Taipei, Sept. 8 (CNA) Taiwan media were encouraged to value journalism ethics, make investment and know what themselves and the public want to be responsible media, a visiting American journalism professor said Saturday.
While the issues of commercialism and journalism ethics are global phonomenon, it takes patience and insistency for a young democracy like Taiwan to shake off its "media chaos" and achieve responsible journalism, which has taken the U.S. more than 200 years to do so, said Doreen Weisenhaus, Director of Journalism and Media Study Center in Hong Kong University.
Weisenhaus, who worked for the New York Times prior to joining Hong Kong University, shared her thoughts with more than 200 participants in a forum titled "Responsible media in democracy? ", which was hosted by Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation.
The New York Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the world, was a tabloid reporting sensational news before it finally decided to make a change and came up with its famous motto -- "Good quality is good business, " she said.
The owner of the newspaper invest its profit back to the management and operation of the company for the following 25 years and, little by little, reversed its once tarnished image and credibility, she said, adding that Taiwan media can learn from the experience.
Media in Hong Kong experienced the same growing pain of their Taiwanese counterparts, she said, but certain events, such as the Article 23 of the Basic Law and the SARS outbreak in 2003, prompted the media to start making a change.
"Sometimes it takes external events like those to make the media change," she said.
Commercialism is not necessarily bad, said Weisenhaus who's visiting Taiwan for the first time since 2000. But media are also responsible to the society because the public placed their trust on the media, and in the U.S., media is the only private sector that is protected by the Constitution.