在台北討生活大不易: Apple Daily 不再假仙/ 反媒體壟斷 學生抗爭

在台北討生活大不易
反媒體壟斷 學生抗爭// 教部「關心」 被轟白色恐怖

數百名學生連續兩天在行政院和公平會前抗議壹傳媒併購案，教育部發函要求學校「關心」參與學生的健康，民進黨立委昨痛斥這完全是假關心、真調查，是校園白色恐怖再現。 （資料照，記者羅沛德攝）

〔記者曾韋禎、林曉雲／台北報導〕白色恐怖復活？三十餘校、數百名學生連續兩天在行政院和公平會前抗議壹傳媒併購案，教育部竟發函要求學校「關心」參與學生的健康？民進黨立委昨痛斥這完全是假關心、真調查；教育部則說只是關懷，絕無要求清查名單。
訓委會要各校 關心學生健康
學 生憂心壹傳媒併購案將造成台灣言論傾中化，日前自發遊行抗議，不料，教育部負責主管大專學務和社團評鑒的訓育委員會楊志忠主任於前天下午三點半，發電子郵 件給台大、明新科大、中興及成大四區學務中心召集人，指出學生因壹傳媒併購案而自組「反媒體巨獸聯盟」，參與行政院、立法院門口集會遊行，因台北連日陰雨 寒冷，部裡長官關心學生健康，請轉達各校多瞭解、關心學生；該郵件還附上三十七間參與串連活動的學校名冊。
民進黨立委鄭麗君砲轟，學生們為追求公義，不畏風雨挺身而出，教育部竟然自甘淪為媒體巨獸的幫兇，以關心健康為由，行調查之實，簡直就是校園白色恐怖再現。教育部長蔣偉寧需為此作出正式道歉。
參與學生：若關心 可送薑湯
立委蔡其昌指出，學生連日來爭的是言論自由，何嘗看到蔣偉寧到場關心或鼓勵？只看到當年管控思想報告的「人二室」復活了。
立委陳其邁更痛斥，教育部打壓言論自由可說是前科累累：二○○八年底的野草莓學運，訓委會就去函要各校回報參與名單；甚至還在二○一○年十一月去函台大，要求檢討並加強管理批踢踢八卦板言論內容。教育部說什麼關心學生健康，都只是「提籃子假燒金」，令人憤慨。
國民黨立委陳學聖認為，若教育部只是關心學生有無受傷，尚可接受，但絕不能逾越此分際。
北上參與抗議的成大零貳社社長陳以箴表示，教育部如果真的關心學生健康，前天大可直接去抗議現場送薑湯，為什麼要轉彎透過學校關心？且追根究柢，如果政府有擔當，勇於捍衛言論自由，學生根本就不需要北上抗議。
反媒體巨獸聯盟代表、台大研究生協會會長林飛帆表示，教育部事後說法太牽強，況且學生在行政院前靜坐兩天，為何不見部長來關心？
教部次長稱 無要求清查名單
教育部次長陳德華澄清說，蔣偉寧在前天早上輿情會報中指示要關心遊行學生，但未具體指示方法，蔣在擔任中央大學校長時，也曾在天冷時，請部屬送薑湯給參與活動的學生喝。
但是學生抗議現場就在教育部旁邊，部長為何不到場關心？陳德華坦承關心的方法有瑕疵、不夠細膩，引發負面觀感應予檢討，但教育部肯定學生參與公共事務的熱忱，絕無要求清查同學名單。

Newspapers in Taiwan

Lai takes his leave

The sale of the island’s most popular daily causes an outcry

Dec 1st 2012 | TAIPEI | from the print edition

An Apple a day kept Beijing at bay

 

MEDIA takeovers often generate headlines. Yet rarely has the outcry been as furious as over the sale of Apple Daily, Taiwan’s most popular newspaper, and other businesses controlled by Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong publisher and democracy activist. The buyers, a group of local tycoons, include a pro-Beijing media executive. This has raised concerns that Taiwan’s press will become less diverse, less lively and less critical of the Chinese government.
On November 27th, in a deal signed secretly in Macau and announced the next day, Mr Lai’s Next Media agreed to sell its Taiwanese print and television businesses to two Taiwanese consortia for $601m. These include Next, a bestselling, muckraking magazine, as well as Apple Daily, which has over 3m readers, or 40% of the market. Rival newspapers tend either to bow to Beijing or to bang on about Taiwanese independence. Apple Daily does neither. It serves up a spicy diet of news and crime stories, helpfully illustrated with gory graphics and interspersed with pictures of scantily clad starlets. It also probes political scandals fearlessly.

The buyers of the print assets are led by Jeffrey Koo junior, son of the chairman of Chinatrust Financial Holdings, one of Taiwan’s largest banks. They include Tsai Shao-chung, president of Want Want Chinatimes Group, a Taiwanese media company. A second consortium, also led by Mr Koo but not involving Mr Tsai, will buy the television businesses. Mr Lai is not selling Next Media Animation, which is celebrated for its animated mockeries of international news, such as Tiger Woods’s Escalade escapade. The sales have yet to be scrutinised by Taiwan’s regulators.
Mr Tsai is the son of Tsai Eng-meng, chairman of Want Want, a maker of snacks, and one of Taiwan’s richest men. Through the media subsidiary headed by his son, the older Mr Tsai controls several influential Taiwanese media outlets including the pro-Beijing China Times, the fourth-biggest newspaper, which has daily sales of 900,000. He is well-known for his support for Beijing: he once told the Washington Post that casualty figures for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 were greatly exaggerated and that he could not wait for cross-strait unification.
With Mr Lai’s exit, there are fears that too much of the island’s press will be in Tsai Eng-meng’s hands, and that under their new owners Next Media’s publications will be reluctant to annoy the Communist Party. Want Want’s involvement prompted rowdy protests from around 100 students outside Taiwan’s cabinet office on November 26th and an overnight vigil by journalists at Apple Daily. The pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party said the deal would be a calamity for Taiwan’s democracy. Those close to Tsai Eng-meng deny that he is Beijing’s stooge.
Mr Lai, who fled from mainland China as a boy, has little choice but to sell. Losses from Taiwan were hurting the rest of his empire. Next Media lost HK$180.8m ($23m) in the year to March, compared with a profit of HK$320.8m two years before. His print businesses as a whole made money, but his Taiwanese television and multimedia operations lost HK$1.2 billion, partly because Mr Lai was not allowed to broadcast on the island’s main cable systems. The share price has risen by more than 40% since the announcement in October that a sale was likely.
After 11 years in Taiwan, Mr Lai will leave a mark. He introduced readers to the thrills of tabloid sensationalism. He also gave the island its only neutral news coverage. The question under the new owners is whether either blessing will endure.