Tough Libel Laws Fetter Press Freedom

As the new chief of the Taiwan Daily, a scrappy newspaper based in the south of this island, Antonio Chiang heads a staff of 500 employees working hard to carve a niche in a competitive news environment. He oversees editorials unique for their progressive positions and is trying to figure out how to attract more readers here in the capital.

But ask Chiang to give his own job description, and his answer may surprise: “My job as a publisher is to go to court,” the veteran journalist says dryly.

In the six months since he took the top job, the Taiwan Daily has been sued three times for libel. Before that, in Chiang’s 10-year career at the weekly Journalist, that publication was sued for libel more than 30 times, mostly by politicians upset over unflattering coverage.

Such is the result of Taiwan’s broad libel laws--statutes that have gone unchanged since they hit the books decades ago.

Now, as the island’s fledgling democracy tries to break with its martial-law past, those statutes have become a prime target for proponents of a free and independent press. If Taiwan’s democratic experiment is to succeed, they say, so must freedom of the press, without constant threat of retaliation.

But that is easier said than done in a state where politicians regularly call for boycotts of offending newspapers or sue reporters on criminal--not civil--libel charges, punishable by jail time.

Such lawsuits can garner endorsements from the highest levels. This week, in a suit supported by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, American journalist Ying Chan appeared before a judge here to defend a story alleging that the chief finance officer of Lee’s ruling Kuomintang Party offered $15 million to President Clinton’s reelection campaign. The finance officer and three party lawmakers sued Chan and co-author C.L. Hsieh of Taiwan over the story, which was published by Asiaweek magazine in Hong Kong.

A number of U.S. news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, have filed a brief on Chan’s behalf.

“If we get a judgment against us, it would discredit Taiwan’s system. It would tarnish its image of a free press even more,” says Chan, who normally writes for the New York Daily News. “I cannot imagine that a Taiwan judge would send a reporter to jail for doing honest work.”

It has happened, if infrequently.

Several years ago, when Formosa magazine accused a professor with close ties to the government of plagiarizing his dissertation, the magazine’s owner was thrown in prison for a year.

In another famous incident of media intimidation, political leaders urged citizens to stop buying the United Daily News, a Taipei paper with a pro-mainland editorial stance that has irked lawmakers.

Government officials branded the paper “the fifth column of

the Beijing regime” and “the foreign edition of the People’s Daily,” reporter Sun Yang-ming says. “If you write something they don’t like, we say in Chinese that they ‘put a hat on your head’--they can easily label you as something, like a spy of the Chinese.”

Sun and others acknowledge that press freedom has improved greatly since the days of martial law, which was lifted a decade ago. Then, the government routinely revoked printing licenses and confiscated copies of publications deemed subversive. Now, Taiwanese journals can print material without fear of official censorship.

But the old libel laws spawn constant lawsuits and heavy fines.

Many news outlets worry that the government is reaching for new ways to muzzle them.

A national press council has been set up--with the president’s son-in-law, Lai Kuo-chou, a journalism professor, at the helm.

Similarly, Taiwan hopes to establish a nongovernmental agency--with Lai as executive secretary--to monitor newspaper circulation, which journalists fear could be used to squelch opposition in the press by threatening to push down advertising rates by low-balling circulation figures.

The proposal has sparked protest from most of the island’s newspapers.

Several Taiwanese journalists have also publicly backed U.S. reporter Chan in her court battle.

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Such activism could be the key to forcing the government to reform laws regarding the media, says Lin Tzu-yi, an expert on constitutional law at Taiwan University.

“The history of free speech here is a very short history,” he says.

“We are still learning the true meaning of freedom of the press.”