Media outlets more blue than blue - Where's Mike Chinoy?

By Lee Ming-tsung ???

Tuesday, Apr 06, 2004,Page 8

If you've been reading the China Times and the United Daily News over the past few days, you have probably been left with the impression that the mass gathering in front of the presidential office was both calm and controlled, and more like a democratic festival. Indeed, most of the protesters were not what the green camp has been calling "violent people" (I object to this expression and

its inherent riot control logic). Maybe a minority of those gathered were overly excited, but the media will automatically help balance and adjust the image.

Compared to the electronic media that rely fully on their SNG teams, these two newspapers are quite adept at scheming and trickery. As I see it, these two media outlets were a hundred times smarter than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) have been over the past four years and in the run-up to the presidential election, as they are in the current situation. This is also the reason why I have always believed the green camp's most difficult enemy has been not the pan-blue camp, but rather the cultural-political power bloc led by these two newspapers.

These media outlets are clearly aware that even if they "lose" this battle (the "objective neutrality" of the Taiwanese media is a joke), they only have to continue their agenda-setting to be able to stay on top of this discourse and perpetuate the legitimacy of their politico-economic and cultural ideology. This will also allow them to continue their compound mobilization based on identification with metropolitan Taipei/Mainlanders/middle class/pseudo-intellectuals.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/04/06/2003116892

Oh Mikie, where are you?