00:00So, on the RSF World Press Freedom Index this year, Taiwan ranks 28th when it was 24th last year.
00:07How can you explain this drop?
00:09We have seen a slight drop in the Taiwan rank.
00:14I think here it's important to emphasize that, of course, RSF is not making up the score itself.
00:19The score is made through the specific methodology based on the questionary by the journalism experts in Taiwan.
00:26So, while analyzing the scores this year, we can see a lot of small changes in the media environment related
00:34mostly to the political polarization in Taiwan that impacted the overall score.
00:40Taiwan has one of the lowest budgets for the public media, while the public media is still considered as one
00:45of the most trustable media outlets in Taiwan.
00:48What do you think are some of the biggest threats to media in Taiwan right now?
00:54For the media, it's media sensationalism, political polarization, as I said, but also the overall lack of trust in media
01:03that we've been speaking of for many years.
01:06The fight between different media outlets on specific subjects, lack of space for real independent reporting on some instances.
01:14But also China's feeling this with disinformation attempts, with its tactics, with China ranks always in the past 10 years,
01:22at least since Xi Jinping came to power at the bottom of the index.
01:25China has fallen quite a lot in the past decade because of the repressive policies of Xi Jinping's attacks on
01:32the media outlets.
01:34But also because China's trying to spread its authoritarian model of information control beyond its borders through the propaganda media,
01:42through different means, through the attacks from the embassies on the media outlets.
01:46And in the past few years, we've seen a lot of visa rejections, other ways that China is kind of
01:52driving away foreign journalists from reporting in China.
01:56Are we seeing, you know, the flow of people into these foreign reporters into Taiwan instead?
02:05We did. And I think there was a period of time that indeed there was a lot of foreign correspondents
02:09that start to move.
02:12Even in Hong Kong, there used to be a beacon of press freedom and fallen to 140th position in this
02:17press index due to the national security law,
02:19due to the sentencing of Jimmy Lai and other repression of the media.
02:24A lot of correspondents cannot find safe space to report any more there.
02:29And they do think that Taiwan has some options for them.
02:33This is the only democratic and the only free society in the Mandarin-speaking world.
02:39And even in Asia Pacific, one of the last independent, you know, and open spaces for journalists to continue the
02:45work.
02:45The problem that we face is lack of asylum law, for instance.
02:48We would like to bring more independent reporters, small media outlets that are being prosecuted in China, in Vietnam, Myanmar,
02:56even in Thailand.
02:57And then basically Taiwan could be a space for them to relocate and have, you know, safe haven to continue
03:02this important work.
03:03And now kind of zooming out. Worldwide on the RSF Press Freedom Index this year, we've noticed a 25-year
03:12low. What does this mean?
03:1452% of the countries are right now in the difficult and very difficult situation.
03:21Just 1% of the countries is in a good situation, which is marked with the green color.
03:28So we see this unprecedented decline of media freedoms.
03:31We see that even democracies around the world are using the same tactics as the authoritarian regimes.
03:37For instance, we see that in this specific region, that countries such as Philippines are using anti-terrorism laws to
03:44detain journalists.
03:45And this is just reality in this region that we see declining press freedom, specifically this year in this legal
03:52context,
03:53because we have seen a lot of new legislations appearing around the world.
03:57But more globally, we have seen so much assault happen in Palestine, even in democracies in the US,
04:02that has fallen quite a lot this year because of the repressive policies, you know, of the current government
04:08and the fact that the democratic authorities and politicians are, like, freely attacking media right now
04:14whenever they are not agreeing with what they are going to say.
04:16Thank you very much.
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