Since I don’t understand Mandarin, I cannot intelligently comment upon Taiwan’s TVBS news station, and it’s supposed bias against Taiwanese nationalist parties.
(If anyone knows of a good blog post or newspaper column on the subject, I’ll happily link to it.)
From what I understand, TVBS has been highly critical of the current Taiwanese president. And that, of course, is the media’s job. The fly in the ointment is that the majority of TVBS shares are held by Hong Kong concerns, so some fear that TVBS is being used as a propaganda arm of the Communist Party of China.
Taiwan’s China Post is rather dismissive of that possibility:
While it is true that the TVBS network is majority owned
by persons and entities from Hong
Kong,
we simply do not accept the proposition that such ownership is somehow
seditious.While TVBS’ owners have worked through a legal loophole
to retain ownership of the network, the fact remains that the loophole is
perfectly legal.
Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right. It may be apropos to recall here that during World War II, Axis Powers were not permitted to own media within the U.S. Perhaps there was a time, when a loophole in the law might have allowed Vichy France or Franco’s Spain to own American newspapers or radio.
But if such a loophole DID exist, I imagine it was closed quite quickly.