Taiwan has jumped three spots in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, to second in the Asia-Pacific and 24th worldwide. Taiwan also ranks first in East Asia. However, press freedom declined overall worldwide, due to economic and governmental pressure on media outlets, says Reporters Without Borders East Asia advocacy manager Aleksandra Bielakowska.
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00:00Taiwan is consistently ranked as one of the most free press environments in Asia.
00:05What can you tell us about this year's ranking?
00:08Taiwan's global ranking in index went up by three places,
00:12securing its position as the East Asia leader of press freedom,
00:16and second in Asia-Pacific just after New Zealand.
00:19However, when we go more in-depth for the index analysis this year,
00:23we see that the overall score had only improved slightly by less than one point.
00:28In social indicator, Taiwan has grown by four points, which is quite significant.
00:35We see this as the raise in public trust in the media.
00:39At the same time, we also see that the political indicator has declined quite significantly by two points,
00:48which is related to the fact that we see the growing pressure from the political figures,
00:53government on some of the media outlets, but also the political fights in the parliament
00:59that leads to the limitation of the public funding for the broadcasters, public broadcasters inside of Taiwan.
01:06So public media is one of the most trusted, but as you mentioned,
01:10they are also potentially vulnerable to political interference.
01:14How do we strike a balance with this?
01:15This word transparency is so important because very often people don't know how the content in the media is created.
01:23They don't know that actually the media are ruled by specific ethical guidance that these media outlets have.
01:29But because of very harmful comments by some of the politicians,
01:34this can create a very strange picture of the media outlets that says, for instance,
01:38that this is not the public media, it works more like the state media, but this is public media.
01:42So they're only founded by the governments.
01:45There should be no interference inside of them.
01:47It's something that politicians should understand also.
01:49So they shouldn't make any harmful comments and try to pressure this media outlets.
01:54Public media are one of the most trustable media outlets in Taiwan.
01:58And it's because they really produce unbiased, fact-checked source content.
02:03And by cutting the funds for them, they really have limitations and they have a huge struggle
02:08to continue doing this work because they don't have enough financial sustainability to basically
02:13continue this work.
02:14Speaking of government-funded media outlets, some of the US's biggest worldwide media initiatives,
02:20like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, have been defunded or effectively shut down
02:26in the second Trump administration.
02:28What does this mean for the rest of the world?
02:30But for Asia-Pacific region, there's no other actor as important as the United States,
02:35which opens the door for the countries such as China, for instance, to literally share its
02:41propaganda, trying to make deals with these media outlets that still remain in the region.
02:47I hope that democracies, especially in the region, will wake up and they understand that without
02:52supporting these media outlets on the ground, not only VOA-RFA, but also supporting
02:58of the Germans from RFA-VOA that are left alone in this situation.
03:01And I'm thinking here about democracy just as Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia,
03:07but also the countries such as Taiwan.
03:09And I think Taiwan could also play a role in it.
03:12We saw a small movement after Hong Kong when some media outlets started to operate from within Taiwan.
03:18But I think Taiwan should really open more doors via asylum legislations for them to come here,
03:26to report from here and make it easier for them to continue the work when it's very difficult for them
03:32in Asia to keep doing this work because very often they cannot stay in the places they used to work
03:41before due to restrictions, pressure, violence even.