Partly due to the increasing threatening from China (mostly from Chinese net users) and the Chinese government, there has been a growing patriotic and populist atmosphere in Taiwan, which leads to the intensification of binary opposition, and there is only one voice reigning supreme in both sides, either one opposes China or the other way. This trend was clearly shown in a recent incident happening to a Facebook post from the Public Television Service news network (PNN) in Taiwan.
This was a post briefly introducing a Chinese propagandist documentary about its Xinjiang policy. In this Facebook post, the editor wrote, "on September 18th, the China Central Television (CCTV) broadcasted a documentary, 'Rare look into Xinjiang（我們來自新疆）', propagating young people from Xinjiang now working in factories across the country and improving their poverty massively. According to Wulan, a 20-year-old working in an electronics factory in Nanjing and earning more than 5000 RMB per month, being able to send money back home makes her neighbours envy." There was a link at the end of this post to another news report on this propagandist documentary. After this post was made public, it immediately faced backlash, and this rebound has still been going on till today. Most of the critiques smeared and tarred with red brush and accused the editor or even the PNN of helping the Chinese propaganda and misleadingly quoting this Ms Wulan's words. Some extreme cases of critiques even charged the PNN with promoting TikTok by using a photo of TikTok as its cover photo, which is not true, because the cover photos of PNN are changed frequently only to highlight news of the hot topics. In the end, PNN apologized and rewrote the post, but it seems these actions could not stop the rebound.
I would like to say a few words for the PNN as a long term loyal audience. First of all, the social media pages, even managed by news media, are different from the websites of the news media. For the case of PNN Facebook page, the tv channel which the Facebook page belongs to, that is, the Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS), actually runs several Facebook pages, including the two main ones -- PNN and PTS fans' group -- apart from other programme specific Facebook pages. According to my own observation, PTS fans group posts advertisement for the tv's recreational programmes mostly, and PNN posts news-related posts mostly but also promotes programmes with news characters, like the environmental issues programme and the documentary programme. Thus, the Facebook post in question was more a quick catch-up to the news than a proper news post. Subsequently, I reckon that, unlike a news report, usually edited and reviewed by more than two editors or journalists, a Facebook post, or even a Facebook page like the PNN, is mostly written and edited by just one editor. Moreover, what editors can do with a Facebook page is restricted to the display of the platform; that is, instead of writing a long report, most editors accustomed to writing a post with a short and punchy sentence together with an eye-catching photo. All these reasons account for the style of a Facebook post.
Based on these understandings of a Facebook post, it should be comprehensible why the Facebook post in question appeared to be like that. There is nothing in this post can be seen as helping Chinese propaganda. In addition, it was indeed an invaluable chance to know about a Chinese propagandist documentary like this. We have always been accustomed to viewing the Xinjiang issues and the Chinese government from a Taiwanese perspective. We should treasure what PTS/PNN is endeavouring, trying to understand the Chinese perspective and also not to push ourselves to a conservative, one-voiced and populist society.
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