The NCC paints itself into a corner

The NCC's claim of independence from political and business interests is in question after it toned down its compliance criteria for Want Want Group, writes 'Taipei Times'

Taipei Times
Saturday, June 6, 2009

In the world of celebrity there is no publicity that is bad publicity, but for the National Communications Commission (NCC), the opposite holds. The embattled agency is again in the spotlight and again facing a barrage of criticism.

On Wednesday, a day after the NCC condemned the China Times Group for printing advertisements that singled out its members for attack over a hostile ruling, the NCC backtracked by dramatically toning down compliance criteria. The signal it sent was that inappropriate corporate and legislative pressure works -- with exceptional results.

Just one day earlier, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai proposed a bill that would give the premier the authority to dismiss individual NCC members with the backing of legislators. If passed, the bill would ratchet up political pressure on panel members.

The vision of the NCC as a panel of experts independent of political and business interests is as distant as ever.

That was made clear again on Thursday, when NCC Chairwoman Bonnie Peng faced legislators on the Transportation Committee. She had been scheduled to discuss problems with Chunghwa Telecom's multimedia-on-demand system, but instead met with a grilling on the China Times Group saga.

KMT lawmakers took up the China Times and Want Want groups' cause, lashing out at Peng over conditions that the NCC attached to its approval of a management shakeup at affected stations CTV and CTiTV.

The KMT legislators criticized the NCC for being concerned about Want Want Group's vast business interests in China. The group earns 90 percent of its revenue across the Strait, raising concerns that the company's agenda could now squeeze editorial freedom across the media outlets it controls.

That should have worried any lawmaker who professes to support independent media, but the KMT legislators were unperturbed, which confirms the foolishness of allowing the legislature to decide the fate of NCC members at the premier's behest.

Given that the Cabinet and the legislature are controlled by a single party -- a party with a tradition of back-room media control and investment -- and that the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou faces accusations of meddling in the Central News Agency and Radio Taiwan International, Tsai's proposal is simply scandalous. The government and legislature have proven themselves to be incapable of disinterested judgment on media matters, and this has implications for the health of a democracy.

For NCC skeptics, doubts over whether the agency in its current form can ever be an appropriate regulator of Taiwan's media have been validated once again. The potential for political interests to sway the NCC's decision-making is one reason that the commission has attracted criticism from its inception. That concern was vindicated when its commissioner selection process was ruled unconstitutional by the Council of Grand Justices in July 2006. The judges ruled that members could not be appointed by political parties in direct proportion to each caucus' number of seats in the legislature.

If Tsai's exit bill passes, the NCC will cease to be a credible regulator altogether, and other agencies with similar structures will have good reason to fear for their future.

Date Posted: 6/6/2009