The video


7'11" YouTube video: "Not all women go for Ma Ying-jeou"
The analysis
It's usually the reporters that make other people cry. Recall, for example, the way the media attacks people like Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) wife Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), or their daughter Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤). Those kinds of attacks, by their very nature, come from pan-blue media.

A female reporter from SET (三立新聞) got all teary-eyed recently after she asked Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) this simple question:

"Someone has said that these legislators accompanying you on your 'long stay' tour have 'kidnapped' you. How do you feel about this?"

Before responding, Ma checked out the logo on her microphone and noted that she was with SET, a station closer to the pan-greens. He snarkily responded (without actually answering the simple question), "Oh, SET! Only your station would ask this kind of a question."

Well, Mr. Gonna-lose-in-2008, that is a lie.


The little one isn't happy with Ma Ying-jeou either.

If it's a lie, then whodunnit?
The question the SET reporter asked was based on a report in the rotten Apple Daily newspaper (蘋果日報), and in fact, a reporter from Era News (年代新聞) -- a very pan-blue TV station -- had asked the same question. At that time, Ma didn't answer the question, but said as he walked quickly away smirking, "That was SET that just asked that question, wasn't it?"

Apparently, it's only acceptable to Ma to be asked questions which make him happy.

Deeper background
While the reporter's tears may seem a bit over the top, this case was merely the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. This wasn't the first or only attack against pan-green media by Ma during this "long stay" tour.

When handing out snacks to the reporters on the tour, he placed special emphasis on the fact that he hadn't excluded Liberty Times or SET -- even though he was obviously acting as if he had left them out. This caused all the other (pan-blue media) reporters to laugh. (This sort of behavior among the media workers may have contributed something to the cause of the tears.) Another day when Ma had a cough, the same female SET reporter asked him how he was feeling. Despite having answered similar questions from other (pan-blue media) reporters, Ma very sarcastically told the SET reporter to "Thank [her] boss for his concern" and that he was "very touched."

There's even more. As you will see in the video, Ma repeatedly mocked the SET reporters, both female and male, for asking him questions. After putting out a statement making a half-assed "apology" which claimed that SET's reporting had been repeatedly "unfair" towards he-who-wants-to-be-emperor, Ma's spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅志強) said that "even" DPP member Hong Chi-chang (洪奇昌) called SET "fascist media." Hong, I should point out, is one of the "11 bandits" (11寇) which are the Taiwanese counterparts of Joe Lieberman. That is to say, if Hong says such things about supporters of the DPP and is used by the opposition to smear the same supporters, Hong doesn't belong in the DPP!

Chen Hsiao-yi (陳曉宜), director of the Association of Taiwan Journalists (台灣記者協會), likened Ma's behavior to that of the KMT under martial law. Instead of answering a simple question which was hardly "unfair," Ma merely tried to make the reporter look bad instead. Pathetic!

The standards on the other foot
On the July 25, 2007 edition of SET's "Talking Show" (大話新聞), footage was shown of the China Times' (中國時報) Washington correspondent Fu Chien-chung (傅建中, AKA Norman Fu) asking DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) a question, then telling him he could only answer "Yes" or "No." How "fair" is that?

How fair is it that most of the media outlets in Taiwan are pan-blue controlled? WTF is Ma Ying-jeou calling "unfair"?

FURTHER READING:
* See the original Georgie Porgie
* In October 2006, The Levitator posted some takedowns of the false impressions created by Norman Fu's disingenuous writing

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Answers that are only acceptable to some: Taiwan, 台灣, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, media, 媒體, SET-TV, 三立新聞, China Times, 中國時報

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: China Times, Ma Ying-jeou, media, SET-TV, 三立新聞, 中國時報, 媒體, 馬英九