Is the Taipei Times turning against the DPP?

Editorial: The DPP buckles on media reform

Last week's reshuffle of the Chinese Television System's (CTS) board of directors and the appointment of Chiang Hsia (江霞) as general manager shows that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is not heeding warnings to avoid political appointments to media management positions. Chiang herself has not denied that her appointment was a political reward. The result is that the CTS board, which theoretically is to recover its proper role as a public organization, will be little more than another bunch of marionettes controlled by the Presidential Office.

When the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in opposition, it strongly criticized the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) monopoly on media ownership, saying that the media were being used as a government mouthpiece. It therefore advocated the removal of party politics from the media. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Chen invited a group of academics and media figures to draw up a white paper on media reform, laying out plans to make the state-owned media an independent public institution. But after winning the election, the Chen government failed to enact the reforms that were anticipated.

The DPP's doing its best to turn into the KMT.

Although the editorial omits this:

The new president of Taiwan's Chinese Television Service (CTS) yesterday vowed to ban mainland-produced programmes from the station.

Liao Ying-ying, a former TV actress better known as Chiang Hsia, also said she would blacklist two Taiwanese artists who supported the opposition in the March presidential elections...

"In the future, CTS will only air locally produced programmes. We will also reduce the number of programmes that were filmed by Taiwanese producers in China," Ms Liao said.

Among the island's four free-to-air television stations, CTS's news programming has the highest ratings. Ironically, the station has achieved popularity recently by showing the same mainland-produced soap operas that will now be banned.

Its news programming has the highest ratings among the island's four free-to-air television stations, which suggests more people watch cable. Also, if she drops the mainland program, maybe she can just run the station into the ground.