INTERVIEW/RSF chief lauds Taiwan's free press but calls for media reforms

Taipei, Oct. 20 (CNA) Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Director General Thibaut Bruttin has high praise for Taiwan's free media, but argued recently that work still needed to be done to encourage more editorial independence in local newsrooms.

"Taiwan can be proud of its free media ... [but] we think it's important to go to the next step," Bruttin said in an interview with CNA in Taipei on Friday.

Bruttin, who was appointed as the new director general of the international press freedom advocacy group in July, lauded Taiwan as a "role model" for press freedom in Asia and hoped that it will continue to "build up its model" and "show the way to other countries in the region."

In the 2024 World Press Freedom Index released by RSF in May, Taiwan moved up eight positions from last year to 27th in the rankings out of 180 countries and regions and ranked first in Asia.

"Taiwan really is one of the test cases for the robustness of journalism in the world," the RSF chief said, reflecting on Taiwan's transformation from an authoritarian regime that censored information into a vibrant democracy that fights disinformation.

Taiwan's free press is not without criticism, however, and Bruttin called for media reforms to address the lack of editorial independence in newsrooms, which he said had undermined the media's credibility.

Bruttin, who visited Taiwan for the first time as RSF chief from Oct. 14 to 18 to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the NGO's Asia-Pacific office in Taipei, described the "credibility deficit" in a recent op-ed as "a real Achilles heel of Taiwanese democracy."

"It's good that the media is free, but freedom is not necessarily something that sums up what journalism is," he said. "At RSF, we fight for free, independent and pluralistic media."

Taiwan must work on preventing its journalism industry from being "weaponized" against democracy, Bruttin said, warning against "narratives that are obeying vested interests, either commercial or ideological, or geopolitical."

He said that the polarized and politicized media had resulted a credibility crisis in journalism in Taiwan, citing the Digital News Report issued by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

The 2024 report indicated that in Taiwan, only 33 percent of 2,011 respondents said they trusted most news most of the time.

RSF has called on the government to increase funding for public media, adopt a "co-regulation" mechanism to encourage editorial independence, and provide incentives to media outlets committed to respecting journalistic ethics, among other measures.

On "co-regulation," Bruttin said the development of such a mechanism would require media regulators or lawmakers to push for self-regulatory initiatives by either individual newsrooms or the media community.

It would take some energy and the will to provoke the ire of people to push for change, but it is important to "build trust [in] and protect the media ecosystem."

Looking to the future, Bruttin said RSF would continue using Taiwan as an Asia-Pacific hub for its monitoring and advocacy work in 33 countries and regions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania.

One of the main issues is to continue calling for the release of Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai (黎智英), who has been in detention since December 2020 for his involvement in the anti-government protests that rocked the city a year prior.

"We need to make people aware of the fact that they are keeping locked in solitary confinement a 70-something media executive who just had one of the freest, most popular Hong Kong dailies," he said.

Lai, 76, is facing charges of collusion with foreign powers under the draconian National Security Law introduced by Beijing in June 2020 and could face life imprisonment.

Bruttin feared that the tragedy of late Chinese literary critic and human rights advocate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) would be repeated, which he said had remained "a trauma" for the human rights community.

Liu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was imprisoned for "inciting subversion of state power" in 2009 and later died from cancer while on medical parole.

But RSF remains steadfast in supporting Lai and his family, Bruttin said, noting that part of that effort is to continue calling on the international community to put pressure on the Chinese authorities.

"We need to continue campaigning. We're a campaigning organization ... But little by little, we campaigned and we managed to get some results."

Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Paris, France, RSF is dedicated to defending freedom of the press and information and has established a presence in 169 countries.