Despite the prevalence of the Internet and the availability of foreign channels on cable television, almost every visitor to Taiwan will come into contact with local English-language media sooner or later, be it a newspaper pushed under the door of his hotel room each morning, or a Government Information Office publication, such as the Taiwan Journal, distributed at the airports.
In Taiwan, English-language news is provided daily by three morning newspapers: Taipei Times, China Post, and Taiwan News. On weekdays, International Community Radio Taipei broadcasts local news bulletins in English every hour between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.
It is difficult to know how many people read these newspapers, or listen to ICRT. The China Post claims 250,000 readers, but like its rivals, it does not release independently audited circulation figures. Listener surveys conducted by market research companies seem to exclude foreigners, and so perhaps understate the popularity of ICRT.
With the exception of the Taipei Times, which launched in June 1999, these media outlets are long established. The China Post and Taiwan News were both founded more than half a century ago. ICRT took over the broadcasting equipment and frequencies of the U.S. armed forces radio station that went off the air in 1979.
With all three English-language dailies distributed islandwide, readers in Taiwan appear well served.
Media watchers in Taiwan point out that more choice does not necessarily mean better newspapers. "The market is certainly too small to support three English-language daily papers, but all the competitors seem determined to carry on and find ways to deal with the financial pressure," said Don Shapiro, a former New York Times correspondent and occasional contributor to Time magazine.
"The result is that they lack the resources to do a really superlative job of reporting and editing. The Taipei Times when it first started seemed to have the potential of providing a first-rate product, but it hasn't lived up to that early promise. In all three papers, readers too often encounter articles that raise as many questions as they answer," added Shapiro, who is currently the editor-in-chief of Taiwan Business Topics, a monthly magazine published by the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei.
"Another problem is the partisan cast that, instead of being limited to the editorial page, creeps into much of their news coverage," he said. "With the China Post being quite pro-blue and the Taiwan News and Taipei Times distinctly pro-green, you need to read at least two, and ideally all three of the papers, to get a fairly balanced picture," explained Shapiro, who has been based in Taipei for more than thirty years.
"That said, the coverage is a vast improvement over the situation three decades ago, when both the China Post and China News, as the Taiwan News was then named, could be counted on only to reflect the KMT government's point of view," he added.
"When there's so many choices for readers, management need to attract audiences by delivering quality content that can't be found elsewhere. That means unbiased reporting, sound analysis and solid editing," said Tim Culpan, an Australian who has been working as a foreign correspondent in Taiwan for seven years.
"I don't see that merging of English-language media outlets alone would improve their quality. We can already see that size and resources is no guarantee of quality for media. On the other hand, content sharing between, say, broadcast and print could possibly benefit both media and their audience," Culpan suggested.
If ICRT and the English-language papers are struggling to generate revenue, they are not alone: Taiwan's Chinese-language media has been suffering, too. According to the 2004 edition of the Taiwan Yearbook, a Government Information Office publication, between 1998 and 2003 the newspaper readership rate in Taiwan declined from 76.3 percent to around 50 percent. Two Chinese-language newspapers have closed down in the past 12 months: the China Times Express, an evening newspaper, and the Kuomintang-affiliated Central Daily News.
Neither ICRT nor the newspapers receive direct subsidies from the government, but advertising purchases by government agencies are an important source of revenue. In recent years, the China Post and the Taipei Times have published travel articles sponsored, respectively, by the Tourism Bureau and the Council of Agriculture's Forestry Bureau. ICRT has run a series of short programs backed by the Council for Hakka Affairs.
The Taipei Times and the Taiwan News are backed by local conglomerates. The Union Group owns the former, along with the Liberty Times, a Chinese-language newspaper. Food giant I-Mei has a majority stake in the latter. The China Post is owned by a local family.
All senior managerial positions and the majority of editorial posts at the three newspapers are held by Taiwanese nationals. "It's difficult to believe that any media outlet can serve its audience well when it excludes members of that audience from its management," observed Culpan. "Perspective, experience and understanding of your market are crucial when editors are making day-to-day decisions on content and approach."
According to an American who worked at two of Taiwan's English-language newspapers between 1997 and 2004, problems with quality are due in part to high staff turnover. "Good Taiwanese reporters who have decent English and an aggressive personality tend to move on quickly," he said, requesting anonymity. "Low salaries are the main reason."
What is more, many copyeditors are recruited from the ranks of English-speaking foreigners who originally came to Taiwan to teach English or study Mandarin. "Most of them are young and enthusiastic, but inexperienced. I worked with people who were willing to put in the hours and the effort, but who lacked basic knowledge about Taiwan," he recalled.
Reporters whose native language is English may write much better than their Taiwanese counterparts, but often lack the language and cultural skills to get to the heart of a story, he added.
Foreign residents are not the only people concerned about the low quality of the local English-language media. Many Taiwanese take ICRT and the three papers seriously, because they are seen as helping to shape foreigners' perceptions of Taiwan.
"The overall impact of English-language media is bound to be lessened in a Chinese-language society," said Jeffrey Mindich, ICRT's senior anchor. "But we do have an impact as far as the upper echelons of society are concerned." "I've found that ICRT is listened to by significant segments of Taiwan's population--not just expats, but also business leaders and diplomats," he explained.
"I know of government officials in the current and the previous administrations who listen to us," Mindich said, adding that government agencies sometimes ask for transcripts or recordings of ICRT's newscasts or programs.
All three English-language newspapers are using the Internet to reach readers overseas, but the advent of the Web has brought challenges as well as opportunities. When it's possible for foreigners in Taiwan to read their hometown newspapers on the Web for free, they are less likely to buy a local publication--a fact recognized by ICRT's Jeffrey Mindich.
"The whole news environment is changing," he said. Because of the Internet and overseas cable and satellite TV channels, "there's a diminishing need for news of the world to come from Taiwan-based media. People have more options."
"The English-language media won't go away," he asserted. "Different sections of society need it for different reasons. ICRT, for instance, has a crucial role during typhoons and earthquakes."
Mindich pointed out that ICRT remains the only medium that reports breaking local news on a day-to-day basis, be it business in the Legislative Yuan or the capture of a wanted criminal.
In addition to serving foreigners in Taiwan who seek information about the island, but whose Chinese is not good enough to understand local Chinese-language media, the newspapers and ICRT attract another, very different audience: Taiwanese who wish to keep up or enhance their grasp of English.
ICRT's Mindich was quick to point out that catering to language learners does not mean news reports are "dumbed down." He stressed, however, that ICRT and his other job on an English TV news hour are meant to be news media, not media for teaching English, and that both have ways of accommodating those who tune in to improve their English. The former posts transcripts of upcoming newscasts on its Web site; the latter adds Chinese-language subtitles to virtually all of its reports as they are broadcast, and also makes bilingual editions of some of the stories available online. Likewise, the Taipei Times, China Post, and Taiwan News all contain special sections for language learners.
Some cities and counties, as part of their efforts to promote themselves internationally, are producing or sponsoring bilingual or English-language publications. The most prominent is probably Discover Taipei Bimonthly, put out by Taipei City Hall's Department of Information. In addition, English-language or bilingual city guides, such as those produced by the Compass group, are now available in almost every part of Taiwan. Even if no part of the industry is very profitable, it seems Taiwan's English-language media is becoming more diverse.
Copyright 2006 by Steven Crook.