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<title>How Taiwan Independent Media Response To The Epidemic - Doublethink Lab</title>
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<h2>How Taiwan Independent Media Response To The Epidemic</h2>
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<p class="txt"><b>Jill Yang</b><br>Assistant Editor-in-Chief, The Reporter</p>
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<h3>Interview</h3>
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<p class="txt"><b>Please briefly introduce The Reporter's positioning and strategy on reporting the pandemic.</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Regarding Taiwan and the Covid-19 pandemic, the influence of the 2003 SARS outbreak was very significant. On the positioning, you must first contrast how the government and media dealt with the 2003 outbreak compared to the current situation. When the SARS outbreak occurred in 2003, both the central and local governments set up command centers with overlapped jurisdictions, and high-level officials competed with each other politically. Due to this, there was divergence on issues such as fever screening standards, who should hospitals report to, how should the Taipei City Hospital Heping Branch be quarantined and so on. As far as the media is concerned, it was the first time that this kind of situation had occurred. Everyone was afraid, the outbreak was an emergency, verification of facts was difficult, there were print deadlines and layout limitations, and it was difficult for news media to have enough time to investigate thoroughly before writing a complete report. During the later stages of the SARS outbreak the government learned to use daily airtime on TV to provide clear information to the public. After the outbreak was over they also revised the Communicable Disease Control Act, creating a “fifth type of infectious diseases” to respond to emerging outbreaks, and from this the central government established the unified Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) system which is still in use today. </p>
<p class="txt">However, is the government’s unified messaging providing the truth? Of course the government will want to present the message in the way they want, but is it the best way to do so? Do they at times dwell on the trivial while making light of important issues? For instance, in the early days they would almost always release critical illness announcements in the middle of the night, not at the press conference. This approach was a bit contradictory. They hoped that the pandemic prevention would be successful, but their approach to these cases was ambiguous, or perhaps they wanted to claim Taiwan was very safe, but the public had to wear face masks everywhere, and had their travel information recorded and doctors and nurses (even high school students and teachers) were banned from leaving the country).</p>
<p class="txt">The Reporter isn’t quite like other media, we don’t need to come out with news every hour. We can spend more time interviewing experts to really understand the pandemic. Our intention is to completely cover a story, even if it is breaking news, and not just release fragments of information. We also hope to provide in-depth reporting, not just the government’s perspective. A difference with the SARS outbreak is that this time the pandemic is happening in the Internet age and there are no longer print deadlines. What is difficult to deal with is not deliberately fabricated news, but the diverse sources of information that cannot be confirmed in the moment, so there is a lot of information that is difficult to verify. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>What were the challenges in reporting the first cured case?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">At the time the first case was a woman doing business in China, and she was scolded at the airport during her health inspection. However, I think this businesswoman is a good model citizen because she informed the airport and didn’t go out into the community. We knew quite early which hospital admitted her, but the media must abide by the Communicable Disease Control Act and can’t report on it casually. The first thing we did was to gain the trust of the hospital, because doctors were also afraid of being penalized, and we ourselves did not want our reporting to turn into a legal challenge for us. We wanted to, by means of conveying the specifics of this recovery case, fully show what pandemic prevention and treatment methods were effective. We conducted interviews from very early on and continued to follow up. We did not publish our complete report until the case was discharged from the hospital and the CECC had held a press conference.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>On the charter flights for Taiwanese stranded in China, the reporting options were unusual and the situation hard to penetrate, and how did your publication handle the public backlash? [Note: when the pandemic started a travel ban on visitors from China was imposed, and many Taiwanese were stranded in China, including many in Wuhan. There was considerable panic at the time, and there were fears that if they returned it would lead to widespread outbreaks in Taiwan. There were also controversies over whether spouses and children of Taiwanese who didn’t yet have Taiwanese citizenship should be allowed to return, Chinese meddling and obstruction in the process, and Taiwanese in China meddling in the choice of who got priority to return for personal and political reasons.]</b></p>
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<p class="txt">The charter flights case was controversial. Through the Taiwanese community there our colleagues got in touch with Taiwanese community leaders in Wuhan and others, and got information from first-hand observers and didn’t just note down what highly visible figures were telling us. At the time, many people wanted to completely cut off from China to stop the pandemic, while at the same time China’s Taiwan Affairs Office inserted their own people into the charter flight process, wasting Taiwanese medical resources. We wanted to clarify through our reporting that not all the Taiwanese in China were necessarily infected, and we hoped to overcome the stigma that people who were diagnosed with the coronavirus were somehow guilty. Not all Taiwanese in China are businesspeople; some are employees or spouses. The issue of marriage is also very complicated, and it does not necessarily mean that you identify with China when you get married and have children there. Of course, there is a special relationship between the two sides of the strait. China will not give up any opportunity to suppress Taiwan. Regardless of politics, it is the innocent people who are really affected.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>What changes to the media ecosystem have occurred in order to produce real-time news during the epidemic?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">The Internet age has changed our lifestyle, and there are constantly bits of information being thrown at us. The fastest to learn how to adapt were government agencies: each one set up dedicated Facebook pages, LINE social media accounts, many held live press conferences through social media pages, and their viewers and followers exceeded other live streamers, so much so they even surpassed the media’s numbers. The government also mastered how to make tables and diagrams. They would upload the graphics first, then hold the press conference after, so reporters could copy the graphics and immediately release them as news. Even the "Disease Butler" LINE account of the Department of Disease Control produced their own news exclusives. The government was attempting to create a common sense of “we’re all united to fight the pandemic,” and currently with their online voice so massive, the media was marginalized. It can be said that the media's competitors were no longer their peers, but the government. After all, the media was competing with the government for trust.</p>
<p class="txt">However, it is in exceptional times like a pandemic that it is easiest for the government to deprive the people of their most fundamental rights. Because of this, it is even more necessary to examine their actions. Taiwan’s government first steps in pandemic prevention were handled very well, but many follow-up measures were taken using article seven of the Communicable Disease Control Act like immediately announcing who and when people weren’t allowed to the leave the country. The government’s power was that enormous. Although Taiwan has a democratic system, compared to other democratic countries its actions show a discrepancy. Of course handling the pandemic situation well is very important, but as the Chinese government has been propagating through large-scale external propaganda, isn't it that the pandemic is better controlled than Europe and the United States? Perhaps in terms of outcome, Taiwan’s epidemic control is indeed good, but after all, democratic countries don’t only care about the outcome, but rather producing good results through a proper process.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>What’s your take on the idea that some people have that the media is deliberately driving the trend of a lot of fake news because the media has too much freedom?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Fake news takes on different forms during different times. In the past, there was a close relationship between the media, government and business, and the bosses of United Daily News and China Times were members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Standing Committee, so there were too many ways the government could get what it wanted into the news. The Internet age and advances in technological tools have made the creation and spread of false information more diverse and the threshold is lower. Now you don’t need to know the boss of the newspaper or go through traditional media, you can find YouTube opinion leaders with good relationships online and they can spread it fast. The media is struggling to fight back against these people. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Has the Taiwan government deliberately suppressed investigative reports?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Everyone is very concerned about the number of cases. From SARS to the present, Taiwan has paid more attention to social intervention, and less attention to scientific investigation and research. Whether it is SARS or this time Covid-19, everyone is so focused on the number of cases, to the extent that some issues aren’t being immediately responded to. This time the entire country is immersed in an atmosphere of successful pandemic prevention. Wasn't it the same in the early days of SARS? Part of the controversy is due to political opposition saying the government is “keeping its cards close to its chest.” I personally believe that the government has not suppressed the number of reported cases, but it would a shame if in order to simply maintain the trust that they have they don’t conduct in-depth investigations. Instead, it has to take advantage of the high level of trust and central and local governments should together examine why Taiwan’s case numbers are only what they are. For example, after the Panshih Navy ship outbreak there were crewmembers out and about in the community, but surprisingly there was no outbreak, so I hope they’ll conduct epidemiological studies to locate what factors have kept Taiwan's infection rate low.</p>
<p class="txt">Testing capabilities may be inadequate, and this may be why the CECC is being fairly conservative. I think the government is very anxious about their screening capabilities: If they fail it would be hard to live up to the political responsibility, so they emphasize precision screening. If the testing time is fast, the sensitivity and the specificity are high, then it could be said that Taiwan has domestically developed this kind of reagent--but does Taiwan dare to use it? Even if there is not such a high probability of false negatives and false positives, once relevant cases occur, political responsibility will arise. In addition, the purchased quantities of reagents and test screenings are not transparent, and these screening tests require a lot of manual labor. For example, recently there has been a lot of discussion about the serum antibody research done by the Changhua County Health Bureau. [Note: the CECC objected to this research and rebuked the local authorities that carried it out, claiming they broke protocol. The CECC also claims that due to testing errors, widespread testing would produce too many false positives, which would be a strain on the system] From the context, we can see that the central government is demanding centralized authority, but maybe this affair is worth examining whether it does challenge the central government’s power because they’re putting a check on community research, which is truly of value. Taiwan has never treated the people as adults, but rather like parents would, asking everyone not to worry and just listen to the government tout their results.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Compared to Hong Kong or other totalitarian countries, is Taiwan’s freedom of the press also reflected in the differences in pandemic reporting?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">The level of Taiwan’s freedom of the press remains quite high. In Japan they have to join journalist associations to conduct interviews. On the impact on Hong Kong by the anti-extradition protests and the resulting national security law imposed on Hong Kong by China, in truth the situation is still unclear. However, we participated in an online conference with reporters from Singapore, Hong Kong, China and other areas, and in the meeting we were the only ones constantly criticizing the government and we often thought the government was fighting a muddle-headed war. The others were like China, the host asked a Chinese journalist how the journalist handled verification, and the reporter said they would ask the hospital to send their diagnostic report. Their article had to be approved before being published, which is a totally different state of affairs from the situation in Taiwan society. The Singaporeans, during their time, talked about how to do promotion and how to increase sales volume during the pandemic. They also thought their government had already done a pretty good job. After the online conference I felt a little ashamed. Did I just continuously cast doubt that Taiwan handled things badly? But I think this is the way for Taiwan to go. I’m not saying that the media has to always be anti-government, but you have to stay vigilant. Don't think that because the government is familiar with social media that media supervision can be replaced.</p>
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<p class="txt"><b>How did you raise the profile of The Reporter during the pandemic? </b></p>
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<p class="txt">It has always been our goal to get more people to be aware of us. Being independent media doesn’t necessarily mean being out of the mainstream, being independent means we hope to not be influenced by business or politics, but we still hope to have an impact. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, the issue of whether to catch illegal migrant workers and nurses was controversial--but the question didn’t rest with whether or not to catch runaway migrant workers, rather it was the medical system avoiding their medical care responsibilities. Hospitals must find nurses for patients, but that is not under the control of the hospital. Nursing or cleaning workers couldn’t get face masks and protective equipment from the hospital, but they were a high-risk group and could easily have become active sources of infection. This time during the pandemic locals weren’t willing to go to hospitals to provide nursing care, only illegal workers were willing to step up. At the time, [Minister of Health and Welfare and head of the CECC] Chen Shih-chung said he couldn’t take this opportunity to catch runaway migrant workers. Everyone applauded, but the hospital’s outsourced human resources situation was due to the poor management of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and this turned into a hot potato situation being tossed back and forth between the Health Ministry and the Labor Ministry. The government did not lie, but shifted focus. For a long time The Reporter has been following the issues of nursing care and pay, and have reported on it before. This time we took the opportunity to raise the issue again. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said that the entire amount to pay for nursing care would be integrated into their payments. For us this news isn’t about being happy, but we hope to get a response and to affect change. </p>
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<p class="txt"><b>Do you think government information is timely and transparent, their report quality and effectiveness improved and has raised the public’s media literacy? Which of these three aspects should be strengthened by Taiwan in the future?</b></p>
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<p class="txt">Transparency has been strengthened, and Taiwan won’t conceal an outbreak situation--though their direction and method of investigation are worthy of scrutiny. Openness and transparency are indeed the way Taiwan is going. The quality of their reports really is worth discussing. The media has been weakened and are finding it hard to operate, having to juggle flow rate and content. With regard to the mainstream media, it’s hard for them--stuck at the CECC all day sending out ten news items a day, what can they do? But in this environment independent media exists. “The worst of times is the best of eras” is not a pedantic phrase. Nowadays the Internet has done away with the previous threshold to run a media outlet--The Reporter is the smallest media outlet I’ve been at--but because of this there is The Reporter, Initium Media and other small media outlets. This means not being hemmed in by traditional forces and clamped down on. It allows for different viewpoints and lets the public have different choices. We are not an anti-government media outlet, but our fundamental values are standing on the side of society and looking at the events that our era is experiencing. We have no political element, we don’t support any particular party: We don’t carry those burdens. As to the public’s media literacy, it’s like dietary habits, the more different and diverse the viewpoints you read, the better your judgement of events becomes. </p>
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