Newspaper Ban of Another Kind: Ko Wen-je Has Dwarfed Himself

 Newspaper Ban of Another Kind: Ko Wen-je Has Dwarfed Himself

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 15, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je asked all City Hall units to comprehensively "review" the need for newspaper subscriptions, instructing at the same time that "if you can do without, then don’t subscribe”; although it is a review, all City Hall units from district offices up have canceled newspaper subscriptions. The logic behind Ko Wen-je’s instructions to the City Hall team include two points: First, the tempo of the government’s electronification is too slow; it should start from “canceling newspaper subscriptions.” Second, all news may now be read on the Internet; there is no need to subscribe to newspapers.

Nobody is going to deny that with the advent of the digital century, the government has always had an anxiety that electronification has not caught up with progress; as a result, efforts have often been exerted in the wrong place. Using the cancelation of newspaper subscriptions to promote electronification is precisely a syndrome among them, because from the very beginning, these are two separate things. Of course, similarly, nobody denies that with the rapid growth of emerging networks and social media, the space for print media’s survival has indeed been compressed, but this does not mean that newspapers have become a thing of the past. As a proof in the latest trend of global media, print media has not only failed to recede, conversely a phenomenon of revival against the trend has emerged. The reason is very simple; nowadays mass produced information on the Internet has not made the world a better place, instead, it has created a more fragmented, fast-food style, lopsided and populist world; it is also a world saturated with misinformation, fake information, and misleading information. This is also why many in countries that have been highly electronified, print media have remained prosperous.

It is understandable at the time when Ko Wen-je gave instructions for “review,” the whole City Hall from top to bottom quickly canceled newspaper subscriptions. If he determined that canceling newspaper subscriptions is an indicator of realizing electronification, advising him to take back his instructions would be highly impossible. From now on, Taipei City Hall will have an administrative team that no longer reads newspapers, while many citizens who go to City Hall for official business will no longer find any newspapers to read, either; of course, this is not within the scope of what Ko Wen-je cares! His successful re-election bid has not enlarged his stature; not minding a cluster of unfinished construction projects in Taipei City, he cares about trivial matters such as whether or not to subscribe to newspapers.

"The newspaper ban of another kind" precisely reflects the "vista of knowledge" of the capital city’s mayor.

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