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kind of progressive agendas akin to what Curran (2000) proposed as a democratic media
system incorporating the civic sector, the professional sector, the social market sector,
and the private enterprise sector. The DPP in power has been aggressive in forcing the
KMT to retreat from media control, but has so far done little to honor its campaign
promise to safeguard the broadcasting media from undue political and market pressure.
Public television continues to exist marginally in the thicket of a widely despised
commercial system. The pro-DPP People’s Television (minshi) television is as vulgarly
commercialized as its three older siblings. Both KMT and DPP governments, in their
mirror images, have failed to act responsibly as a guardian of what Thompson (1990)
calls “regulated pluralism.”
Media liberalization is thus a prerequisite to but by no means synonymous with
full democratization. There are multiple structures of domination and subordination, and
democracy is not a finished product but an ongoing project to addresses the emerging
issues and agendas in order to achieve the never fully achievable aims of human
liberation. In Taiwan, media liberalization means abolition of state stricture more than
construction of a fully democratic media order. During the martial law era the market
forces did present strong countervailing forces to state media control, but in its aftermath
they have replaced the state as a main source of media constraints (Lee, 2000, 2001).
While the media are virtually free from state censorship (a major achievement not to be
dismissed lightly), the market forces are exercising a more insidious but no less
consequential form of control on them. The glut of media outlets competing in a
disorderly market has caused financial losses to almost all players. What has lost in the
midst has been the vaunted “public sphere.”
Convention