Yesterday saw tens of thousands of protesters in Taipei, protesting against Chinese influence on Taiwan media. Examples given are “China Times”, and “want want media” stuff like “Apple Daily”.
What’s your experience? For example on coverage of the HK protests?
Some reports, in no specific order:
“Fun and odds”, really, Yahoo? Rally in Taiwan against mainland China media influence
Are you sure those aren’t fake news stories? I heard all those people were there to protest against young people not doing what their parents want.
I understand the sentiment but is this a good idea? What precisely do they want?
If they required media to be open about their funding, that would be good. If people were more discerning in what they shared online, that would be better. However, to kick out media outlets because of their viewpoint (even if I disagree with everything about that view) doesn’t appear to be something I would want to support.
i agree.
better to have these idiot outlets and their commie views, else Taiwan’s freedom of press will match the country it is trying to Not be taken over by.
They should put these efforts at just denouncing China directly, call for support of HK, etc. etc.
Of course, only in Taiwan (and HK) do they have a right to protest on this subject.
I don’t get it, Taipei Times, Taiwan News, Liberty Times are full of slanted, propaganda articles, So are they saying our green propaganda good, their red or blue propaganda bad? If they want censorship why don’t they say so.
I thought I was really missing something here from what I’ve seen online. I’ve had but one in-person conversation about this and when I asked “what, precisely would you want to do and how would it be legislated?” and didn’t get a response.
If people were protesting to keep your opponents out of the market, I suppose it would be easy enough to support it. Perhaps people simply don’t think things through to the second order of ideas.
I think they are saying they don’t want media financed by china
This is not that different from what you can see in the west, eg in the USA recently some foreign “media” had to register as foreign agents or the Baltic’s where there is some pushback towards Russian financed media
Given the influence of media on people´s opinions, and the lack of education regarding critical thinking or at least putting one´s needs before following the trend, this protest is actually a good sign. peopel are starting to realize where the slippery slope leads to.
The problem with CTS or China Times is that it is a little bit too evident. That one of the big four newspapers available erases its archives on Tiananmen does not bode well. Or a mayor 24 hours cable news doing way too much coverage of just one “character”. Worse is pushing the Taiwan bad, China best agenda, the false news stream, the calling of Taiwan an area and not a country, feeding fear and telling people here there is no hope. Give up, do not fight, what for? take the money, make money, all that is important in life is a Ferrari and China is the only way to get it.
Media has the power to build and destroy. What people are protesting is that what is being built is a gallows and what is being destroyed is history and common sense.
Foreign ownership of media is nothing unusual, just look at the large chunk of British media owned by Australian/US Murdoch.
Even the "Independent " in the UK is owned by Russians and Saudis, not a lot of British media in the Uk.
wait…are we talking about CNN or CTITV?
Correct, it’s not. But it becomes problematic when its owned by a hostile foreign power which uses it to influence domestic politics, hence the examples I mentioned in my previous post
The demonstration was not directed against foreign media ownership. Taiwan’s laws are very strict on that. The demonstrators opposed the viewpoints and reporting of certain media. According to the TT article Holger Chen complained
“The network “reports whatever it likes and promotes [certain politicians] to a godlike status,” he said, adding that he wonders how many people have been brainwashed by its so-called news. “We want such media outlets to go away,” he said, urging people to stand up against media manipulation and defend Taiwan regardless of their age and party affiliation.”
You could say similar things about lots of Taiwan’s media, most of whom relentlessly push a certain agenda.
I guess that is the media takeaway from these protests 
I don’t think it’s about what viewpoint the media has; it’s much deeper than that: the media basically controls what is news for its readers. Before social media the chances were good that if the very small number of newspapers and TV channels that controlled our information didn’t report on an event, as far as most of us were concerned, the event might as well never have happened.
Here’s what the Chinese papers had to say about the protests. See if you can figure out which ones are Chinese-controlled
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Nice piece on how “bad” or at least, broken, Taiwan media is.
Elementary solution my dear Icon , use the arch villain Moriarty at the AIT to balance the scales 
Hmm. so you are saying that any newspaper that does not give the demo front page coverage is Chinese controlled? A bit far-fetched, isn’t it? If every newspaper carried the same headline I would feel like “back in the USSR”.
I suppose a different perspective on things is fine , but .not reporting huge events is not reality ?
It’s only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realize how often they burst into flames. HARRY HILL
Sorry, I didn’t mean “owned” in the strict legal sense.
I mean by owned controlled(which can take many forms, legal ownership is just one of them)