How people view Taiwan journalists

Joe Hung writes about the low opinion the general public has of journalists

The China Post
Monday, April 27, 2009

By Joe Hung

Once a reporter always a reporter. I am, except for a brief seven-year stint in Rome as Taipei representative in Italy. From time to time, however, I feel ashamed of telling people I newly meet that I am a journalist.

There occurred two such occasions in very quick succession last week.

Two Chinese visitors were killed in Taipei Thursday when the long arm of a huge crane mounted on top of a tall building under construction fell, crashing down on their tourist bus passing by the site. All the Chinese tourists were aboard the bus when the accident happened. Four others were wounded, one of them seriously.

Fatal accidents occur in huge metropolises like Taipei. But I was stunned to see on the TV screen a couple of paparazzi trying to stop the widow of one victim and a sister-in-law of the other for a quick scoop interview. Of course, it isn't the first time I witnessed such a downright criminal scene. I have seen similar scenes in Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere, but I have to confess I am not inured. Perhaps I am not cut out for news-hunting. If I apply for a job as cub reporter now, I'm afraid I won't be able to find an employer.

Only a day before that accident, I chanced to hear a conversation between a Taipei bus driver and one of his passengers. The bus had started moving after the traffic light turned green when the driver stamped on the brakes to avoid ramming into a TV crew car that was trying to make a forbidden U-turn at a busy road intersection near Taiwan Normal University. All passengers aboard the bus were given a jolt, but the car was able to negotiate the about-face turn and sped away. Then a not very old lady passenger accosted the driver. I overheard how they bandied words against reporters.

"These young ones know no manners," said the lady. "Oh yes," the driver readily agreed. "But," he went on, "they are 'cultural thugs,' after all. What else can we do?" Passengers nearby nodded their agreement.

Yes sirree, we journalists are wenhua liuman, which, for lack of an apt English equivalent, I translate as cultural thugs, at least in the eyes of the man on the street. Wenhua poses no difficulty in translation; liuman does. I didn't try to find its etymology, but I suspect the word originates in Hoklo romua, which means either road ruffian or a kind of thick, stubby, large indigenous freshwater eel that is all but extinct now. Incidentally, it is considered a delicacy and, well, an aphrodisiac. These people were placed under police control while Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese, though they have more or less regular jobs, most of them menial. As a matter of fact, they were regarded by the people under colonial rule somewhat as "knights of the town" who could do them justice of sorts.

After Chiang Kai-shek moved his Kuomintang government to Taipei from Nanjing, a harsher eye was kept on these native-born road ruffians under a hastily adopted statute that gives them their current moniker. Subsequently, tong-like families were founded by "out-of-province" youngsters, who are placed under similar harsh control in accordance with the same statute. Members of these families are organized more like yakuza in Japan or Mafiosi in Italy as well as the United States. One of the biggest families is the Tryad, whose founder is reputed to be Koxinga, a loyal Ming general who drove the Dutch out of Taiwan in 1672.All of us journalists in Taiwan prefer to remain "uncrowned kings" or to belong, at the very least, to the fourth estate. Fine, if we are up to it. But most of us aren't, just as the paparazzi and practically all working reporters, young and old, have repeatedly demonstrated. Most of the stories published are so poorly written as to make readers wonder what's wrong with reporters and copy readers. More often than not, headlines contradict the stories. Electronic media fare even worse in their newscasts.

For one thing, reporters haven't been sufficiently trained, despite more than a dozen of universities that offer studies in journalism. There is a full-fledged university of journalism in Taipei, too. None of them teach students how to be decent reporters.

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, which I attended more than 45 years ago, offers a graduate course titled philosophy of journalism. A three-credit course for just one quarter, it wasn't well taught, but students learned enough to work as responsible journalists. I don't know whether a similar course is offered in Taiwan. Once on the job, graduates are under the mercy of their city editors or news directors who have to obey their employers obsessed with boosting their circulation or ratings. Reporters are told to get scoops in whatever way possible. No training. Not even time to acquire a full understanding of the stories they have to report.

This contributes, among other things, to the decline of the press in Taiwan and elsewhere.

Of late, I often think of one of my classmates at Southern Illinois now. Larry Lorenz had served three years with the now all but defunct United Press International, for which I once worked as Taipei correspondent, before he came to Carbondale. Larry got his Ph.D. and then started teaching at a Wisconsin university. "Joe," he told me at one of our after-class beer parties at a Student Center beer hall at night where we all used to badmouth our professors, "you know where journalists stand in the United States? In social status, we are just one notch up from hookers."

Which are better: hookers or cultural thugs?

Date Posted: 4/27/2009