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

The basic background
In late February and early March of this year, at the time when people in Taiwan were commemorating the 60th anniversary of the infamous "228 Massacre," SET-TV broadcast a multipart program which used oral history from survivors of the incident, documentary evidence, recreated footage, and narration to tell the tale for those who may not know much about it. Among the footage used was a clip of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) soldiers executing people in public. It turns out that the footage was not filmed in Taiwan, but rather in Shanghai.

Rather revealing is the fact that when this came to light in May, the KMT began shedding crocodile tears. (Is this an inadvertant admission that they did not know this back in February?) As soon as this information was made public, the guilty party (and by that, I mean the KMT) wanted the currently-unconstitutional NCC (National Communications Commission) to shut down SET on account of this. This would be the same NCC that wouldn't shut down the mendacious TVBS after that station had broadcast footage of a gangster, claimed it was sent to them, and were discovered to have shot the footage themselves. Before the revelation that the TVBS footage was faked, it was used by KMT legislators to admonish the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration for its "failure to maintain public security in the wake of a recent spate of crimes."

Can you see the double standard so common in KMT behavior at play once again?

Some simple answers to simple questions
1. Was the footage in question filmed in Taiwan?
Apparently not.

2. Weren't those KMT soldiers that were seen in the footage executing people in the street?
Yes.

3. Would many Taiwanese have known about the KMT's Shanghai killings if they hadn't attacked SET over the error?
Probably not. (Thanks for that much, KMT.)

4. Did the KMT commit the same kinds of atrocities in Taiwan (and wouldn't that explain why SET used the footage)?
Yes.

5. Did SET handle the apology appropriately?
Perhaps not.

6. Did those asking for the apology approach it correctly?
Absolutely not.

7. Is the "SET Incident" different from the recent "BS-TV Falsification Fest"?
Yep, it's way different.

8. Did the 228 Massacre happen any differently than SET portrayed it?
Nope.

9. Any more questions?

RELATED:
* See the Shanghai footage as it was originally used (at about the 1'52" mark in this video), comprising less than 4 seconds of the SET program that I uploaded to YouTube: The 228 Incident - 60 years on, Part 3/3

UPDATES:
Here are a couple of things which have happened since I posted this:

* NCC fines SET-TV NT$1 million for misleading public (May 19, 2007, Taipei Times)

[NCC spokesperson Howard] Shyr said the commission's review committee had found the history was portrayed in an inappropriately emotional and dramatic manner, which was a violation of journalistic ethics.

After suppressing discussion of it for decades, of course it's going to look "emotional" and "dramatic" (especially to those allied with the murderous party) when the survivors speak out about the people who tried to murder them. If you have any doubts, read George Kerr's Formosa Betrayed.

* KMT slams regulator's 'double standards' in TV row (May 22, 2007, Taiwan News)

At the Legislative Yuan, KMT caucus members said the NCC had been more lenient with SET TV than with TVBS, stating that the NCC had only fined SET TV NT$1 million and asked that its managers and supervisors attend an eight-hour news ethics course, but had fined TVBS NT$2 million and demanded that General Manager Lee Tao be relieved of his post.

"If NCC applied the same standard to both companies, why can't TVBS managers just attend an eight-hour news ethics course?" asked KMT Legislator Sun Ta-chien (孫大千).

Keep in mind that a TVBS reporter made a video of a gangster and pretended it was mailed in while SET merely used (real) footage of KMT soldiers (just in another location) committing (actual) murders (just like they did in Taiwan). Simple logic should make the difference between these two cases rather obvious.

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Victims, real and imaginary: Taiwan, 台灣, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Kuomintang, KMT, 國民黨, media, 媒體, TVBS, SET-TV, 三立新聞, 228 Incident, 二二八事件

Cross-posted at Taiwan Matters!

Labels: 228 Incident, KMT, media, SET-TV, TVBS, 三立新聞, 二二八事件, 國民黨, 媒體