Taipei, Sept. 14 (CNA) A report found that cable television news coverage of an ongoing anti-Chen sit-in campaign has been so excessive that as much as three quarters of all 60-minute newscasts have been focusing on the topic, a media watchdog said Thursday.
Three of six television news networks monitored by the watchdog featured reportage on the campaign that took up more than half of every hour of news broadcasts from Aug. 22- 24, with TVBS-N topping the list at 75 percent, ETTV second at 62 percent, and SET third at 51 percent, said Connie Lin, CEO of the Broadcasting Development Fund.
On Aug. 23, TVBS-N devoted 85 percent of its new reporting to the campaign, the review found.
"It makes you wonder if this [campaign] has been the only thing that has happened in Taiwan," she said.
The news coverage has been unbalanced as well since the campaign began on Sept. 9, said Hsu Yung-ming, a research fellow at Academia Sinica.
Hsu pointed out that only two cable television networks reported on President Chen Shui-bian's teleconference with Taiwan allies' ambassadors to the UN, U.S. scholars and the international press yesterday, when Taiwan's bid for the UN membership was blocked for the 14th straight year.
"As far as news reporting goes, it is hard for me to see where the Principle of Proportionality is," Hsu said.