Taiwan Blog Feed

I've decided to have one post like this each day, where we put the latest media fun, updated as the day goes on.

Today maddog alerted me to this report from BBC's alternate universe. That's the universe where, two years later, you can still read on their Taiwan timeline that Chen Shui-bian devolved his powers onto the premier, even though that isn't constitutionally possible -- it was just political theatre, forgotten the next day (and the premier has been changed, to boot!). I'll be updating my old deconstruction of that wildly pro-PRC and completely out of touch timeline later.

But back to today's fun! BBC piously avers:

Taiwan's finance minister has resigned after a mass brawl between rival MPs, nine days before the island's hotly disputed presidential election.

Ho Chih-chin had accompanied members of the opposition KMT party to the campaign headquarters of the ruling DPP to investigate corruption claims.

The KMT alleged the DPP paid no rent on the Taipei building - which they deny.

A fight broke out between the rival groups as they tried to leave, and MPs from both sides were arrested.

The DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) is trailing behind the KMT (Kuomintang) in opinion polls ahead of the 22 March elections.

Note the description: "a mass brawl between rival MPs" in which legislators from both sides were arrested. There was no mass brawl between rival MPs. Four KMT legislators entered the Hsieh campaign HQ making the usual unsubstantiated accusations, and a scuffle between them and DPP supporters erupted, later expanded to include the police. The Finance Minister did resign, but the Taipei Times story on the resignation contains no mention of any arrests. Nor does the article on the apology from the KMT for the behavior of the four legislators. Nor does the report of the incident from the previous day. One could reasonably expect the China Post would be all over reports of DPP legislators being arrested, but their accounts here and here also contain no mention of mass brawls between legislators or arrests of anyone, much less legislators from both sides.

Bottom line: this is one completely erroneous article. Once again: no mass brawl between rival MPs, no arrests of MPs. What really pisses me off is that this horseshit is going to appear all over the world as another example of those immature Taiwanese MPs -- a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel. Shit.

BBC owes the people of Taiwan an apology. Please contact BBC and let them know (contact form).

UPDATE: The Foreigner has a kickass review of the actual invasion of DPP HQ.


Eric passed me this slanted piece from Mark O Neill in Asia Sentinel. You can sense how bad it is going to be from the opening paragraph:

Although Kuomintang candidate Ma Ying-jeou is cruising toward a comfortable victory in the March 22 Taiwan presidential election that would give his party control of both the executive and Parliament, his supporters fear that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party will stage a last-minute stunt to swing public opinion and steal a victory, as it did in 2004 after an assassination attempt that many believe was staged.

So far the only manufactured incident we've had was the invasion of Hsieh HQ by 4 KMT legislators. The belief that Chen arranged the March 19 incident is laughable, and a good journalist would at least have indicated that no evidence supports this belief, and that it is an article of faith only among KMT followers. The reality is, as comments below the piece point out, that Chen had already pulled even with Lien, and ahead in some credible polls, ten days prior to the election.

The piece also regurgitates KMT claims on the economy, mentions the Chen Corruption bogey without giving any clue that Ma is encumbered by similar baggage, quotes words from a KMT politician and Hu Jin-tao without any balancing information from the DPP, and generally tracks the KMT talking point tape loop. No need to check it out; it is merely ordinarily bad, not a milestone like the Wong piece in the NY Times the other day. I'm only loading it up here for completeness.

[Taiwan]

A-gu just emailed me to inform me that my dream had come true: Jane Rickards has another slanted piece in the Washington Post. The reason he said that is because last night I had emailed several people saying I couldn't wait for the inevitable dreck from Rickards, and sure enough, it's out today, right on cue.

The piece is basically a hit piece on the UN referendum:

Taiwan's main opposition group, the Nationalist Party, called on its supporters Wednesday to boycott a government-sponsored referendum asking whether the island should apply for U.N. membership under the name Taiwan.

The appeal reduced chances that the referendum measure would succeed, news likely to be greeted with relief in Beijing and Washington. China and the United States have denounced the referendum as a needlessly provocative maneuver, designed by President Chen Shui-bian and his Democratic Progressive Party to emphasize the self-ruled island's claim to formal independence from China.

As A-gu has noted, it is simply a regurgitation of the KMT position. It never uses the term "KMT" referring instead to the "Nationalists," and contains no citations from the DPP or pro-democracy side. Every word in it is from someone who represents the KMT.

The interesting items in this short piece are two. She writes:

Philip Yang, a political scientist at National Taiwan University, said the Nationalist Party's boycott call means Chen's referendum measure faces an uphill battle. More than half of registered voters must support a referendum measure for it to pass, he noted, and polls show that Nationalist supporters outnumber Chen's.

Rickards must surely know that Yang, pro-KMT, is an advisor to the Ma campaign -- identified as such in the otherwise awful piece from Ed Wong in the NYTimes I blogged on yesterday -- and cannot be cited as an independent source.

She then writes of the KMT referendum:

Wu said the Nationalist Party would continue to support the holding of a separate referendum on U.N. membership. That measure, also on the March 22 ballot, will ask whether Taiwan should seek admission to the United Nations under its official name, the Republic of China, or any other name deemed suitable.

.........

The Nationalists' proposal is equally unlikely to pass, but it is considered less inflammatory since it sticks with the island's official name and thus is not considered an indirect attempt to move toward independence.

Rickards must know, and suppresses the information, that the KMT referendum asks whether to enter the UN under the name Republic of China, Taiwan, or any other name deemed suitable (complete text of both in Alan Romberg's study of the UN Referendum issue). Yet twice she mentions the referendum without mentioning that fact.

Off to write yet another letter....

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