Human Rights in a Country With Too Many
Woke Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club Elbows Stringers From Stage
China In Arms BOOKSTORE and GIFT SHOP!
Follow on Twitter
Enjoy China In Arms on the big screen!
Subscribe: $5 Month/$50 Annual (unable to secure a subscription contact the bank for permission for Stripe deposits). If you continue to have problems, please notify me immediately: chinainarms@substack.com
Note: Most articles are paywalled after 24 hours.
25 April 2024 (Thursday)
Human Rights in a Country With Too Many
Woke Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club Elbows Stringers From Stage
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - With Covid and China’s crackdown on foreign journalists, including Hong Kong, the once sleepy island nation of Taiwan with maybe ten members of the TFCC’s monthly happy hour, found themselves overwhelmed with real competition.
Ten years ago, they almost closed the club for fear of no one showing up even for the annual Christmas Party.
Since the U.S. government shadow banned Taiwan in 1979 to recognize China, foreign journalists simply followed the money. Staff correspondents moved lock-stock-and-barrel from Taipei to Beijing.
Taiwan became a ghost town of freelancers and stringers. Staff correspondents in Beijing were so arrogant that they claimed Taiwan as part of their coverage and would fly in once a year to torment their local stringers to arrange interviews with senior political elites.
Bylines in big publications would have the staff correspondent’s name, “with” the stringer’s name at the bottom as a contributor. Stringers were often barred from the actual interview themselves. To make things worse, they often were forced to teach English part-time to make ends meet.
The foreign media’s coverage while in Beijing of China was always the same. The narrative was China was a rapidly growing economic and technological power that would eventually, with a little coxing from the Western media and pro-China apologists in the U.S. State Department, bend to international norms of trade and commerce. Eventually, embracing democracy and free speech.
But now, the narrative frame has changed. So why would an “objective” news organization stage a Human Rights Press Awards show in Taiwan? A country with virtually no human rights complaints beyond woke political parades with flag bearers waving the rainbow flag like deranged idiots.
Virtue signaling?
There certainly are no investigative journalism award shows at the TFCC. They are stenographers.
There might be an answer to this paradox.