attempt to generate votes.”
By giving such prominent space, first paragraph, in the most read newspaper in the world, always copied by Newsweek and Time and everyone else, including the Taiwan media, by giving such prominent space the ugly “Kurouji” canard – ‘‘the president might have staged an 11th-hour assassination attempt to generate votes’’ – it totally irresponsible on the Times’ part. Sure, there’s a story there, but it’s just an ugly rumor flamed by paranoid KMTers. The Times should not mention it in the first graph. Way way down below is okay, because it is a rumor that is causing trouble here. But it is pure idiocy, and for the Times’ reporters to give it “credit” is weird. Maybe these reporters just parachuted into Taipei yesterday and don’t know Thailand from Taiwan…
This just inflames the situation. Tomorrow the United Daily News and the CHina Times will quote this New York Times article, and Taiwanese KMTers will read it and say "see, we told you so, even the New York Times says it was kurouji!’’
from the midwest:
CSB’s bullet wound made page 26 of the st.louis post dispatch. i saw no mention of the event on television news. the election results are running across the bottom of the cnn screen banner. says CSB won in a close one and that the opposition party is calling for a recount and that the election was unfair.
[quote=“almas john”]CNN’s website has a poll going at the moment with the question "Was Taiwan’s election fair? When I last looked, the vote was exactly 50-50 (after a total of 11,100 votes).
www.CNN.com (bottom right of the first page)[/quote]
The Lien-Soong Gang have evidently rallied all their supporters and their friends in the PRC to vote “no”, as it’s registering quite a large majority now. The pan-greens need to get everyone mousing in “yes” votes, or else this will provide more distorting propaganda for the anti-democratists to wave and use to create conflict and turmoil in Taiwan.
The BBC report is excellently well balanced and impartial – I cannot find any fault with it at all. Importantly, they mention that the election was held “a day after President Chen Shui-bian survived an apparent assassination attempt”, and are careful just to quote Lien’s despicable mouthings after the election without seeming to accord them any credibility.
Spot the errors in reputable newspaper coverage of Taiwan’s election:
http://www.csmonitor.com/earlyed/early_world0320.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/asia/21TAIW.html?hp
CNN is now, SUnday 11 am, reporting the repeat of the Ny Times assertion from Lien that the assassination was “staged.” Once the New York Times starts the assertion, however invalid and crazy it is, the other media follow, and it takes on a life of its own. Soon it will be gospell truth, not a mere canard.
Well, at least there seems to be fairly good coverage in terms of amount. i.e. it is getting a high place on news bulletins and a fair amount of information is being reported. However, the big problem is that the implicit bias of the Western media in its reporting about Taiwan still exists. By that I mean the notion that Taiwan is a “renegade province” or that Taiwan is part of China tends to be conveyed implicitly through the reporting. It doesn’t help that most media organisation don’t have full time reporters based in TAiwan although at least they did send reporters there to cover the election.
From a Reuters report by Michael Kramer:
The lead presents a decisive vote-swing from the attack to Chen as fact, which it is not. It is speculation.
Oh, now, much further down it’s said that this is what “analysts” say “could be due to.”
No mention of the fact that there was a well-publicised campaign for people to spoil their ballots. The organizers of this campaign were after 1 million spoiled ballots.
Nothing is really given to counter this. “All the information” – bullshit! Taiwan’s polls are notoriously bad – and often notoriously biased. To give an idea of the reliability of such things, keep in mind that an exit poll – a poll of voters as they are leaving the polling place – predicted a 6 point win for Lien. Obviously that was way off – and it should have been more reliable than “all the information” before then.
:raspberry: :raspberry: :raspberry:
Here are the top five news stories on U.S.Yahoo as of 11:25p.m. Sunday 21 March. No mention of Taiwan’s election troubles, but bakery and binge-drinking, oh yes! 
[quote=“Omniloquacious”][quote=“almas john”]CNN’s website has a poll going at the moment with the question "Was Taiwan’s election fair? When I last looked, the vote was exactly 50-50 (after a total of 11,100 votes).
www.CNN.com (bottom right of the first page)[/quote]
The Lien-Soong Gang have evidently rallied all their supporters and their friends in the PRC to vote “no”, as it’s registering quite a large majority now. The pan-greens need to get everyone mousing in “yes” votes, or else this will provide more distorting propaganda for the anti-democratists to wave and use to create conflict and turmoil in Taiwan.[/quote]
Just as expected, the blue camp are trying to make capital out of this meaningless poll.
This morning’s local radio news included the announcement that “A CNN poll shows 57% of people think that the election was unfair.”
I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot about that poll, dressed up to imply that the international community has serious doubts about, and good grounds for doubting, the validity of the election result. 
Given the poll’s obvious propaganda value, the pan-green camp should have been savvy enough to have thousands of their supporters logging in and making sure that the voting did not come out so misleadingly skewed.
Two things worth noting.
Anti-Chen protesters refuse to call off mass rally
An estimated 200,000 protesters continued to lay siege to the Presidential Office in Taipei early this morning after the government rejected their demand for an independent inquiry into the election-eve assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian.
PLA put on combat alert over island’s crisis
Beijing has ordered the PLA to be on combat alert, ready to attack Taiwan if the crisis on the island worsens, according to mainland sources.
[LANE119 note: The PLA is always on combat alert. This is just a military term for be prepared always. There is no war imminent and about to happen. Again, more propaganda for the HK masses.]
[quote=“lane119”]Two things worth noting.
Anti-Chen protesters refuse to call off mass rally
An estimated 200,000 protesters continued to lay siege to the Presidential Office in Taipei early this morning after the government rejected their demand for an independent inquiry into the election-eve assassination attempt on President Chen Shui-bian.
PLA put on combat alert over island’s crisis
[LANE119 note: The PLA is always on combat alert. This is just a military term for be prepared always. There is no war imminent and about to happen. Again, more propaganda for the HK masses.][/quote]
Uh, do you have any clue what you’re talking about? Did you read any of the SCMP’s post-election articles or did you just look at the front page and go no further since you don’t have an online subscription? I don’t see anything wrong with the phrase “laying seige.” That’s pretty much what the Blues were doing last night and early this morning when they should have gone home and waited for judges to make decisions.
What exactly do you mean by “more propaganda for the HK masses?” When has there been propaganda before? HK has twice the number of major newspapers as Taiwan, many with different editorial positions. I would only consider a couple of them to be diehard pro-Beijing. The SCMP is anything but a pro-Beijing paper.
How is this statement propaganda? Can you read the last part of the sentence? You (edited later because I felt a little bad for using harsh language) gosh darn moron. The SCMP is probably providing far more objective reporting on the election than the pro-DPP or pro-KMT rags you’re getting in Taiwan.
While the BBC says it’s “several hundred”!
Somebody is wrong.
“One thing is for sure about Chen Shui-bian: He is determined to be the founding father of a new nation by 2008,” said Yang Shu-tong, a prominent Chinese foreign policy expert at Kwinghwa University in Peking. “The question for China is where it will draw the line, and how it will act to stop him.”
told the New York Times yesterday. has any local paper reprinted this remark?