公民搶救公視聯盟

 英文 Taiwan News的這篇社論指出，國民黨透過控制公視，也控制了華視，將逆轉過去二十年來要求黨政軍退出的媒體改革運動，重回一黨獨大，國民黨壟斷社會，並將喪失公民社會的支持。

   歡迎大力傳播，並向國際（媒體團體或國會議員）揭發國民黨的惡質復辟。

KMT trumps Taiwan public television        （Taiwan News Editorial ）
 2010-01-07

President Ma Ying-jeou's ruling right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party
(Kuomintang) government appears to have finally succeeded in its drive
to take control over the Taiwan's Public Television Service Foundation
(PTSF), which manages the Taiwan Broadcasting System (TBS) on behalf
of our nation's citizens.

On Monday, a new stacked board of PTSF directors, which are legally
mandated to manage the Taiwan Public Television Service (TPS) on
behalf of our nation's citizens in the public interest, will elect a
new chairman subservient to the restored "formerly authoritarian"
ruling party after abrogating the three-year contract of the incumbent
a year in advance.

Ordinarily, a management team is changed before their contracted term
only in cases of malfeasance or abject failure.

But the team of PBSF Chairman Cheng Tung-liao and Sylvia Feng
Hsien-hsien have not been accused of any malfeasance during the first
two years of their legally mandated three year term but are
undoubtedly "guilty" of sharply expanding the viewership and influence
of the public television network while cutting costs and improving
program quality and deserve the right to fulfill their contracts.

Some indicators of the improved PTS performance include a 30 percent
jump in viewship last year and its rise in cable television viewership
rankings from 40th in 2007 to 35 in 2008 and to 25th during the first
11 months of 2009; the rise in the number of citizens with "active
contact" with PTS call-in broadcasts or other activities from nearly
291,000 in 2007 to over 392,200 during the first 11 months of 2009,
and the increase in the average number of persons actively visiting
the PTS website each month from 843,000 in 2007 to nearly 1.2 million
in the first 11 months of 2009.

Finally, besides winning numerous domestic and international awards
for its programming, PTS ranked second in average viewer satisfaction
among all major TV channels, with 80.26 percent satisfaction rating
during the July - September 2009.

Given the steady improvement in viewership and program quality, the
unseemly haste of this "unfriendly takeover" hints that the "crime" of
Cheng and Feng has been their success in expanding the influence of an
independent and autonomous public media voice just as the KMT is
trying to muzzle critical, "unfavorable" or even objective content in
state-owned but legally independent media such as the Central News
Agency and Radio Taiwan International.

Indeed, numerous KMT lawmakers have publically complained about the
content of PTS current affairs or discussion programs, which are
generally quite fair, and have expressed exasperation with the concept
that public television cannot be controlled by the ruling party even
though it is financed largely through funds that require formal
legislative allocation.

The KMT's upcoming success took over a year and a half of efforts,
including three revisions to the Public Television Organization Law to
expand the size of the board for stacking by KMT lawmakers and other
sycophants, that were frustrated by factors such as the lack of
credibility in removing a successful management team and Ma's eroding
public confidence.

Nevertheless, Monday's election will take place under a cloud of
possible illegality as the eight new directors which supplied the
votes to dump Cheng in a heated board meeting December 28 were chosen
by the Government Information Office in a clearly flawed process that
was hit with an official "correction" by the Control Yuan December 10
in response to a petition by a civic campaign to "save public
television."

Restoring control

The new board, now was stacked with a pro-KMT majority, and the GIO
ignored the Control Yuan and voted December 28 to fire Cheng and elect
a new chairman January 11.

The pro-KMT PTSF board seems now set to hold a re-election Monday
despite a December 30 resolution by the foundation's three supervisors
who declared the resolution to fire Cheng "invalid" and called on it
to delay the election of a new chairman until the status of the eight
most recent appointees was corrected in line with the Control Yuan's
order.

With the ouster of the PTSF chairman and its feisty general manager,
the KMT dominated board will be able to take control over the entire
Taiwan Broadcasting System (TBS), which includes Public Television
Service (PBS), the affiliated Hakka Television, Taiwan Indigenous
Television and Taiwan Macroview Television as well as the giant China
Television Service.

The biggest prize will be CTS, which is one of Taiwan's four wireless
television networks and was directly controlled by the KMT during the
decades of authoritarian rule through its ownership by the Ministry of
National defense.

By taking over both PTS and regaining direct control over CTS, the
ruling party stands to reverse the main achievement of the media
reform movement, namely the removal of KMT direct control over the
broadcast media.

The bottom line is that the KMT has used its restored one - party
domination to reverse the fruits of a decade of democratic media
reforms to carry out an emasculation of Taiwan's public television
that will only further undermine its waning support in Taiwan civil
society.