THE PERFECT TYPHOON: VIEWING TAIWAN'S TYPHOON MORAKOT THROUGH JOURNALISTIC LENSES
A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
by Chiaoning Su July 2015
Examining Committee Members:
Dr. Carolyn Kitch, Advisory Chair, Journalism Dr. Nancy Morris, Media Studies and Production Dr. Deborah Cai, Strategic Communication Dr. Katherine Fry, External Reader, Brooklyn College, CUNY
© Copyright 2015
by
Chiaoning Su All Rights Reserved
ii ABSTRACT
Although scientific and technological progress continues to improve advanced warning technologies for meteorological and seismic events, natural disasters remain a threat globally. Asia is the continent most affected by natural disasters. Located in both the Circum-Pacific seismic belt and the western Pacific typhoon zone, Taiwan faces similar threats to its Asian neighbors. In 2009, the island nation experienced Typhoon
Morakot and saw its massive rain-triggered landslides, burying more than 700 people in several rural villages and causing US$1.5 billion in economic losses. Furthermore,
Typhoon Morakot was a political storm and a symbolic crisis because of the government's sluggish and inept response and the identity of the primary victims—
Taiwanese Aborigines—who were forced to negotiate their racial identity and cultural heritage post-disaster.
This dissertation examines the cultural and political role of disaster journalism.
Employing a methodological triangulation of in-depth interviews with 23 veteran journalists who covered Typhoon Morakot and textual analysis of broadcast, newspaper, and online news coverage of Typhoon Morakot, this project investigates the process of disaster news-making, the visual construction of public emotions in broadcast news, the narrative attribution of political responsibility in newspapers, and the social justice potential of alternative media. News coverage of Typhoon Morakot thus provides both an outlet to witness the production and presentation of disaster news developed in a highly mature and competitive media environment and a glimpse into the international challenges and domestic predicaments faced by the newly democratized Taiwan.
iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sitting down to write these acknowledgements feels surreal because there was a point at which I did not think this dissertation would ever be finished. The fact that I can now close this chapter in my life is due in great part to my advisory committee. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Carolyn Kitch, for her unwavering support, guidance, and patience. Her wisdom shone through this typhoon to provide direction when I felt so battered and lost. I am grateful to Dr. Nancy Morris for believing in me from the very start, even when I couldn't believe in myself. Her passion for Chinese culture and language made me feel welcomed. Dr. Deborah Cai has always served as a great example of a strong female scholar juggling both academic and administrative duties. Finally, thank you to Dr. Katherine Fry for providing valuable comments and questions during the dissertation defense.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work for Dr. Neil Theobald, his wife professor Sheona Mackenzie, and Dr. Hai-Lung Dai. The experiences they provided allowed me to see how the university operates and how Temple Owls are made.
My lovely cohort who shared the laughter and tears along the way will remain lifelong friends. Thank you, Angela Carter, Alina Hogea, Byron Lee, and Michael
Schuyler. Several M&C alumni provided the necessary know-how and friendship when I needed it the most. Thank you, Sueen Noh Kelsey, Jiwon Yoon, Lingling Pan, and
Satarupa Dasgupta. I am also grateful for the support offered by Jade Kim, Hojeong Lee,
Jaehyeon Jeong, and Weidan Cao. Finally, Paige Gibson appeared in the last mile of this journey but became my greatest motivator, proofreader, and sounding board in finishing this dissertation.
iv I would like to thank my longtime friends Tzu-En Chang, Pin-Hsien Wu, and
Yen-Yu Chen for encouraging me to pursue my American dream. Their encouragement gave me strength to continue on this path. Thanks to my Taiwanese friends in
Philadelphia, Kai-Hao Wang, Han-Chih Wang, Jen-Kuan Chang, Florence S.C. Hsu, and
Sophie Ling-Chia Wei for being my family away from home.
I would be nothing without my family. Growing up, my father always told me that words and dreams matter. Everything I do, I do in the hopes of one day being more like him. My mother taught me that strength can come in gentle packages. I am forever grateful for the dedication she has shown our family. My older sister has long been a role model in my life. Because she shouldered the responsibility of continuing our family legacy, I have had the freedom to pursue my own path. My brother-in-law and my two nieces have brought great joy into our family. My younger sister is my best friend in the whole world. She has her own way to cheer me up and keep me moving forward. She is my true soul mate. This dissertation is for them.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...... iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iv
LIST OF FIGURES ...... x
LIST OF TABLES ...... xi
PROLOGUE ...... xii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Taiwan, the Republic of "Crisis" ...... 5
A Brief History of Taiwan ...... 9
The Transformation of the Taiwanese Media Landscape ...... 11
Aborigines, Outsiders in Taiwan’s Imagined Community ...... 17
Overview of Dissertation Chapters ...... 23
CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW OF THEORY AND METHODS ...... 27
Conceptualizing Modern Disasters ...... 27
Disasters and the News Media ...... 36
Studying Journalism Through the Concept of Ritual ...... 38
Studying Disaster Journalism Through the Concept of Social Drama ...... 42
Methods and Data Explained ...... 45
CHAPTER 3: MAKING DISASTER NEWS: JOURNALISTS' REPORTING ASSIGNMENTS DURING TYPHOON MORAKOT ...... 48
Literature Review ...... 49
Theoretical Construct ...... 50
Journalism in Times of Disaster ...... 53
vi Method ...... 54
Racing the Typhoon with the Boys ...... 57
The (False) Acceleration of Onsite Operational Autonomy ...... 58
The Socialization of Disaster News Language ...... 63
The Gender Boundary in Disaster Reporting...... 68
Conclusion ...... 73
CHAPTER 4: FEELING THE DISASTER: AN EXAMINATION OF EMOTIVE TELEVISION REPORTAGE FOLLOWING TYPHOON MORAKOT ...... 75
The Expression of Emotion in Disaster News...... 76
The Integrative Function of Emotive Disaster News ...... 76
The Disruptive Function of Emotive Disaster News ...... 79
Method ...... 81
Findings ...... 83
Switching to "Disaster Marathon" Mode ...... 83
Live Broadcasting the Horror ...... 86
Dramatizing "Floods of Tears" ...... 91
Manufactured Compassion and Hope ...... 97
Conclusion ...... 100
CHAPTER 5: WHEN A NATURAL DISASTER TURNS INTO A POLITICAL STORM: HOW NEWSPAPERS FRAME POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITIES DURING AND AFTERMATH TYPHOON MORAKOT ...... 102
Literature Review ...... 103
Method ...... 107
From Natural Disaster to Political Storm ...... 110
Setting the Stage: Employing Historical Analogies to Define the Situation ...... 112
vii Identifying the Culprit: Quoting Foreign News Sources to Play the Blame Game 117
Searching for Closure: Using Media Events to Restore Public Consensus ...... 123
Conclusion ...... 127
CHAPTER 6: AN ALTERNATIVE "CHRONICLE OF CHAOS": A CASE STUDY OF 88NEWS' CONSTRUCTION OF ABORIGINAL VICTIMS DURING AND AFTER TYPHOON MORAKOT...... 130
Alternative Media and Active Citizenship ...... 131
Distinguishing Alternative Media from Mainstream Media ...... 132
Alternative Media in Taiwan ...... 135
Method: A Case Study of 88news ...... 137
Manufacturing an Alternative Voice: News Production by 88news ...... 139
Objective, Ownership, and Financing ...... 140
Production and Distribution ...... 142
Traditional Journalistic Values ...... 143
New Norms of Transparency ...... 145
A Disaster Story Untold: Regarding the Pain of the Minority ...... 147
Controlling Race Through Law and Charity ...... 148
Converting Race Through Physical Environment ...... 153
Colonizing Race Through the Regulation of Daily Conduct ...... 156
Employing Refugee Discourse as a Means of Claiming Race and Citizenship ..... 159
Conclusion ...... 162
CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION...... 164
The Temporal Unfolding of Typhoon Morakot and the Healing Role of Disaster
Reporting ...... 164
viii Two Epistemological Questions to Journalism ...... 169
Viewing Typhoon Morakot Through the Universal as well as the Particular .... 176
APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (MAINSTREAM MEDIA) ...... 182
APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (ALTERNATIVE MEDIA) ...... 183
APPENDIX C: INTERVIEWEE INFORMATION ...... 184
APPENDIX D: FIGURES ...... 186
APPENDIX E: CINEMATIC VIGNETTE POEM ...... 196
REFERENCES ...... 197
ix LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE 4.1 – “MORAKOT SWEEPS THROUGH” ...... 186
FIGURE 4.2 – PXMART TYPHOON AD ...... 186
FIGURE 4.3 – 7-ELEVEN “RAINBOW WITHIN THE TYPHOON” ...... 187
FIGURE 4.4 – PROVIDING CONTEXT ...... 187
FIGURE 4.5 – INTENSE PERSONAL GRIEF ...... 188
FIGURE 4.6 – BIRD’S EYE CRITIQUE ...... 188
FIGURE 4.7 – EYE-LEVEL FLOOD ...... 189
FIGURE 4.8 – CINEMATIC VIGNETTE ...... 189
FIGURE 5.1 – “VERY STRONG WINDS” ...... 190
FIGURE 5.2 – FLOATING BODY ...... 190
FIGURE 5.3 – “FUCK THE GOVERNMENT!” ...... 191
FIGURE 5.4 – CNN QUICKVOTE SOURCING...... 191
FIGURE 5.5 – PRESIDENT MA’S DEEP BOW ...... 192
FIGURE 5.6 – “FIND OUT WHO’S RESPONSIBLE!” ...... 192
FIGURE 5.7 – PRESIDENT MA CONSOLING TYPHOON VICTIM ...... 193
FIGURE 5.8 – EMPHASIZING THE VICTIMS ...... 193
FIGURE 5.9 – “STOP IGNORING VICTIMS” ...... 194
FIGURE 6.1 – GREAT LOVE VILLAGE STONE INSCRIPTION ...... 195
FIGURE 6.2 – PROTESTERS SMOKE SIGNAL ...... 195
x LIST OF TABLES
TABLE 1 – DAILY NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION ...... 15
xi PROLOGUE
Summer 2009 started off like any other in Taiwan. The days were long and the heat oppressive. President Ma Ying-Jeou, who had just been elected a year earlier, was at the top of his political career. His victory brought Kuomintang (KMT) back into power after eight years. On the other hand, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the opposition, had lost its momentum and was struggling to maintain its constituency. No one could have anticipated the typhoon that would come to change the physical and political landscape.
The Central Weather Bureau announced the formation of Typhoon Morakot on
August 7, 2009. At first no one took it seriously, including public officials responsible for disaster management. This island nation is usually pummeled by at least three or four typhoons a year. Dealing with torrential summer rain is a natural part of life in Taiwan.
People paid even less attention to Typhoon Morakot as August 8 is Father's Day—a day for families to reunite. As reported by Taipei Times, Executive Yuan Secretary-General
Hsueh Hsiang-Chuan excused the government's slow response by saying: "Come on, it's
Father's Day!" (Shih & Hsu, 2009). But the massive rain this typhoon brought and the landslides it triggered quickly turned Morakot into much more than just another weather event.
In merely three days, the typhoon killed more than 700 people, caused more than
$1.5 billion in economic losses (Huang, 2009). Most victims were aboriginal people, an ethnic minority long marginalized in Taiwan. For a month, the nation viewed images of ravaged terrain, of ruined infrastructure, and of death. Stories of misery and loss were disseminated across a variety of media outlets. Most apparent, however, were the social
xii problems underlying this natural disaster. The media spectacle it created transformed
Morakot into a news war, the politicians who pointed figures at each other created a political storm, and the tension between the Han Chinese-dominated government and the aboriginal communities created a symbolic crisis in the aftermath.
This dissertation attempts to understand the complexity surrounding Typhoon
Morakot through its news production and presentation. In the center of the mediated typhoon lie the tension and struggle facing the contemporary Taiwanese people.
xiii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
Although scientific and technological progress continues to improve advanced warning technologies for meteorological and seismic events, natural disasters remain a threat globally. In 2011 alone, the year this project began, the world saw a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in New Zealand (February 22, 2011); a devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan (March 11, 2011); two massive weather disasters in the United States involving storms and tornadoes (April and May 2011); major floods in southern Thailand lasting for months (August to December 2011); a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Turkey (October 23, 2011); and a severe storm that lashed the Philippines with torrential rains, floods, and landslides (December 2011). The Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) recorded 332 natural triggered disasters in 2011, claiming 30,773 lives, affecting 244.7 million people, and inflicting a record US$366.1 billion in economic damage (Guha-Sapir, Below & Ponserre, 2012). Although 2011 was an extreme year in terms of disasters, it was not an anomaly. Rather it simply reflected the trend of recent decades toward increasingly frequent natural disasters.
From 1974 to 2003, approximately 6,367 natural disasters occurred worldwide, claiming more than two million lives, affecting 5.1 billion people (including leaving 182 million homeless), and causing about US$1.38 trillion in economic losses (Guha-Sapir,
Hargitt & Hoyois, 2004, p. 14). Furthermore, Oxfam's Climate Alarm Paper (2007) noted that the number of natural disasters occurring annually around the world has quadrupled during the past two decades, while the number affected by disasters "has increased from an average of 174 to 254 million people a year" (p. 7). As Oxfam director Barbara
Stocking observed, the future trend in natural disasters will be "a pattern of more frequent,
1 more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events [...] affecting more people" (Gutierrez, 2008, ¶ 4). The increasing frequency of destructive natural events not only causes enormous physical and psychological harm for affected populations but also represents an urgent problem demanding attention from interdisciplinary scholars.
In an age when competing news channels’ coverage of natural disasters has been labeled "disaster marathons" (Liebes, 1998, p. 71), the role of news media during natural disasters is particularly important. Most people only experience the shock and suffering associated with disaster indirectly via journalistic representations. News media not only transmit disaster images and information but also influence how these tragedies come to be known, responded to, and remembered. Accordingly, it is essential to ask how natural disasters are constructed in today's complex news media environment; how their significance and meaning are articulated by news media using cultural archetypal narratives; how conventional journalistic practice is challenged in times of disasters; how audiences are invited to witness, comprehend, and remember disasters through news media; and how society as a whole defines itself through disaster experiences and memories. To downplay the role of news media in constructing and interpreting disasters is to ignore a vital analytical perspective.
A burgeoning literature has explored the role of news media in the public construction of natural disasters. Some work focuses on the issue of news representation.
For instance, Fry (2003) detailed the way television news used specific cultural and aesthetic codes to represent the 1993 Midwest flood so as to reinforce the discourse and iconography long associated with the affected area. Other studies looked at the dimension of news production, including the multiple roles reporters play while covering natural
2 disasters (Durham, 2008; Izard & Perkins, 2012) and the coping mechanisms they employ to deal with the chaos and suffering they witness (Santos, 2010). Despite rich findings from these projects, very little research has focused on the Asian context and almost none on Taiwan. Scholarship about disaster journalism remains a Western-centric field despite Asia being the continent most severely affected by natural disasters. This is not to say that scholarly works on mediated disasters have never addressed Asian examples, but the few Asia-focused disaster studies to have been carried out adopted a
Western lens (Kivikuru & Nord, 2009). That is, most of these studies focused on events that significantly affected Westerners (e.g., the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami) (West, 2008) or on cases that served the geopolitical aims of Western nations (Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen,
& Cottle, 2012). Thus Asian political complexities and cultural nuances that significantly influence the production and presentation of disaster journalism have been either ignored or misinterpreted.
To address this shortage, this dissertation focuses on media coverage of Typhoon
Morakot, a traumatic weather event that struck Taiwan in 2009. This dissertation thus examines the cultural and political role of disaster journalism in an Asian context.
Specifically, this project investigates the following questions:
RQ1: How are conventional journalistic practices challenged in times of disaster?
How do journalists establish their cultural authority through disaster reportage? How do journalists remain objective in emotionally-charged situations?
RQ2: How do different media represent natural disasters? How are the issues of the construction of public emotion, the attribution of political responsibility, and the
3 representation of victims dealt with differently by newspapers, television, and alternative media?
In order to answer these research questions, this project relied on methodological triangulation focusing on the production and content of Typhoon Morakot news coverage.
These included 23 in-depth interviews with journalists who covered Typhoon Morakot, as well as interpretive visual analysis of 300 hours of the first week of broadcast news from the top three news networks (TVBS, SET, CTI), framing analysis of more than
8,000 articles of the first month of newspaper coverage for the four newspapers with the largest circulation (Liberty Times, Apple Daily, The China Times, and United Daily), and narrative analysis of 1,396 article of the four years of coverage produced by the alternative media site, 88news.
This dissertation conceptualizes modern natural disasters as a clash between natural forces and social actors and strives to derive instructive lessons from these destructive events. The analysis shows how journalism can transform natural disasters into constructed media events (or even pseudo events), reducing them to spectacles, framing them with cultural narratives, and helping preserve them in the collective social memory. Disaster journalism also reflects conflictual rituals through which imbalanced power relationships among authorities, journalists, and citizens are renegotiated and in which social reflexivity and critique are invited. Stories of natural disasters and associated grief and survival constantly appear in political language, news discourse, public debate, and popular culture. These stories are employed by politicians as effective rhetorical tropes to boost social solidarity and national identity, while simultaneously
4 being subversive symbols employed by media and social activists to challenge the legitimacy and competency of political authorities.
Taiwan, the Republic of "Crisis"
Given the natural fault line that runs along the Asian shore, Asia is the continent most often affected by natural disasters (47% of all such events occur in Asia), and suffers such calamities twice as often as the next two most affected continents, which are the Americas (where 22.4% of natural disasters occur) (Guha-Sapir, Hoyois & Below,
2014). Located in both the Circum-Pacific seismic belt and the western Pacific typhoon zone, Taiwan faces similar threats to its Asian neighbors. According to Taiwan’s Central
Weather Bureau (2008), the island country experiences 214 felt earthquakes and three to four typhoons each year. Given the frequency with which the nation is hit by natural disasters, it is not an exaggeration to call Taiwan the Republic of Crisis—a play on
Taiwan's official name the Republic of China. Dealing with torrential summer rains and being shaken awake by earthquakes is a part of life in Taiwan. Most Taiwanese can estimate the magnitude of a quake by how much a ceiling light swings. They have also come to learn that flashlights and candles are essentials during typhoon season, because heavy rains can cause power outages, and that the prices of certain vegetables that are vulnerable to water damage can skyrocket at this time of year.
The decade from 1999 to 2009 was particularly catastrophic for Taiwan, with the occurrence of two of the most devastating natural disasters in its post-WWII history, the
921 Earthquake and Typhoon Morakot. On 21 September 1999, Taiwan suffered a massive earthquake that left lasting physical and mental scars. In a matter of seconds, the devastating tremor, which measured 7.3 on the Richter scale, released energy equivalent
5 to over 40 atomic bombs, causing incalculable destruction (Lee, 1999). Many reported strange screeching sounds that seemed to warn of the ensuing catastrophe. People were shaken awake and some thought Taiwan was being bombed by China (Chang, 2002). In a letter to a friend, well-known Taiwanese writer Chang Man-Chuan described her experience of the horrific event:
The shuddering building I was in made shrieking sounds as if it were ready to collapse at any moment. I was terrified and thought I was about to die. That feeling that the world was ending has become part of me and will remain with me all my life. (Chang, 2009)
Realizing the seriousness of the situation, the government responded swiftly. Then-
President Lee Teng-Hui promptly declared a state of emergency and initiated rescue and relief efforts. Over the next fortnight, more than 460,000 soldiers worked to rescue survivors, locate the missing, and rebuild destroyed bridges and roads. More than
200,000 volunteers from both local and overseas nongovernmental organizations collected huge volumes of relief supplies and delivered them to victims in stricken areas
(Huang, 2009). Political leaders, including three presidential candidates who had been engaged in intense wrangling ahead of the 2000 presidential election agreed to suspend all political campaigning and called for the nation to come together in solidarity to face the challenges ahead (Yang, 1999). The official government death toll for the 921
Earthquake and its aftershocks stands at 2,455. A further 50 persons were ultimately declared missing, presumed dead, and 11,305 more were injured. Additionally, 38,935 buildings fully collapsed and another 45,320 partially collapsed. Total economic losses from the earthquake have been estimated at US$10.9 billion (Huang, 2009, p. 187).
Taiwanese news media coined the term Quake of the Century to describe this painful and
6 unforgettable calamity, which disrupted lives, tore families apart, deprived people of their friends and relatives, and traumatized society.
Ten years later, with the physical reconstruction largely recomplete and
Taiwanese society gradually recovering from the trauma of the 921 Earthquake, Taiwan suffered another natural disaster when Typhoon Morakot pummeled the island on 8
August 2009. According to official records, parts of Taiwan experienced a record- breaking 3000mm of rain over a three-day period. This massive rain event triggered major landslides, burying more than 677 people in several rural villages in southern
Taiwan and causing at least US$1.5 billion in economic losses (Huang, 2009, p. 131).
The devastation attracted international attention and the Dalai Lama visited Taiwan to pray for the typhoon victims (Lin, 2009). However, Typhoon Morakot quickly stirred up a political maelstrom locally owing to the government's sluggish and inept response.
Surveys indicated that only 10 percent of Taiwanese citizens were satisfied with the performance of President Ma Ying-Jeou in heading relief efforts, while 65 percent were strongly dissatisfied (TVBS Poll Center, 2009). One month after the tragedy, on
September 7, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan resigned to take full political responsibility for the administration’s failed management of the crisis (Pong, 2009).
A mutually constitutive relationship existed between these two natural disasters that happened ten years apart. The 921 Earthquake became a historical analogy that the news media used to define the status of Typhoon Morakot as it unfolded and that politicians used to judge the performance of rescue missions. Lessons government officials learned from the 921 Earthquake further dictated their decisions regarding post- disaster construction. Nevertheless, both the timing of the event and the identity of the
7 primary victims made Typhoon Morakot a more complex natural disaster than the 921
Earthquake. There were several reasons for this. First, while in the late 1990s the
Taiwanese news media had only just begun to incorporate the latest technology into news
gathering (e.g., satellite news-gathering vans), by 2009 the local news market had
become saturated, with eight 24-hour television news channels, four major newspapers,
and several online news sites swarming over unfolding events. Thus Typhoon Morakot
became a news war in the sense that countless journalists participated in the discursive
construction of a natural disaster as they tried to make sense of both the visual spectacle
and the resultant political storm. Second, this political storm manifested itself in a
particular way. In contrast to the late 1990s, when Taiwan's democracy was still in its
infancy1 and military threats from China were unrelenting2, by 2009 Taiwanese society
had opened up and Cross-Strait relations3 had dramatically changed—the once
adversarial situation between Taiwan and China gave way to economic and sociopolitical
exchange. This political transformation not only meant increasingly vocal opposition to
the government within Taiwan, but also increased Chinese involvement in Taiwan's
domestic affairs. This interference was seen in the government's response to Typhoon
Morakot—namely the initial rejection of foreign aid in a show of respect for the One-
China Policy. The resulting tensions made Typhoon Morakot a perfect stage for political
drama, creating an additional level of complexity on top of the devastation. Finally, the
fact that the majority of typhoon victims were aboriginal people—the largest ethnic
1The first direct presidential election, held in 1996, is deemed the beginning of true democracy in Taiwan. In contrast to previously when presidents were elected by members of the National Assembly for six-year terms, Taiwan now elects its presidents by popular vote for a term of four years. 2From 1995 to 1996, the People's Republic of China (PRC) carried out a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait area in a warning to then-President Lee Teng-Hui, whom it deemed to have strayed from the One-China Policy. 3Cross-Strait relations refers to relations between two political entities, China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC), separated by the Taiwan Strait in the western Pacific Ocean.
8 minority group in Taiwan—further complicated disaster management. The government's decision to evacuate aboriginal victims from their damaged mountain tribal communities and relocate them in purpose-built permanent housing projects reflected problematic racial relations in Taiwan, the social prejudice suffered by the Taiwanese Aborigines, and the dominance of the Han Chinese. With the help of the internet and digital media, a group of amateur journalists spent four years following the lives of typhoon victims in the wake of the typhoon. Their reportage transformed a natural disaster into a cultural forum centered around issues of social justice and identity construction.
Thus, coverage of Typhoon Morakot provides both an outlet to witness the production and presentation of disaster news developed in a highly mature and competitive media environment and a glimpse into the international challenges and domestic predicaments faced by the newly democratized Taiwan. To understand the profound meaning of the Morakot story, it is necessary to review the historical context of the Taiwanese political, media, and racial landscapes—the context into which the story was born.
A Brief History of Taiwan
The modern history of Taiwan is characterized by colonialism. Taiwan has been a colony of several countries, including Portugal, the Netherlands, and Japan (the last from
1895 to 1945). The Kuomintang (KMT) regime from mainland China further prolonged the island’s colonial experience. The KMT came to Taiwan as a foreign political power when it retreated there following its military defeat by the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) in 1947. The newly arrived KMT used military, juridical, administrative, and educational institutions to impose a Chinese nationality on locals in the face of resistance.
9 As Yip (2004) noted, "Mainland China and Taiwan may share a common linguistic and cultural heritage, but, like the two halves of the formerly divided Germany, their modern identities have been shaped by very different historical experiences" (p. 14). Cultural and social conflict between the newly arrived mainlanders and native Taiwanese was common. The 228 Massacre in 1947 was the most serious instance of such conflict. On
February 28, 1947, a female cigarette vendor was arrested by police and beaten to death.
This incident triggered large-scale political protests led by native Taiwanese social elites critical of the corruption and repression of the KMT regime. In response, the KMT government deployed troops that arrested and executed nearly 28,000 native Taiwanese, then declared martial law and a dozen other emergency decrees in 1949, all in the name of national security (Hong, 1999). From 1949 to 1987, the authoritarian KMT regime suppressed the cultural and linguistic heritage of native Taiwanese and tightly controlled all media outlets.
The KMT regime gradually began sharing power with native Taiwanese in the late 1980s, leading to significant social change and political restructuring in Taiwan.
With the lifting of martial law in 1987 and the legalization of the Democratic Progressive
Party (DPP) in 1989, Taiwanese society underwent rapid social liberation and political democratization. Many described the legitimization of the DPP as a political miracle, because it represented "the first time in the more than 5,000 years of recorded history of
China, [that] a group that was both legal and political was formed outside the chain of command under the head of state" (Rampal, 1994, p. 73). In 1996, Taiwan held its first direct, competitive presidential election. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian, a native Taiwanese and member of the DPP, defeated his KMT opponent to become president, heralding a
10 new era of greater democracy and cultural localization. The KMT returned to the presidential office in 2008, buoyed by the campaigning of Ma Ying-jeou, who was reelected in 2012. These events helped normalize the democratic transition of power in
Taiwan. A growing proportion of the local population identify as Taiwanese, rather than
Chinese and are quick to point out how the cultural and political systems of Taiwan are distinct from those of mainland China. Despite its legal status remaining controversial internationally, Taiwan is a modern nation-state and has an established "imagined community" (Anderson, 1983) and collective identity. Taiwan has rapidly transformed from a colony with a primarily rural society into a modern global industrial power. These changes have not only improved living standards, but have also transformed the media environment.
The Transformation of the Taiwanese Media Landscape
The transformation of the Taiwanese media landscape can be divided into two stages: the martial law era (1949‒1987)—the historical period during which the media was controlled and media content was censored by the state, and the post-martial law era
(since 1987)—the current period during which Taiwan's media environment has experienced commercialization, tabloidization, and sinification (中國化).
From 1949 into the late 1980s, all forms of media in Taiwan were tightly regulated due to martial law. The ruling KMT considered media a political tool to enhance nationalist ideology and social solidarity and subordinated freedom of expression to nation-building (Chen, 1998, p. 16). In other words, the role of media during this period was not to provide the latest information or critical commentary but to buttress the political position of the authority in power. Media control was exercised in
11 five different ways, including 1) state monopolization of the media; 2) control in the name of national security and in response to national emergencies; 3) control by licensing;
4) pressure on media outlets; and 5) violence against individual journalists (Hong, 1999, p. 42). These conditions led to all media institutions becoming aligned with the KMT in various ways. As documented in Weston's (2013) study, at that time, "if the media challenged the party-state's ideology, right to rule, or goal of recovering the mainland [i.e.,
China], its activities were likely to be classified as illegal" (p. 209). The publication law, implemented in June 1951, restricted the total number of newspapers permitted on the market and the number of pages each newspaper was permitted (Weston, 2013, p. 210).
Until the lifting of martial law in 1987, the total number of newspapers in Taiwan was frozen at 314, with each being restricted to 12 pages per issue (Rampal, 1994, p. 78; see also Lee, 1994). Similarly, the three broadcasting networks, namely TTV, CTV, and CTS, were run by the government and the military. During the first stage of its development,
Taiwan's media environment thus was KMT dominated, leaving almost no room for the development of private and commercial media or the creation of politically independent voices.
The lifting of martial law in 1987 saw the removal of restrictions on newspaper licenses and numbers of pages per issue, triggering a boom in the media industry. The number of newspapers in Taiwan grew from 31 to 249, while the number of pages per issue increased from 12 to anywhere between 30 and 50, with even more in weekend editions (Rampal, 1994, p. 79). Total daily newspaper circulation surged almost 50 percent, from 3.9 million in 1987 to 6 million in 1994 (Hong, 1999, p. 44). Similarly, the
4 Out of the 31 newspapers, four were run by the KMT, nine by the military, two by the government, and the remaining 16 were privately owned. A full list of these newspapers and the names of their owners can be found in Lee's (1994) article "Sparking a fire" (p. 167).
12 number of magazines published in Taiwan rapidly grew from 3,400 in 1988 to 5,700 in
1998 (Hong, 1999, p. 44). Moreover, the passage of the cable television law in 1993
legalized cable TV in Taiwan. The three broadcast networks found themselves facing a
growing number of cable networks, which provided a popular alternative for Taiwanese
audiences. More than 140 cable television systems, each providing an average of 70
channels, competed in 1999, including eight all-news cable channels offering 24-hour
news coverage with intensive analysis of important issues5 (Chiu & Chan-Olmsted, 1999,
p. 494). Records show that the cable network penetration rate stood at 81.6% of
Taiwanese households in December 2006, the highest in the Asia Pacific region (Hsu,
2014, p. 516).
Despite the large amount of registered newspapers, few enjoyed substantial
circulation and thus had significant sociopolitical influence. According to a study by Hsu
(2014), the four Taiwanese newspapers with the largest circulations in 2013 were Liberty
Times, Apple Daily, United Daily, and The China Times (2014). The rise of Liberty Times,
founded by Taiwanese-born banker Lin Ron-San in 1987, was of particular significance,
because it added a different voice to the media landscape. Although initially it had
difficulty competing with the more established pro-KMT Taiwanese newspaper titans—
The China Times and United Daily—the Liberty Times' pro-independence position and
close ties with the DPP helped it become the best-selling newspaper in the late 1990s
(Weston, 2013). Similarly, in the realm of cable networks, both FTV and SET were
deemed pro-DPP and pro-Taiwanese identity television channels.
5The eight 24-four news channels were TVBS, TVBS-N, SET (Sanli), CTI (Zhongtian), FTV (Mingshi), ERA (Niandai), EBC (Dongsen), USTV (Feifan).
13 Many believe that the liberalization of the media accelerated Taiwan’s political democratization by allowing diverse media discourse to express and debate varied and competing political perspectives (Chiu & Chan-Olmsted, 1999; Rawnsley & Gong, 2011).
Nevertheless, political partisanship remains rampant in news production in Taiwan.
Taiwanese journalists are often accused of "acting as mouthpieces for politicians or of letting their own political views color their reporting" (Rampal, 1994, p. 82). President
Ma Ying-jeou even labeled three media outlets "san-ming-zi" (sandwich)—a play on their Chinese names: Sanli (SET), Mingshi (FTV), and Ziyou Shibao (Liberty Times)—to highlight their pro-DPP position and so deflect their harsh criticism of him (Hsu, 2014, p.
527). Additionally, numerous examples have been uncovered of business owners offering gifts and money to news workers to ensure positive converge (Wu, 1993). Journalistic professionalism and ethics thus has become a major social issue in Taiwan.
The launch in 2003 of the Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper known for its exaggerated reporting style and sensationalist graphics, created more problems for
Taiwanese journalism. The newspaper's name reflects the origin of guilt symbolically represented as an apple in the story of Adam and Eve; without the right and wrong associated with guilt there would be no news (Huo, 1995). Apple Daily entered the
Taiwanese market as a tabloid, "providing paparazzi-style scandal exposure and exhibiting a flair for flaunting sex and violence in full-color" (Ho & Sun, 2008, p. 103).
As Ho and Sun (2008) described, "the so-called 'Apple Effect' moved traditionally defined 'serious reporting' to celebrity/entertainment tabloids, so that only firms capable of transforming all types of information into 'entertainment' would survive" (p. 103). In only six months, Apple Daily won 10 percent of Taiwan’s total newspaper readership. By
14 the end of 2005, the circulation of Apple Daily surpassed that of two major newspapers,
The China Times and United Daily. The appeal of Apple Daily derived from its "reader- first" philosophy. Unlike other Taiwanese newspapers, which often favored governmental officials, politicians, and social elites, Apple Daily adopted a flexible and market-oriented strategy responsive to consumer demands and preferences (Tsai, 2005). To compete with
Apple Daily, all three established newspapers (i.e., Liberty Times, The China Times, and
United Daily) revolutionized their own formats and layouts and featured more paparazzi- style stories and sharper sensationalism. However, rather than winning readers back, these changes merely brought about the tabloidization of Taiwanese journalism. Within three years, the China Times lost 36 percent of its readership while United Daily lost 14 percent (Ho & Sun, 2008, p. 106). The Liberty Times and Apple Daily are currently the two leading newspapers in Taiwan (Table 1).
Year Liberty Times Apple Daily United Daily The China Times
2009 681,309 530,000 250,000 200,000
2013 622,781 383,000 150,000 100,000
TABLE 1 – DAILY NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION Average daily circulation of Taiwan's four major newspapers in 2009 and 2013 Source: Hsu, 2013, p. 516.
China's influence on Taiwan's media became increasingly visible in the late 2000s, especially after Ma Ying-Jeou became president in 2008. As Hsu (2014) summarized,
China employed several strategic tactics as it sought to control the Taiwanese media landscape. First, by investing financially in specific Taiwanese media outlets, such as the
China Times Group, the Chinese government was able to quickly transform The Chinese
Times into a pro-Beijing newspaper, which pushed a China-focused agenda and adopted a
15 pro-Beijing frame of reference. Second, by exerting pressure on media owners with business interests and/or investments in China, the Chinese government was able to compel certain media outlets to exercise self-censorship and avoid reporting on controversial China-related issues, such as human rights, Tibet, and Falun Gong. An illustrative example is SET cancelling its popular and long-running anti-China political talk show "Big Talk News" in June 2012. Sources confirmed that this decision was made in response to a combination of pressure from Beijing and a desire on the part of SET to sell its TV dramas to the Chinese market (Hsu, 2014, p. 529). Finally, the Chinese authorities attempt to change Taiwanese people's perceptions of China by placing
"advertorials" that resemble hard news in Taiwanese media (Hsu, 2014, p. 530).
According to Chang Chin-hwa, a professor in the Journalism Department at National
Taiwan University, these advertorials form part of China's "media warfare against
Taiwan"—a long-term propaganda effort with the ultimate goal of reunification (cited in
Hsu, 2014, p. 532). Consequently, the sinification of Taiwan's media is a warning sign of the erosion of press freedom—a nascent freedom that remains fragile even after the long fight to secure it.
This was the highly commercialized, sensationalized, and politicized media environment in which news coverage of Typhoon Morakot occurred. Thus, what was included in the mainstream Morakot story reflected not only the primary concerns of the
Taiwanese society but also a balancing act by media outlets as they weighed soft news to boost readership against hard news to inform the audience. Media must also consider the implications of controversial stories in a tenuous political landscape. Matters excluded from the mainstream Morakot story, such as aboriginal victims' post-disaster struggles,
16 highlighted issues that have long been silenced or marginalized in Taiwanese society. To understand this critical absence requires unpacking the evolution of the racial landscape in Taiwan.
Aborigines, Outsiders in Taiwan’s Imagined Community
Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in Taiwan, immigrated from China during the last 400 years. The Han Chinese in Taiwan can be further divided into three subethnic groups: Hoklo (73%), Hakka (12%), and Mainlanders (13%) (Brown, 2004).
The Hoklo and Hakka were the earliest Han Chinese arrivals, coming from southern
China (primarily Fujian and Guangdong Provinces) starting in the 17th century, while the
Mainlanders came more recently, arriving with the KMT regime after World War II
(1949). Despite their diverse cultures and sociopolitical experience, these subethnic groups share the common sentiment that as Han they are different from non-Han (i.e.,
Taiwanese Aborigines). In contrast to the Han, Taiwanese Aborigines are of
Austronesian descent, and share genetic and linguistic ties to other Austronesian ethnic groups, such as the peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar, and
Oceania (Harrison, 2003). According to the government, Taiwanese Aborigines currently comprise 13 tribes, with the largest being the Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, and Bunun.
Although Taiwan’s Aborigines inhabited the island for seven thousand years prior to Han migration, demographics have seen them become an ethnic minority and cultural other; the aboriginal population is currently about 530,000, or just two percent of the total national population (Council of Indigenous People, 2014). As Lan (2006) noted, "The imagined unity [of the Han Chinese] under the umbrella of Confucian culturalism requires the oppositional existence of the racial and ethnic other. Taiwanese Aborigines,
17 for this reason, have long been the objects of the colonial gaze" (p. 61). In Taiwan, the
Aborigines have become the “others within”.
The Taiwanese Aborigines experienced centuries of military conflicts and economic competition with various colonizers who implemented a series of policies to foster cultural and linguistic assimilation. Qing Dynasty literati depicted the Aborigines as dehumanized, primitive, and hypersexual savages (Teng, 2004). Subsequently, the
Japanese colonial regime (1895‒1945) used both repressive power (e.g., military force) and soft power (e.g., forming baseball teams) to transform the Taiwanese Aborigines from "uncivilized savages" into "loyal imperial subjects" (Lan, 2006, p. 61). Under
Japanese rule, the Hoklo and Hakka quickly developed a sense of "national consciousness" through which they set themselves apart from the colonizer. However, this new "national consciousness" excluded the Aborigines from the newly imagined community due to their "lack of civility" (Chiu, Hwang & Bairner, 2014, p. 352). The excerpt below is from an editorial written in 1931 for the Taiwan New People's
Newspaper. The editorial was a critique of policies used by Japan to govern Aborigines, but clearly reveals the racial alienation between Han Chinese and the aboriginal population. The editorial stated:
Due to their lack of knowledge, the barbarians habitually use weapons to resist outsiders. If they had substantial knowledge, they would not use weapons. They should employ public opinion and writing to fight, because the pen is the intellectuals’ weapon (Cited in Chiu, Hwang & Bairner, 2014, p. 352).
During the postwar period (after 1949), with the relocation of the KMT regime from Mainland China to Taiwan, Taiwanese society underwent a relatively successful phase of industrialization and economic restructuring, rapidly transforming from a primarily agricultural society to a modern industrial power. In pursuit of opportunities to
18 improve their living situation, Aborigines migrated in waves from rural to urban areas.
This migration inevitably increased cross-ethnic contact for aboriginal people, as well as political submission to the state and assimilation into Han culture (Lan, 2006; Teng,
2004). However, Aborigines continue to face economic and social barriers, including high unemployment and low education, as well as suffering from such issues as excessive drinking and high suicide rates, particularly among their urban communities.
The 1990s saw a major shift in Taiwan's racial boundaries as a result of the affirmation of Aboriginal ethnic identity and political capital. In his concept of a new and inclusive Taiwanese identity, one that included Aborigines, Hoklo, Hakka, and
Mainlanders, then-President Lee Teng-hui highlighted the vital role played by each ethnic group in Taiwanese identity. In 1994, following a decade-long struggle by grassroots activists, the government adopted the term "yuanzhumin" (literally "original inhabitants") as the new official appellation for Taiwan's Aborigines (Lan, 2006). Although many saw this new narrative of national membership as a political move by the Lee Administration to establish an autonomous and distinct Taiwanese identity to contrast Chinese identity
(Brown, 2004), it nevertheless confirmed Aborigines as a key constituency in Taiwan's imagined community.
Since their incorporation into the national rhetoric known as the New Taiwanese identity, Aborigines have come to be seen as part of the "us" by many Han Chinese in contemporary Taiwan. However, this rhetorical egalitarianism has confronted aboriginal people with a new form of what Bonilla-Silva (2010) called "color-blind racism", where race is claimed to no longer be an issue, despite discrimination continuing to impact their everyday lives. As Doane (2007) contends, the core belief of a color-blind racial ideology
19 is that "race does not play a significant role in the distribution of resources and that racism is essentially a thing of the past" (p. 107). This racial ideology works as a framework that the Han Chinese use to legitimatize the persistent racial inequality resulting from historic and systematic disenfranchisement. Thus, similar to Bonilla-
Silva's (2010) study of African Americans, the long-standing poverty issue facing aboriginal people can be explained away as the result of individual choices (i.e.,
Aborigines failed to seize economic opportunities to which they enjoyed equal access) or attributed to stereotypical cultural features (i.e., that Aborigines are lazy and unmotivated).
This color-blind racial ideology was pervasive in media discourse during and after
Typhoon Morakot. Statistics show that the majority (80%) of typhoon victims were aboriginals living in mountain tribal communities (Chiu, 2010). Many were buried alive in the middle of the night under landslides triggered by the heavy rainfall. The disaster decimated families and destroyed the tribal communities in which their social networks and cultural customs were deeply rooted. As the most powerless segment of society, the
Aborigines were both the hardest hit and the least likely to be able to access adequate evacuation resources. However, the mainstream media quickly presented the dire situation of Morakot's aboriginal victims as self-inflicted. Many questioned the decision of aboriginal people to continue living in mountain communities that had been declared unsafe after the 921 Earthquake. Some even argued, "our precious social resources should not be wasted on the irresponsible choices of individuals" (cited in Huang, 2009, p.
78). Another type of media discourse blamed aboriginal victims for "exotic cultural practices" that sometimes conflicted with the national environmental policies of the Han
20 Chinese-controlled government. For example, a United Daily editorial dated August 13,
2009 stated,
Xiaolin Village was possibly inundated by mudslides because its inhabitants employed deep plowing techniques to plant ginger and taro in massive quantities, destroying both the physical contours and geologic structure of the mountains. This aboriginal agricultural practice disrupted the natural ecology, leading to entire villages being wiped out and the loss of the aboriginal people’s ancestral land (Cited in S. Ho, 2013, p. 23).
This mainstream news narrative, which aligned with modern environmental rhetoric, immediately gained public support and came to influence government plans for victim evacuation and relocation.
In most disasters, the government handles housing issues in three stages: 1) emergency shelters are initially established near the evacuees' permanent homes so they have a safe place to await the passing of the external threat; 2) temporary housing then offers victims interim or long term living arrangements that allow them to resume their household responsibilities and activities; and 3) finally permanent housing provides residential facilities victims can use to reestablish their life routines over an indefinite time horizon (Quarantelli, 1982). Temporary housing thus serves an important intermediary role for victims, allowing them to adapt to environmental pressures and discuss their permanent living situation as a community (Quarantelli, 1982). However, this significant housing option was not provided in the wake of Typhoon Morakot.
According to Du Ming-Han, Executive Director of World Vision Taiwan, the government was reluctant to provide temporary housing after Morakot because of lessons from the 921 Earthquake. As Du noted, "Some evacuees were still living in what had originally been defined as temporary housing years after the earthquake. This type of illegal occupation became a thorny issue for the government to handle" (Liang, 2009, ¶
21 13). Furthermore, based on the Policy of Homeland Recovery and Conservation, the government favored "letting the mountains rest", which required keeping mountain areas free of human habitation and agriculture. Therefore, when the Buddhist Tzu Chi
Foundation proposed building permanent houses for the evacuees, the government was more than happy to "outsource" its responsibility for the matter to a prestigious religious group (Hsieh, 2010, ¶ 22). The government believed this would permanently resolve the typhoon victims' living situation, and moreover would be fully consistent with environmental policies.
Three weeks after the typhoon, without any deliberative public discussions, the government abruptly announced that the Tzu Chi Foundation would start construction of permanent housing in the form of Great Love Village, a project whose design was based on Han Chinese and Buddhist cultural and religious customs—both of which sometimes conflicted with the cultural heritage and Christian beliefs of the aboriginal people (S. Ho,
2013). In other words, the government showed no intention to rebuild the damaged communities and help the aboriginal victims resume their original way of life (S. Ho,
2013). Whether to accept permanent housing or return to their damaged tribal communities thus became the ultimate quandary for aboriginal victims in the wake of
Typhoon Morakot. Since a unanimous decision was impossible the dilemma caused internal division and mistrust within aboriginal tribes. Typhoon Morakot thus was more than a physical disaster to its aboriginal victims, but was also a symbolic crisis that forced the negotiation of their racial identity and cultural heritage in the Han-Chinese dominated society.
22 Five years after the typhoon, Morakot remained a controversial word in Taiwan and one that represented the emergence of a risk society, the rupture of the social contract, and distrust in political authority. Through interviews with the journalists involved and analysis of the coverage they produced, this dissertation aims to examine the political and cultural role of Typhoon Morakot coverage—a unique Asian case that could potentially contribute to the current scholarship on disaster journalism.
Overview of Dissertation Chapters
This dissertation is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 details the historical, cultural, political, and institutional contexts of this research. It provides a detailed description of Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan as well as an overview of the rapid transformation of the Taiwanese media environment after WWII to situate the practice of disaster journalism in this specific media context. It also unpacks the racial relationship in
Taiwan and the social injustice long faced by the primary minority group—Taiwanese
Aborigines—injustice that became especially evident after Typhoon Morakot. This chapter helps readers unfamiliar with Taiwan better understand the background to this research.
Chapter 2 reviews the scholarship on the intersection of news media and natural disasters to reveal both the breadth of scholarly interest in this field and the varying perspectives they represent. Furthermore, this chapter discusses the research methods used, including in-depth interviews and various textual analyses, and the purposes they serve in this project. The final section of this chapter details the research data.
Chapter 3 delves into the process of news production to elucidate the character of disaster news coverage, both generally and specifically in the case of Typhoon Morakot.
23 Based on in-depth interviews with 20 mainstream journalists, this chapter notes that even in times of disaster, which seem to provide journalists with higher levels of operational autonomy, their practices are still highly constrained by external factors, such as on-site technological options, extended newsroom control, and their continued reliance on official sources. Additionally, the coverage they produced was highly influenced by the cultivated interpretive framework and the phenomenon of pack journalism. Together, these external and internal factors contributed to the similarity of news coverage across different media platforms. However, the most interesting finding is the gender division that became clear when journalists discussed their personal emotion while covering
Morakot. While most male informants reported to be emotionally intact, female informants described themselves feeling stressed and vulnerable in the situation. Their testimony to some extent concluded that rationality conflated with masculinity ruled the domain of disaster reporting.
The next three chapters focus on the news representation of Typhoon Morakot as constructed by three independent media that nevertheless influence one another, namely television, newspapers, and alternative media. Chapter 4 examines the first week of broadcast news coverage of Typhoon Morakot and the televisual construction of public emotions. A series of televisual techniques were used, including such as interruption of regularly scheduled commercials to signal the threat of the impending disaster, the live broadcast of news which invited the audience to witness the shocking devastation, and the visual dramatization of tears used to signify the emotion of grief, of anger, and of pride. And finally, six days after Morakot hit Taiwan, the news networks even broke
24 news conventions to produce a cinematic vignette to pay tribute to the first responders, or heroes as they called them.
As found in Chapter 5, in the following month of newspaper coverage, there was a progression of public emotion from grief to anger. It became essential to identify a culprit to assign blame and political accountability. This journalistic investigation was conducted through a variety of framing approaches, including historical analogy to compare Morakot with previous local disasters as well as disasters that happened afar, such as Hurricane Katrina. Second, Taiwanese newspapers heavily quoted foreign sources, such as CNN, New York Times, and Washington Post, to justify their criticism of president Ma and his administration. To repair its image, in the later phase of Typhoon
Morakot, the Ma administration began to use media events, such as international press conferences, its cabinet reshuffle, and its granting of entry to the Dali Lama, as attempts to regain public trust. On September 3, almost a month after Typhoon Morakot, the majority of mainstream media dropped their coverage and started to focus on a new crisis
─Bird Flu.
Chapter 6 examines the four years of coverage of Morakot by 88news, an alternative media website established to follow Typhoon Morakot and the living situation of aboriginal victims in its aftermath. With coverage starting in late September, 88news aimed to fight the premature closure offered by mainstream media. Adopting nonconventional journalistic norms─transparency not objectivity─and nonconventional news sources─victims first, not official sources─88news produced an unheard version of the Morakot story. Their coverage not only questioned the way the government outsourced the relief effort to Tzu-Chi, a religious humanitarian organization, but also
25 questioned the way Tzu-Chi sought to assimilate the Aboriginal victims. Overall, 88news documented the mundane aspects of aboriginal victims' everyday lives in the aftermath and thus portrayed a real rather than ideal progression of recovery.
Finally, Chapter 7 concludes this dissertation. This final chapter employed the concept of "social drama" (Turner, 1981) to review the journalistic rituals and political rites associated with Typhoon Morakot. It also elucidates the healing role of disaster journalism in general and specifically in Morakot coverage─emotional news narratives that provide the community an opportunity to mourn and thus to heal. The empirical findings of this dissertation posed two questions to journalism at large, namely the role of emotionality in journalism and the potential of emerging alternative media.
26 CHAPTER 2 OVERVIEW OF THEORY AND METHODS
The question of what is a disaster actually is easily answered by those directly affected. Even in the academic discussion disasters are usually conceived of as clearly defined entities which have distinct causes and effects. Such a perspective, however, easily loses sight of the interactive quality of disastrous events as well as of the social constitutedness of disasters, which are recognized as such only through interpretive procedures. Moreover, as an inter-subjective social reality they are constituted through communicative practices alone. (Bergmann, Egner, & Wulf, 2009, p. 1)
This chapter attempts to build the theoretical and methodological foundation for this dissertation. It starts with a review of disaster scholarship in social science to demonstrate the role of social forces in transforming a nature-caused event into a disaster.
Second, it examines the intersection of disaster and news media and how each contributes to the other. Focusing on the cultural and political implication of disaster coverage, this section employs the concept of ritual—both consensual and conflictual—to show how disaster journalism simultaneously creates social solidarity and political empowerment.
Finally, it discusses the methods and data used in this dissertation to answer the previously mentioned research questions.
Conceptualizing Modern Disasters
Cultures around the world have for centuries termed natural disasters "acts of
God" (Thompson, 1955). In his historical analysis of the earthquake that struck Carinthia and Northern Italy in 1348, Rohr (2003) found that local people adopted narratives of divine rage to comprehend and cope with the utter devastation. Dundes observed that "the flood myth is one of the most widely diffused narratives" and has been used to demonstrate the enormous power of nature and the inability of humans to control it (cited in Lule, 2001, p.173). In short, natural calamities are traditionally explained as divine
27 punishment to humble humankind and as a signal directing those who have strayed back to the correct path. For their part, survivors will overcome, rebuild, and thrive once again
(Lule, 2001).
Only after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 did western societies begin to adopt a scientific perspective in understanding natural disasters—including the use of perspectives from social science. Defining the Lisbon earthquake as the first modern disaster, Dynes (2000) argued that its timing and location make it important, because it was "the first earthquake to affect a 'modern' European city at a time when there was a rethinking of the nature of personality, knowledge, science, and religion, a period which has come to be known as the Enlightment" (p. 99). Traditional religious perceptions thus were challenged by a growing number of informed Enlightenment thinkers with secular interpretations of this disastrous seismic event. These thinkers not only attributed the
Lisbon earthquake to natural forces, but further suggested that the event could only be interpreted in terms of its sociocultural context, thus signifying the "embryonic social understanding of disaster" (Dynes, 2000, p. 114).
The application of a social science perspective to understanding disasters emerged in the United States in the early 1950s. Initiated in the wake of the Cold War, societal concern about the risk of foreign attack was reflected in early disaster research that adopted a rather limited focus on collective behavior under stress. Pioneering researchers working closely with national government agencies saw natural and technological disasters as providing useful settings to examine emergent collective behavior, and particularly to illuminate whether large-scale physical deconstruction and social disruption led to public panic and demoralization (Quarantelli, 1987).
28 As early publications showed, disasters produce emergent social structures that bring out the best, rather than the worst, in affected groups (Tierney, 2007). Positive outcomes of disasters include enhanced community cohesiveness and solidarity, reduced antisocial behavior, development of therapeutic communities, suspension of pre-disaster conflict and partisan divisions to accelerate community rehabilitation, and collective adaption and innovation in response to disruptions (Tierney, 2007, p. 505). Notably, such public responses contrast with those in earlier "disaster myths," in which disasters are conceived to be accompanied by withdrawal behaviors, such as public panic, flight by victims, and helplessly awaiting external aid (Quarantelli, 1960), as well as violence, such as looting, riots, and other deviant behaviors characteristic of civil unrest (Tierney,
Beve, & Kuligowski, 2006).
In the 1960s and 1970s, disaster researchers continued to identify the diverse patterns of disasters and to develop the notion of consensus and dissensus crises based on their empirical findings. Consensus crises refer to tragic events "where there is agreement on the meaning of the situation, the norms and values that are appropriate, and priorities that should be followed," whereas dissensus crises involve situations of conflict where the cause and meaning of the event and related priorities are contested (Quarantelli &
Dynes, 1977, p. 23). Natural disasters are events caused by natural forces, characterized by short-term social disruption, identifiable victims, clear causes, and responsible institutions, and to which government or volunteer organizations respond with restoration plans (Picou, Brunsma & Overfelt, 2010; see also Quarantelli, 1998). Hence, natural disasters are regarded as consensus crises that increase community morale and solidarity and decrease conflict, partisan divisions, and antisocial behavior (Tierney, 2007). The
29 recovery process following natural disasters is deemed therapeutic, allowing affected communities to come together to provide mutual support and engage in innovative social readjustment (Drabek, 1986; Fritz, 1961). While there are cases, such as Hurricane
Katrina, in which looting does seem to occur, these reports have been found to be largely exaggerated and a strategy to gain support from the national guard (Tierney, Beve, &
Kuligowski, 2006).
Technological disasters refer to human-caused accidents, technological and systematic failures, and toxic contamination, with examples including the Bhopal accident as well as the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear plant accidents.
Technological disasters severely and irreparably damage ecological systems and affect communities over long periods. Moreover, damage is usually complex, solutions are elusive, and identifying culprits and victims is difficult. Furthermore, recovery and compensation plans are often delayed by strategic legal maneuvering. Technological disasters thus frequently become contested events, categorized as dissensus crises, with negative effects on the community such as short-term antisocial behavior and long-term mental and physical trauma, heightened distrust of authorities, and protracted litigation that delays recovery (Picou, Brent, & Duane, 2004; see also Marshall, Picou, &
Schlichtmann, 2004).
Early disaster research was highly influenced by the structural functional theory that prevailed in the social sciences after World War II (Stallings, 1988; Wolensky &
Miller, 1983). Focusing on system equilibration, the dominant view considered disasters negative disruptions to the social order, with affected communities first adapting, before eventually either resuming old behaviors or innovating new ones in a stabilized
30 environment (Perry & Quarantelli, 2005). Fritz (1961) best summarized this viewpoint in his classic definition of disasters as
accidental or uncontrollable events, actual or threatened, that are concentrated in time and space, in which a society or a relatively self-sufficient subdivision of society, undergoes severe danger, and incurs such losses to its members and physical appurtenances that the social structure is disrupted and the fulfillment of all or some of the essential functions of the society is prevented. (p. 655)
Although Fritz's definition of disaster, which is event-based, time and space concentrated, physical-damage focused, and problem-solving oriented, has since been contested and challenged, it has been widely cited by scholars and has set the overall tone of mainstream disaster studies for decades.
Researchers began to question the conceptualizations and findings of earlier disaster research in the 1980s. Challenges to classic frameworks focused on the assumption that natural disasters are distinctive events caused (solely) by natural forces.
Even the term natural disaster has been challenged as leaving no room for human agency in the causation of these events. Researchers argued that over-emphasizing the physical agent of disasters produces an environmental determinism that ignores social factors and human actions (Blaikie, Cannon, & Wisner, 1994). As Quarantelli wrote, "there can never be a natural disaster; at most there is a conjuncture of certain physical happenings and certain social happenings" (cited in Bolin & Stanford, 1998, p. 4). Although an earthquake is a natural phenomenon caused by geophysical dynamics, it often becomes a disaster only through a vulnerable and failing social system. Additionally, the assumption that disasters are time-space concentrated events excludes many diffuse and deadly phenomena, such as famines and epidemics, from the disaster category. As Westgate and
O'Keefe noted, "the emphasis on a specific event as an identifying feature [of disasters] is
31 a pro-Western, pro-technology, pro-capitalism bias" that becomes a major impediment preventing researchers from identifying calamities unfolding over longer periods in underdeveloped countries (cited in Quarantelli & Dynes, 1977, p. 24). Still others have argued that disasters should be seen as inevitable social consequences that reflect the characteristics of their location, such as industrialization, urbanization, and globalization
(Hewitt, 1983; Tierney, 2007). As such, natural disasters demonstrate "the ongoing social order, its everyday relations to the habitat and the larger historical circumstances that shape or frustrate these matters" (Hewitt, 1983, p. 25). Consequently, rather than seeing disasters as individual natural events originating in earth and atmospheric systems, the social construction perspective seeks to understand disasters as social processes and social constructions caused by existing social structures and material practices in human societies (Bolin & Stanford, 1998).
In light of the social construction perspective, analysts coined the term disaster gerrymandering to demonstrate how disasters are shaped by political and institutional practices and designated to serve their interests at the national level (Platt, 1999). In the
United States, the distribution of federal relief to disaster areas requires presidential approval of a request from the governor of the affected state. However, the definition of a major disaster is vague, and the decision to issue a disaster declaration is influenced by a state's ability to rapidly estimate economic damage, election year politics, and the media.
As Klinenberg (2002) argued in Heat Wave, despite heat waves killing more people annually than all other natural disasters combined, because they do not damage physical property they are not considered major disasters equivalent to earthquakes and hurricanes,
32 and hence do not qualify for presidential disaster declarations. These same political factors determine the entitlements, aid, and benefits given to disaster victims.
In line with the social construction perspective, scholars have developed the vulnerability approach to disaster to unveil the embedded social inequality and politics of poverty disguised by the supposed naturalness of disasters (Cannon, 1994). As Hewitt noted, "Disasters, as social processes, are shaped and structured by the sociocultural formations and political and economic practices that exist prior to the onset of a hazard event" (cited in Bolin & Stanford, 1998, p. 2). Although natural disasters are generally not seen to discriminate, recent literature has shown that their impact is determined by the socioeconomic status of the affected group, including class, race, gender, occupation, and social position, rather than the ranking of the event on the Richter or Beaufort scale
(Olive-Smith, 2002). Vulnerability describes the human capacity to resist and recover from disasters and varies with social and economic capital. The example of Hurricane
Katrina6 clearly demonstrates the correlation between vulnerability and socioeconomic circumstances, as described in the following.
In New Orleans, however, topographic gradients doubled as class and race gradients, and as the Katrina evacuation so tragically demonstrated, those better off had cars to get out and credit cards and bank accounts for emergency hotels and supplies. Their immediate families likely had resources to support their evacuation, and the wealthier also had insurance policies for rebuilding. Not just the market but successive administrations from the federal to the urban scale, made the poorest population in New Orleans most vulnerable. (Smith, 2006, ¶ 3)
6 Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast of the United States on August 29, 2005, was one of the most costly and deadly natural disasters in American history. According to the Tropical Cyclone Report (2005), Katrina claimed at least 1,836 lives and caused US$81 billion in economic damage. The hurricane also created the largest internal "diaspora of displaced people" the US has experienced to date and this diaspora is ongoing (Brunsma, 2007, p. xv). Many scholars view Katrina as a social event, rather than a natural disaster, and thus as involving many complicated issues deeply embedded in the US social structure. As Negra noted (2010), Hurricane Katrina "manifested not only a profoundly unequal national culture and the rupture of the social contract, it also seemed to lay bare the normalization of risk in American life" (p. 1). Six years later, Katrina remains synonymous in America with distrust of the government and social inequality.
33 Post-disaster reconstruction, a tempting opportunity for the public and private sectors to gentrify affected regions for profit, often increases political and economic power differentials between racial and class groups (Negra, 2010, p. 11). Rebuilt urban areas can be tourist magnets, but are typically too expensive for low-income, working-class victims. Natural disasters thus often resemble social disasters in that they increase social exploitation and oppression and exacerbate existing social differences.
Finally, the nature of contemporary disasters in the highly urbanized and industrialized 21st century world renders classical disaster codification and associated findings increasingly problematic. In predicting public responses to disaster, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the dichotomy between natural (consensus) and technological (dissensus) disasters. United Nation Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) office head Margareta Wahlstrom (2012) observed, "Given the rapid pace of urbanization, and the technology base that a well-resourced city requires, the risk of 'synchronous failure' is growing constantly" (¶ 5). In today’s world, damage from natural disasters can display a ripple effect as disasters impact technological systems with catastrophic results.
The Fukushima Earthquake vividly demonstrated this phenomenon. As a natural disaster, the Fukushima Earthquake was an 8.9 magnitude geological event that rattled northeastern Japan and triggered a 14-meter high tsunami that damaged two major coastal prefectures, Miyagi and Fukushima. As a technological disaster, the Fukushima
Earthquake disrupted the critical power supply for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant while the tsunami disabled back-up generators at the plant, causing the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986 (Freer, 2012). A complex, large-
34 scale catastrophe like the Fukushima Earthquake thus challenges traditional disaster typologies.
Given that the increasing hybridization of natural and technological disasters renders a priori classification ineffective, scholars in disaster research are seeking alternative views and using the concept of the na-tech disaster (i.e., a combined natural and technological disaster) to define the evolution of modern catastrophes (Picou,
Brunsma, & Overfelt, 2010, p. 6). This evolution includes the long-term political, economic, cultural, and environmental impacts of such disasters, as well as the mental health and recovery issues facing affected communities (Picou, Brunsma, & Overfelt,
2010, p. 6). Consequently, by highlighting the complexity of contemporary disasters, researchers and responsible institutions strive to develop innovative techniques for post- disaster intervention and rehabilitation to "enable therapeutic processes and constrain corrosive processes" in the aftermath of disasters (Picou, Brunsma, & Overfelt, 2010, p. 9, italics original).
Although not exhaustive, the above discussions have shown the evolution of social science research on disasters. Modern natural disasters are considered to represent collisions between natural forces, social institutions, and human actors that must be understood from both scientific and sociological perspectives to fully grasp their complexity. Realizing the lack of concern of disaster research with broader theoretical issues, disaster researchers advocate linking disaster studies with related specialties, such as the study of risk (Beck, 1992) and environmental sociology (Perrow, 1984; Vaughan,
1996). Other disaster scholars suggest focusing explicitly on race, gender, ethnicity, and social class in disasters to keep pace with concerns in mainstream sociology (Tierney,
35 2007). Nevertheless, all of these perspectives overlook the close connection between disaster studies and media studies. This is not to say that scholarly work on disasters has never addressed media. However, when mentioned, media are often treated as simply transmitting disaster information, as seen in studies of crisis communication.
The role of media during natural disasters must be addressed, because most people experience catastrophic events only indirectly via media representations. In today's world it is through the media that people bear witness to tragedies and suffering.
Using Hurricane Katrina as an example, "fewer than several hundred thousand people witnessed the storm in person. For the other 99.8 percent of Americans, the disaster was a media experience with lasting implications for public opinion and action" (Mayer, 2008, p. 178). Media not only transmit disaster images and information, but also influence how disasters become known, responded to, and remembered. In other words, media articulate the political significance and cultural meaning of disasters. Consequently, to downplay the role of media in constructing and interpreting disasters is to ignore a vital analytical perspective.
Disasters and the News Media
Communication studies dealing with disasters have mainly focused on the development of disaster cognition and information diffusion. As summarized by the
National Research Council's Committee on Disasters and Mass Media, the role of the media in a crisis is to prepare the public for potential emergencies, disseminate disaster information and coping strategies, and provide reassurance or assuage grief and guilt in the aftermath (cited in Wilkins, 1984, p. 51). Most Western disaster communication research has focused on the media's ability to transmit instant and accurate warning
36 messages in response to disasters. A similar trend has been found in Asian scholarship on the relationship between disaster and news media. In recent years, a few Chinese and
Taiwanese scholars have attempted to study the function of journalism during natural disasters, especially in the wake of particularly devastating events such as the 921
Earthquake (1999) and Typhoon Morakot (2009) in Taiwan, and the Sichuan Earthquake
(2008) in China. However, most of these studies have focused on the technological dimension of information and on efforts to improve crisis communication. Studies in this tradition have concluded that "better communication technology and democratic access to the media are what prevent a hazard from becoming a disaster, because the content creates disaster awareness and risk perception among [the] audience" (Perez-Lugo, 2001, p. 56). The assumed linear relationships between the three key actors in disaster communication, namely the governmental officials who generate disaster information, the media conveying that information, and the public that receive the information and modify their perceptions and behaviors accordingly, underscore an influential tradition in communication studies—the transmission view of communication.
The transmission view describes the sources and content of disaster coverage, but does not consider the reasons for specific topic selection or the profound impact of the mediated representation of disasters. As Riegert and Olsson (2007) asked, "if information dissemination is paramount in extreme crisis, why does television news continue live for hour after hour, with no new information forthcoming?" (pp. 143‒144). Rather than giving a factual account of disaster related developments, the news media clearly also function as "psychologist, comforter, and co-mourner" to help society work through a tragic event (Riegert & Olsson, 2007, p.147). Furthermore, Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen, and
37 Cottle (2012) suggested that the way in which disasters are "signaled and symbolized, turned into spectacles or effectively rendered silent on the media stage, can have far- reaching consequences for the victims and survivors directly affected, for surrounding communities, and for the conduct of social relations and political power more widely" (p.
23). Therefore, it is important to recognize that the media not only communicate but also construct disasters, conditioning their visibility, priority, cultural meaning, and political significance. To better interpret cultural nuances and political complexity in news coverage of Typhoon Morakot, this dissertation employs a cultural approach, inspired by
Carey's (1989) ritual view of communication, to examine its production and representation.
Studying Journalism Through the Concept of Ritual
Drawing on several research traditions, Carey (1989) proposed adopting a ritual view of communication to understand its cultural function of communication in human society—a view that "is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs" (p. 18). In this view, the ritual form of communication is valuable because it brings meaningful order to our lived experience. In other words, communication is a ritualistic process through which social members are united in
"fellowship and commonality", while their cultural world is produced and maintained
(Carey, 1989, p. 18).
Examining journalism using the cultural approach, Carey (1989) suggested that reading newspapers is a "ritual act", because it is "a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed" (p. 20).
38 As illustrated in his example of the international trade negotiations between the US,
Germany, and Japan, newspapers do not merely provide information but offer a narrative
"portrayal of the contending forces in the world" (i.e., "American patriots" versus
"ancient enemies") (Carey, 1989, p. 20). Journalism thus is a specific cultural creation that helps a collective confirm its core values while "genres of journalism are seen as forms of story-telling inherited from the culture in which they work" (Riegert & Olsson,
2007, p. 144). But how do the "contending forces" mentioned by Carey (1989) work on different levels of news making to produce a particular cultural perspective for readers (p.
20)? The answer to this question lies in the work of Ehrlich (1996). Using the concept of ritual to study journalism, as Ehrlich (1996) suggested, can connect conventional journalistic practice ("individual or occupational level") and newsroom culture
("organizational level") to the reproduction of the social status quo ("institutional level")
(p. 5).
Journalists use a series of routinized practices to handle daily events (Tuchman,
1973). These structured responses to events guide journalists in both daily practice and when confronting great uncertainty. Journalistic routines include presenting both sides of a story to show impartiality, providing supportive evidence to enhance credibility, using quotes and quotation marks to demonstrate neutrality, and employing an inverted pyramid format to structure and prioritize information in a news story (Tuchman, 1972).
These routinized procedures, known as the "strategic ritual of objectivity" (Tuchman,
1972), allow journalists to develop seemingly objective accounts of and explanations for the social world they cover, while avoiding charges of bias and unfairness. In short, these ritualized practices are a defensive mechanism that helps newsmakers deal with
39 "continual pressures [such] as deadlines, possible libel suits, and anticipated reprimands of superiors" (Tuchman, 1972, p. 660).
This strategic ritual is performed at both the individual and organizational levels of news-making. News organizations typically rely on routine procedures, such as newsbeat systems, to ensure a steady flow of news production. The newsbeat system refers to the routine assignments given to journalists based on topic or territory (Cook,
1998). This system transforms the social world into compartmentalized journalistic domains, meaning stories that do not neatly fit into one of these domains can fall between the cracks. Furthermore, authoritative individuals belonging to a given newsbeat (e.g., institutional spokespersons or committee chairmen) often function as primary sources for journalists, enhancing story accountability. These individuals have titles that indicate their privileged knowledge positions (i.e., "they have more 'facts' in their disposal"), supporting the accuracy and depth of their information (Tuchman, 1972, p. 672).
Favoring institutional and authoritative sources thus adds structural bias to journalists' news coverage, constructing a social reality that primarily reflects the interests and perspectives of particular social classes (Cook, 1998; see also Hall et al., 1978).
The idea that news coverage is scripted by authoritative agents becomes even more prominent during special occasions, such as national ceremonies and political races.
Describing these televised special occasions as "media events", Dayan and Katz (1992) proposed a three-way categorization: "contests" (e.g., the Olympic Games, presidential debates), "conquests" (e.g., moon landings), and "coronations' (e.g., royal weddings) (pp.
30‒33). As "high holidays of mass communication," media events are carefully preplanned and scripted ceremonies often hosted by official institutions, produced by
40 news media that broadcast them in real time, and viewed by large audiences in multiple locations who invest their viewing with special attention and emotion (Dayan & Katz,
1992, p. 1). In other words, media events are co-productions between political establishments and news media that interrupt not only normal broadcasting schedules but also the "natural rhythms" of the everyday viewing experience (Carey, 1998, p. 44). Thus the significance of media events comes from their ritual function of uniting a collective through shared viewing experiences as they turn private homes into public and cultural spaces in which "collective identities and solidarities essential for the functioning of differentiated societies are forged" (Curran & Liebes, 1998, p. 5).
From the individual level of news-writing, through the organizational level of news-making, and finally to the institutional level of media event production, the concept of ritual offers a useful device to connect a particular journalistic culture to the general culture or worldview of its audience (Ehrlich, 1996). Despite their routinized and repetitive nature, journalistic practices are performed organically, not mechanically. To consider these practices as regulations imposed on journalists is to underestimate their symbolic power. In fact, the strategic ritual of objectivity in journalism is highly valued as a professional ideal (Tuchman, 1972). As argued by Philipsen, "ritual pays homage to a sacred object or principle while enacting and expressing a participant's close identification with the symbolic code of a group" (cited in Ehrilch, 1996, p. 6). In this regard, through mastering the news storytelling craft journalists establish their professionalism and confirm their membership of the "interpretive community" (Zelizer,
1993). These shared organizational procedures become a way for journalists to create professional boundaries that differentiate them from amateurs.
41 Studying Disaster Journalism Through the Concept of Social Drama
Because of their unpredictable dynamic and conflictive nature, natural disasters threaten routinized journalistic practices and the conventional power structure made up of authorities, journalists, and citizens. For instance, extended reporting of disasters often occurs against the government's will, renders government institutions vulnerable to public criticism, and pressures authorities into immediate action. In such situations, journalists are expected to be assertive and independent as they convey public dissent and disagreement with officials. Furthermore, news workers employ resonant symbols, dramatic visualizations, and emotions to enhance their narrations in disaster coverage to maintain viewership. Disaster journalism thus presents a "social drama," using the term of anthropologist Victor Turner (1981), through which public dissent and resentment are conveyed and existing power structures challenged.
Social drama, according to Turner (1981), describes a disruptive event occurring within a group with a shared culture, values, and interests. The cause of this disruption can emerge from impulsive heated feelings or from deliberate actions aimed at revealing hidden social issues (Turner, 1981, p. 146). Either way, such dramas often proceed through four stages: 1) the "breach" phase, in which there occurs a public breach of the long existing "rule of morality, law, custom, or etiquette" (Turner, 1981, p. 146); 2) the
"crisis" phase, in which tensions manifest and divide society into various factions (Turner,
1981, p. 146); 3) the "redressive" phase, in which the authorities provide adjustive mechanisms, ranging from "personal advice and informal attribution to formal juridical and legal machinery", to limit further widening of the breach (Turner, 1981, p. 147); and
4) the final phase, which can be either the "reintegration" of once divided and contested
42 social groups or, if redressive attempts have failed and the breach is deemed irreparable,
"spatial separation" between social groups (Turner, 1981, p. 147). Although Turner's
(1981) social drama was based on his observations of political rites in a primitive society, this concept represents a "universal processual form" in which different social actors employ particular means and resources to compete for "sacred ends" (i.e., "power",
"honor" and "prestige") (p. 148). In other words, the concept of social drama not only emphasizes the maintenance of culture and society through ritual, as does that of media event (Dayan & Katz, 1992), but also recognizes the performances of and interactions between social actors in this process and permits social change.
Applying this anthropological concept to examine disaster journalism, intense news coverage during disruptive events clearly can escalate a breach caused by a disaster into a sociopolitical crisis. In the crisis phase, not only is journalism a site to reflect political and cultural struggle, but journalists also become participants in this process, experimenting with nonconventional practices and formats to make sense of these political and cultural upheavals. As Bennett (1990) discovered in his model of press-elite indexing, the mainstream US media typically treat government officials as sources of daily news. This practice leads to "granting public officials a virtual news monopoly" and limiting "diversity in the politically volatile marketplace of ideas" (Bennett, 1990, p. 103).
However, when political elites display divided opinions or uncertainty, the media seizes the opportunity to adopt critical and independent perspectives. In this regard, non-routine disaster events create opportunities for news media to reverse existing power structures.
Similarly, Durham (2008) observed that television adopted a more populist stance in its coverage of Hurricane Katrina to represent the voice of the people and attract the
43 attention of the "absentee government" (p. 112). This populist stance refers to both the reprioritization of news sources so as to include more ordinary people (e.g., citizens, victims) in news coverage as eyewitnesses, and also to emotionalized news coverage—a tradition in tabloid journalism—to engage more viewership. Pantti and Wahl-Jorgensen
(2007) noted that public emotions of horror, empathy, grief, and anger are often articulated discursively in disaster coverage, serving as glue to create social solidarity in a devastated society and as a catalyst for social change. In this regard, emotive disaster coverage is a "unique secular ritual that both builds communities and enforces accountability" (Pantti & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2007, p. 22).
Due to intense media scrutiny, community political leaders, or "star groupers" to use the label of Turner (1981, p. 148), are forced to speed up their deliberation of redressive mechanisms to resolve the heated crisis. This media pressure is described as
"CNN Syndrome"—the way dramatic and nonstop media coverage has not only
"nationalized and politicized" otherwise local disasters but also "distorts objective consideration of state requests for disaster relief" (Platt, 1999, pp. 21‒22). Meanwhile, political leaders learn to create media spectacles to divert public attention or regain public trust. As Turner (1981) noted,
it is the star groupers who manipulate the machinery of redress, the law courts, the procedures of divination and ritual, and impose sanctions on those adjudged to have participated crisis, just as it may well be disgruntled or dissident star groupers who lead rebellions and provoke the initial breach. (p. 148)
Throughout the redress phase, new developments and political moves are interpreted and represented by journalists using "media templates" to create the continuity between the past and present (Kitzinger, 2000, p. 61), strategic framing to emphasize certain dimensions of the disaster (Entman, 1993), and culturally resonant narratives to highlight
44 shared social values (Kitch, 2003; Lule, 2001). Disaster news coverage has "real and enduring consequences for social life" (Ettema, 1990, p. 311). It helps create the reintegration of a traumatized community, or escalate their separation in either physical or symbolic ways. Consequently, disaster journalism resembles a conflictual ritual, a social drama, in the sense that through its coverage sociopolitical antagonisms are witnessed, the media-structure dynamic and conventional journalistic practices are redefined, and social reflexivity and critique are invited.
Using the concept of ritual to examine disaster journalism enables this research to investigate how journalists employ ritualistic practices to turn collective traumas into constructed media events, narrate them through established cultural codes, and transform them into a preferred and authoritative moral allegory (Zelizer, 1992). In this regard, disaster journalism functions as a "civil religion" that provides closure to the national grieving process, establishes a dominant collective memory, and creates a unified national ideology (Kitch, 2003, p. 213). On the other hand, this research demonstrates how disaster journalism is a conflictual ritual, a social drama (Turner, 1981), that not only renegotiates imbalanced power relationships among social actors but also the ideal of journalism itself.
Methods and Data Explained
Although some general rules guide journalism worldwide, news production and presentation remain distinctive cultural practices shaped by social milieu. Employing a methodological triangulation of in-depth interviews with 23 veteran journalists who covered Typhoon Morakot and textual analysis of related broadcast, newspaper, and online news coverage, this dissertation examines the production and representation of the
45 event in the Taiwanese media. In the social sciences, triangulation refers to the simultaneous application of several methods to achieve a research goal (Seale, 1999). As
Dingwall explained, "triangulation offers a way of explaining how accounts and actions in one setting are influenced or constrained by those in another" (cited in Seale, 1999, p.
474). Using triangulation thus not only allows researchers to learn from multiple types of empirical evidence, but also helps avoid the intrinsic bias that can result from using only one approach.
Specifically, this dissertation employs the following: 1) in-depth interviews with veteran journalists to gain insights into journalistic operations during Typhoon Morakot;
2) interpretive visual analysis to examine the visual construction of public emotions in the first week of broadcast news; 3) framing analysis to examine the narrative attribution of political responsibility in the first month of newspaper coverage; and 4) narrative analysis to examine news stories focused on aboriginal victims, published over four years on the 88news website. Together, these qualitative research methods help this research better interpret continuity and discontinuity between disaster news production and presentation. Furthermore, reading the news coverage from the immediate aftermath to four years after recovery enables this research to see the evolution of news in each phase of the disaster.
The data collection process in this research proceeded in four steps. After obtaining IRB approval7, the 23 informants (i.e., journalists who covered Typhoon
Morakot) were recruited using snowball sampling and interviewed one-on-one for approximately 1.5 hours each. Informant testimonies were recorded with permission,
7This project was approved by IRB as protocol 21352 on April 17, 2013. It was renewed once on March 10, 2014 and was closed on March 10, 2015.
46 transcribed verbatim, and translated from Chinese to English by the researcher. The transcriptions were analyzed using open coding to search for high-level concepts (i.e., thematic patterns) and dominant categories and sub-categories (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
Second, the three top-rated news channels in 2009—TVBS, SET, and CTI—were identified following research by Lin (2009). Then, the first week of broadcast news on
Typhoon Morakot (August 7‒14) from these three channels was accessed and downloaded from the Democratic Progressive Party's news archive. The final sample included 138 hours of news programming from TVBS, 108 hours from SET, and 96 hours from CTI. Third, the first month of newspaper coverage on Typhoon Morakot
(August 7‒September 7) by four major Taiwanese newspapers—Liberty Times, Apple
Daily, United Daily, and The China Times—was collected from the archives in the
National Taiwan University Library and National Central Library. The sample ultimately consisted of 579 stories from Apple Daily, 1,098 from Liberty Times, 1,077 from United
Daily, and 1,065 from The China Times. Finally, online news coverage on Typhoon
Morakot was collected from the 88news website (http://www.88news.org/). The first news article on this website was posted on September 29, 2009 and the last on August 13,
2013. The final sample consisted of 1,396 news articles. Descriptions of how the methods were employed, how data were analyzed, and what the findings were are detailed in
Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, to which we now turn.
47 CHAPTER 3 MAKING DISASTER NEWS: JOURNALISTS' REPORTING ASSIGNMENTS DURING TYPHOON MORAKOT
In Baton Rouge, for a while I can't see the camera lens because of the rain. It doesn't really matter, though; I know what I'm supposed to say: "I am powerless in the face of the storm." That's what reporters always say. "The storm's a reminder of how weak we humans really are." Right now, however, at this moment, I don't feel any of that. I feel invincible. The storm whips around me, flows through me. I am able to work, to stand, even when it's at its worst. The satellite dish is up, we are on the air, and we’re just about the only ones left. We have beaten the elements. We have won. (Cooper, 2006, p. 128)
When Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan on August 8, 2009, hundreds of journalists rushed to the disaster sites to cover the large-scale destruction and incredible human loss. Coming primarily from four major newspapers and seven 24-hour television news channels, these correspondents represent a group of news organizations that vary widely in terms of audience (national vs. local), technology (print vs. electronic), and institutional culture. Significant individual differences also exist among them in terms of journalistic experience, gender, and work ethic. Nevertheless, facing a chaotic situation and fierce competition, these journalists produced very similar news content through all phases of the disaster.
While the coverage began with the standard warning of an impending typhoon and distribution of preparatory information, mainstream journalists quickly realized that
Morakot was anything but "normal". For the next twenty-six days, until bird flu replaced
Morakot as breaking news on September 3, the coverage collectively and consistently estimated causalities, documented flood levels, emphasized economic losses, investigated the government’s responsibility to lead recovery efforts, and presented human-interest stories of victims and first responders. Watching news across platforms presented the
48 impression that all these journalists worked in synergy (i.e., collective, team-oriented journalistic efforts).
Examination of the journalistic operations of mainstream reporters during
Typhoon Morakot is necessary to understand the highly formulaic media coverage they produced. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 veteran newspaper and broadcast journalists who covered Typhoon Morakot, this chapter aims to understand how behind- the-scenes forces (e.g., newsroom control, informal networking, and onsite technological options) influenced journalists’ front stage performances (i.e., news-making). Together these testimonies not only take us to the core of disaster news production in Taiwan, but also reveal how journalists see themselves and their profession.
Literature Review
News is often seen as the creation of individual journalists practicing their craft.
The impression of news production as an individual practice is further enhanced when readers see bylines in newspapers and magazines articles, and when the audiences hear the names and affiliations of reporters at the end of each newsreel. However, the development of "standardized news" (Bennett, Gressett, & Haltom, 1985, p. 50)—similar news content produced by seemly independent reporters across organizations—has challenged scholars to reconceptualize news-making as a collective process highly influenced by professional consensus, interpersonal networking, and "inter-organizational imitation" (Bennett, Gressett, & Haltom, 1985, p. 50). News media's gravitation toward a particular story with a shared focus becomes even more apparent in times of crisis. The image of "an excessive number of reporters (i.e., writers, anchors, etc.) aggressively pursu[ing] one notable story, actually smother[ing] the site with their grand presence, and
49 recurrently report[ing] on the story in a like fashion at a macro-level" (Matusitz & Breen,
2012, p. 900) has become a familiar visual in the news coverage of any modern disaster, from man-made tragedies (e.g., school shootings and terrorist attacks) to natural catastrophes (e.g., earthquakes and hurricanes).
This chapter is guided by two theoretical frameworks in attempting to understand this collective process of news making and its cultural and political functions: Zelizer's
(1993) journalists as interpretive communities and Cook's (1998) news media as a single institution. Building on this foundation, the discussion further situates this process in the context of disasters to explore the unique associated journalistic opportunities and challenges.
Theoretical Construct
Growing out of Stanley Fish's (1980) cultural studies oriented research, the concept of interpretive community contends that the meanings of texts are interpreted through readers' shared social experience—contradicting the traditional journalistic vision of a single objective truth (Hackett, 1984). Applying this concept to journalism, scholars have suggested that reporters form an "interpretive community" whose members are united by common interpretations of their social world (Berkowitz & TerKeurst, 1999;
Robinson & DeShano, 2011; Zelizer, 1993).
Zelizer (1993) argued that the profession of journalism is not only defined by professional ethics (e.g., education, training) but also by narrative practices (e.g., storytelling). In her analysis, Zelizer (1993) applied the notion of "double-time", namely
"two temporal positions" regarding an event (p. 224), to examine how journalists constitute themselves as an interpretive community. In the "local mode of interpretation"
50 (Zelizer, 1993, p. 224), journalists first position themselves as "the object of [news] accounts" (Zelizer, 1993, p. 224) through narratives such as "being there" and "on the spot" (Zelizer, 1993, p. 225). In the "durational mode of interpretation" (Zelizer, 1993, p.
225), journalists frame themselves as the subject of the news by emphasizing their association with and reflexive accounts of a historical event. This double time narration thus doubles the opportunities of journalists to act as interpretive authority of an event, first as an eyewitness and later as an amateur historian. The interpretive narratives journalists developed are then "transported into collective memory, where they are used as models for understanding the authoritative role of journalist[s] and the journalistic community" (Zelizer, 1992, p. 189). Consequently, journalism becomes a "discursive construct" which is characterized by the way "journalists talk about themselves and how they generate shared meaning of reality" (Mourao, 2014, p. 3).
Cook (1998) provided another angle to examine the journalistic consensus from a sociological perspective. Seeing news media as a single institution, Cook first suggested that journalists are guided by a key set of practices in gathering and structuring news information, such as deferring to expertise and official sources, presenting both sides of the story, providing hard evidence, and writing in an impersonal manner. These practices, similar to what Tuchman (1972) termed the "strategic ritual of objectivity" are vital for journalists to "respond to the risks imposed by deadlines, libel suits and superiors' reprimands" (p. 662). However, when the practices of news production are highly routinized and have little relevance to the end product, news becomes texts that are defined by established journalistic rules and routines, rather than being a representation of "the characteristics of events" (Cook, 1998, p. 73).
51 Secondly, Cook focused on the "mutual reliance" between journalists across space and over time (Cook, 1998, p. 80). Not only do individual journalists perform similar journalistic routines, they also consult each other when facing ambiguous situations to determine the newsworthiness and meanings of events. Counter intuitively, competition between journalists does not push them to pursue exclusive scoops, but to establish a
"risk averse consensus" (Cook, 1998, p. 78). Using Sigal's phrase, "This group judgment...imparts a measure of certainty to the uncertain world of the newsman" (cited in Cook, 1998, p. 80). Furthermore, journalists familiarize themselves with previous reporting angles to ensure they adopt an appropriate approach in covering a subject. In short, uncertainty about news reinforces dependency between news organizations and continuity in news narratives and interpretive frameworks. However, the danger of journalistic consistency is the absence of diversity in viewpoints and coverage across various media outlets.
Finally, the link between news media and politics was discussed. As a political communication scholar, Cook addresses the use of news making in policymaking. Given that journalists overwhelmingly favor official sources to add legitimacy to news, key political actors learn to feed their preferred agendas, issues, and facts to news organizations thorough strategic public relations and publicity efforts. This "structural bias" (Mourao, 2014, p. 4) enables politicians to exert control over news information to accomplish political and policy goals. Consequently, rather than playing the traditional role of the fourth estate, that of supervising the government’s exercise of its political power, the news media may become an "unwitting adjunct" (Cook, 1998, p. 165) to that very power. Recent studies on the monolithic, consensual, and patriotic coverage of the
52 9/11 terrorist attacks further underscored media complicity in engaging in a centralized media ritual and reproducing nationalist ideology (Borden, 2005).
Journalism in Times of Disaster
The theoretical lenses of journalists as interpretive communities and news media as an institution explain the similarity in news narratives and journalistic practices across media modalities. Nevertheless, recent scholarship on mediated disasters has recognized a more fluid press-government relationship as well as an alternative narrative that is more provocative than objective.
As Bennett (1990) discovered in the model of press-elite indexing, mainstream
US media typically treat government officials as sources of daily news. This practice leads to "granting public officials a virtual news monopoly" and limiting "diversity in the politically volatile marketplace of ideas" (p. 103). However, when political elites have divided opinions or display uncertainty, the media will seize the opportunity to adopt critical and independent perspectives. In this regard, unexpected disaster events create opportunities for news media to reverse existing power structures. Similarly, Durham
(2008) identified a de-centralized and conflictual relationship between news media and government in his research on news coverage of Hurricane Katrina. In his analysis, since officials were unable to manage the information flow and publicity as effectively as normal, television news adopted a more populist stance in its coverage of Hurricane
Katrina to represent the voice of the people and attract the attention of the "absentee government" (p. 112).
Izard and Perkins (2012) observed that many journalists abandoned the rules of dispassionate reporting and displayed their emotions in their coverage of Hurricanes
53 Katrina and Rita. Journalists' initial shock and sorrow quickly transformed into outrage and was candidly conveyed in their reportage. The clearest example occurred when CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper interrupted Senator Mary Landrieu as she thanked national leaders for their extraordinary disaster relief efforts. He said,
I'm sorry for interrupting, Senator...for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi, and to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I've got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset and very angry and very frustrated...Because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here? (Cited in Izard & Perkins, 2012, p. 6)
Cooper's raw outrage is rare in news coverage since journalists normally "outsource emotional labor by describing the emotions of others" (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013, p. 129).
Consequently, as Overholser (2006) concluded, in contrast to traditional news coverage in which emotional expression is carefully censored or expressed through sources, news workers "showed their hearts" in covering Hurricane Katrina, and moreover this is a typical journalistic response in times of disaster.
Method
So far this chapter has drawn on literature that portrays journalists as members of a political institution and as an interpretive community that faces unique opportunities and challenges in times of crisis. To better understand the production process of natural disaster news in Taiwan, the researcher conducted 20 in-depth interviews with mainstream journalists with first-hand experience of covering either the 921 Earthquake or Typhoon Morakot.
The interview subjects were recruited via snowball sampling, which refers to "the process of accumulation as each located subject suggests other subjects" (Babbie, 2004, p.
54 184). This method is appropriate when the researcher wishes to collect data on a target population whose members are difficult to locate. In this case, the difficulty was the result of the passage of time (i.e., five years). The first three interviewees (Informants N2,
N5, and T1) were friends of the researcher before the project was initiated. They were interviewed first and provided contact information of colleagues and supervisors who shared similar experiences in disaster reporting. The final group comprised 10 newspaper and 10 broadcast journalists. Informant numbers (N1-10 for newspaper; T1-10 for television) are used throughout the text to maintain anonymity. While all informants covered Typhoon Morakot in 2009, approximately two thirds of them covered both natural disasters (i.e., the 921 Earthquake and Typhoon Morakot) during their careers.
The majority of this group (16 out of 20) were still working in the news industry at the time of their interviews—albeit as managers (e.g., chief director, assistant manager, and deputy coordinator) rather than beat reporters. Meanwhile, four of them left the news industry to pursue careers in academia (Informants N1, N10 and T10) and the documentary film industry (Informant T8). On average, the group had 14.7 years of journalistic experience, with a range from 6 years to 22 years. Additionally, despite great efforts, only 5 female journalists (Informants N10, T1, T5, T7, and T10) were recruited— two of whom (Informants N10 and T10) were no longer working as journalists.
Each one-on-one interview was conducted face-to-face between August 2013 and
August 2014 and lasted approximately 1.5 hours. This process can be seen as an "in- depth contextual analysis of ordinary experiences" (Buzzanell, 1995, p. 344), which seeks to understand the production process of disaster news and the meaning journalists make from their reporting assignments. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to "focus [the]
55 discussion, yet also allowed flexibility to explore new ideas as they emerged" (Berkowitz
& TerKeurst, 1999, p. 130). These partially structured interviews were guided by such primary questions as: "What is the news production process during natural disasters, and how does it differ from everyday procedures?", and "Where and how do you obtain your news information?" As with most interview protocols, the questions asked of the journalists evolved over time. After the initial five interviews, the researcher started to observe a repetitive pattern in informants' responses. For example, they perceive that disaster reporting continues to be a male domain. This gendered division in Taiwanese news media was not anticipated by the researcher nor a focus in the beginning. However, observing this pattern in the first round of interviews, the researcher modified the protocol for the subsequent interviews. The final version of the protocol and the detailed demographic information can be found in Appendix A and Appendix C, respectively.
In a qualitative interview project, "saturation" is the most important concept for a researcher to determine when to stop conducting interviews (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson,
2006). The concept of saturation refers to "the point at which no new information or themes are observed in the data" (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006, p. 59). In this research, the threshold of saturation was achieved around the twelfth interview. Even though each informant shared distinctive personal experience in covering Typhoon Morakot, all shared a similar description of how to produce a news story, how to deal with the extended control from the newsroom, and how to compete yet cooperate with their colleagues. At this point, the researcher was almost able to predict the responses to any given question. For good measure, eight more interviews were conducted to confirm a pattern had been established. All interviews were recorded with the permission of the
56 informants, then transcribed verbatim and translated from Chinese to English by the researcher.
The resulting texts were analyzed using "open coding," a technique that searches texts for high-level concepts (i.e., thematic patterns) and dominant categories and sub- categories (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The open-coding data analysis comprised several stages. The first step was to closely read all transcripts to gain a feel for what disaster reporting is about (i.e., the essence of the raw data). After this initial reading, conceptualization was performed through "line-by-line analysis" to break the raw data into discrete incidents able to be searched for high-level concepts (i.e., repetitive thematic patterns). A deeper axial coding was further conducted to identify the relationships between the thematic patterns. Finally, the central thematic patterns were integrated and categorized through selective coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Applying open coding to interpret informants' disaster reporting experiences identified common patterns between newspaper and broadcast journalists, such as the (false) acceleration of operational autonomy, socialization of interpretive framework, practice of pack journalism, and a gender boundary in disaster reporting. These thematic patterns will be discussed in the next section to understand how mainstream journalists collectively built a shared interpretation to represent a key public event in Taiwan—Typhoon Morakot.
Racing the Typhoon with the Boys
The journalists interviewed described their news-gathering routines in times of disaster, the socialization that shapes the interpretive frameworks they use to represent natural disasters, and the masculine norms and ideology that dominate disaster journalism.
The analysis revealed that institutional, interpersonal and individual (gender) forces are
57 all crucial in the process of disaster news production. This section will discuss the journalistic practice, journalistic language and gendered norms associated with the coverage of Typhoon Morakot, drawing upon journalists’ words and experiences to illustrate and demystify the process of news production.
The (False) Acceleration of Onsite Operational Autonomy
In Taiwan, the news-gathering routine for newspapers starts the night before the presses roll as journalists inform their supervisors of scheduled events (e.g., press conferences, protests, consumer events, academic seminars) in their newsbeat for the following day. In the morning, they check in with their sources for developments and await the official assignment from their supervisors (determined in the morning meeting).
Around noon, the reporters reconfirm with their supervisors regarding the news stories they are working on, and at this point the supervisor may cancel a story or ask that two stories be combined. By 6 pm, the list of the next day's news items is finalized, and by 11 pm the journalists have written the stories and uploaded final versions via the online system. Their supervisors then check the content, and the editorial department verifies facts, decides headlines, and designs page layout. Normally, each page consists of 5 to 6 news stories plus 2 to 3 photos, and the maximum length of each news story for all four newspapers is 500 words.
For broadcast journalists, their daily routine starts with reading newspapers.
According to a reporter, "without a doubt, the newspaper sets the news agenda in Taiwan.
As a broadcast journalist, most of the time our job is just to visualize those stories covered in the newspapers" (Informant T1). After the morning managerial meeting, the journalists receive concrete assignments from their supervisors and go into the field to get
58 footage and sound bites from appropriate informants. Broadcast journalists face two daily deadlines: the first at around 11 am for the noon newscast, and the second at 6 pm for the evening news. A regular television news story is about 90 seconds. Broadcast journalists also provide live reports to cover major ongoing events.
Both newspaper and broadcast journalists have their own assigned newsbeat; however, in response to a major disaster they are reassigned to cover the breaking news.
According to a senior reporter,
When Typhoon Morakot struck southern Taiwan, journalists in central Taiwan were asked to rush to the disaster sites immediately because of their geographical proximity. Soon after, we [journalists located in Taipei, northern Taiwan] were also parachuted to the sites to support them. (Informant no. N4)
Journalists prioritize crises and collective trauma by inviting audiences to monitor developments with around-the-clock coverage. After all, as Izard and Perkins suggested
(2012), "It's not cynical to note that journalism thrives on bad news. One definition of news...is that which is not normal" (p. 1). News media respond to unexpected disasters by abandoning regular coverage to give the disasters significant space or airtime. The sudden increase in demand for disaster information challenges established journalistic practices, and many informants mentioned the "acceleration of operational autonomy"
(Informants N3, N4, T1, T3, T5, and T8). As the only persons on site, the journalists served as the "discoverer" and "initiator" of news stories (Informant T1). In other words, journalists took from their supervisors and editorial departments the power to decide what is newsworthy. However, reading their testimonies more closely, it is clear that even in times of disaster, news production practices remain highly controlled by institutional forces in several ways.
59 First, since most journalists covering Typhoon Morakot were parachuted into the disaster sites, they had no previous local knowledge or connections and thus relied heavily on "official sources" (e.g., local governments, police departments, fire departments and hospitals) to comprehend the disaster (Informants N3, N4, N6, T1, and
T3). This is consistent with Sood, Stockdale and Rogers' (1987) observation that journalists tend to rely on an "information czar", a person with official status and relevant expertise, to convey the most credible and authoritative information regarding disasters and interpret its complexities (p. 35). Quarantelli's (1981) research also found that the
"command post perspective"—i.e., the perspective of officials—dominates the media representation of emergencies (p. 59). Consequently, the journalistic preference for using a centralized information source reflects the fixed and asymmetrical relationship between the media and sociopolitical authorities (i.e., the government and other authorities).
Representing Typhoon Morakot from the command post standpoint, newspaper and broadcast journalists thus collectively created a one-dimensional disaster story focused on disputes between politicians as well as their political responsibilities. Mainstream journalists largely overlooked the other characters involved in the tragedy, whether civic volunteer groups or severely affected aboriginal tribes, because they were not considered legitimate sources. This political emphasis and its implications will be discussed in
Chapter 5.
Other sources were notably absent from mainstream news coverage of Typhoon
Morakot. This exclusion was not based on their lacking credibility (i.e. they are not included in the regular news beat), but rather on their established cultural authority.
Illustrative of this absence is the lack of critical voices in mainstream coverage of the
60 Tzu-Chi Buddhist Foundation. Given Tzu-Chi’s many decades of contributions to both local and international disaster relief efforts, it has established a reputation in Taiwanese society as a well-respected and prestigious humanitarian organization. Fearing this foundation's social impact, most mainstream media consciously remained silent when activists and alternative journalists questioned Tzu-Chi's disaster housing project for aboriginal victims as "undisguised colonization" in a 21st century context (Pnn, 2010, ¶
12). As a broadcast journalist explained,
I don't know if there is a mutual agreement between our management team and Tzu-Chi. The only thing I know is that you should never represent this foundation from a negative angle...There is no written policy, but a smart journalist learns this rule from his/her reporting experiences. (Informant no. T1)
While newsroom socialization was a big reason for this self-censorship, other journalists mentioned Tzu-Chi directly intervening to control its media image. For instance, immediately after The China Times ran a full-page story on the controversies associated with the disaster housing project, the executive editor received a phone call from Tzu-Chi voicing concerns. In response to strong pressure, The China Times then ran another full- page story emphasizing Tzu-Chi's humanitarian spirit to provide "balance" (Informants
N1 and N5). In short, institutional sources set the news agenda through the inclusion and exclusion of news items. They can either feed journalists vital information, or use their social connections and influence to block a story from publication.
Furthermore, the onsite newsgathering process of broadcast journalists is highly controlled and constrained by both technological and organizational forces. Given that television news stresses visuals and immediacy, live reporting becomes the best way to address these two emphases (Informant N7). A live report requires that journalists be on constant stand-by in a specific place that is both visually dramatic, thus satiating the
61 spectator’s gaze, and accessible to the Satellite News Gathering (SNG) car, thus facilitating signal-transmission. As a reporter opined, "When I was assigned to do a live report, I dared not go too far away since it might not allow for a stable transmission signal... Even if you got the best image, it would mean nothing if you couldn't send it out"
(Informant T9). Broadcast journalists were also in close contact with their home offices and instructed to cover developing stories from specific angles. "My supervisor monitored the newscasts from rival television channels all day long. If he saw something he liked, he called me immediately to order a similar news story" said one reporter
(Informant T1). This acknowledgment not only illustrates the low operational autonomy enjoyed by on-site broadcast journalists, but also discredits their statements, reported above, regarding the newsroom power shift in times of disasters.
Compared to their broadcast colleagues, newspaper journalists are relatively autonomous doing disaster reporting. With only one daily deadline, they spend most of their time exploring the affected areas in hope of sniffing out scoops by their news nose.
However, not all print journalists enjoy this acceleration of operational autonomy, and this holds especially for less-experienced ones. For example, one reporter said, "Typhoon
Morakot was my first-ever parachute assignment. I was clueless and wasted so much time on unnecessary practices. I wish my supervisor had been more hands on and provided me with more information about the events" (Informant N4). In other cases resentment resulted from insufficient instructions from the home office to help them navigate the situation (Informants N1 and N2). Other senior informants mentioned internal tensions commonly seen in disaster reporting, mostly generated by rivalry between parachute and local journalists and inter-departmental politics (Informants N3, N7, and N9). As one
62 informant noted, "I was clearly there to help. But my colleague based in southern Taiwan was very defensive and unwilling to share his local connections with me. It was as if I was trespassing on his news beat" (Informant N9). This testimony shows that although disasters are supposed to unite collectives, journalists still fought one another to maintain ownership boundaries. Another informant recalled that they phoned the editorial department seeking assistance in typing up a story via dictation when the situation was so chaotic that there was no technology to send their article back. However, this request to
"take a 350 word dictation" was denied on the basis that it was the journalist's job to write the news, not the editor's (Informant N6). In the words of a senior newspaper journalist who suffered a heart attack after 34 days spent covering Typhoon Morakot with little rest,
"Disasters bring you greater operational autonomy. However, less intervention also means less assistance. It is just the way it is" (Informant N3).
Even though the increased demand for disaster information gives both broadcast and newspaper journalists different levels of operational autonomy, their dependence on institutional sources and technology as well as the extension of newsroom control work together to constrain this liberty. As the following section shows, the socialization of disaster news language and the practice of pack journalism further limit journalists’ options in disaster reporting and lead to highly formulaic, unoriginal Typhoon Morakot coverage across news platforms.
The Socialization of Disaster News Language
Many informants described the process of learning how to write the news regarding a natural disaster. With time and experience, most reporters learn the rules and routines of disaster news language, which helps them reduce "the variability of the raw
63 material of news" and "routinize the unexpected" in disasters (Tuchman, 1973, p. 129).
"The event is different each time, but the interpretive framework you use to represent each disaster is similar", said a newspaper journalist (Informant N6). Disaster coverage thus can be seen as a "novelty without change" (Cook, 1998, p. 81) through which journalists transform an inexplicable natural catastrophe into a comprehensible social event.
The interpretive framework journalists employed had a different focus at each stage of a natural disaster. When Typhoon Morakot first broke, journalists focused on
"factual information," such as the flood level, ravaged landscape, and number of fatalities; they did so to evaluate the seriousness of the unexpected catastrophe (Informants N4, N5,
N7, N6, T1 and T7). Both newspaper and broadcast journalists used textual and visual analogies to convey this factional information. For example, while a newspaper reporter coined the term "Hurricane Katrina in Taiwan" to help readers comprehend the devastation caused by Typhoon Morakot though juxtaposition with another disaster, broadcast journalists inserted footage of Formula One races into their newscasts in a visual metaphor to describe the wind speed. Beyond mere statistics, this factual information quantified and personified Typhoon Morakot as a destructive villain or unruly monster that threatened human civilization, a perpetual struggle between man and nature. Following this first framework, "human interest stories," which emphasize valor and resilience, were used to envision the victory of humanity, whereas "the attribution of responsibility" framework was used to explain why humanity occasionally lost the battle.
Tales of heroism and sacrifice were paired with inexplicable horrors in disaster reporting (Informants N4, N5, N7, N6, T1 and T7). Stories of heroic behaviors—e.g.,
64 soldiers and fire fighters who gave their lives to save fellow citizens, and students who volunteered in rescue efforts—attracted great media attention during Typhoon Morakot.
As one broadcast journalist said,
We are a PG-13 news channel that our audience can watch with their families during dinnertime. Rather than repeating images of chaos, we want to focus more on uplifting stories. We want to show that there is still a bright side in times of darkness. (Informant T3)
Hero stories thus reassured the audience that the social order will be maintained and the tragedy handled with courage and optimism. Additionally, journalists singled out individual victims whose stories seemed particularly tragic, including their funerals and memorial services, to commemorate the common loss. Similar to Kitch and Hume's
(2008) study on news telling of tragic events in American context, these "obituary-style" news stories often underscored the virtues of the deceased (e.g., a good father, loving mother, and devoted daughter) (p. 19). Thus they functioned as civic lessons not only reflecting who we are, but also instructing the public who we want to become.
While human-interest stories provide closure to the national grieving process and assign cultural meaning to natural disasters, the attribution-of-responsibility framework creates an outlet for media to voice public anger and collective dissent. In disaster journalism, identifying a culprit on whom to assign blame is just as important as finding a hero to boost morale (Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen & Cottle, 2012). As noted by several informants, the "blame-game" became a media approach to transform a natural disaster into a social disaster and explain it as a result of human activity and/or negligence
(Informants N4, N5, N7, N6, T1 and T7). In his research on British television news coverage of the Kurdish refugee crisis in 1991, Shaw (1996) argued that "graphic portrayal of human tragedy and the victims' belief in Western leaders was skillfully
65 juxtaposed with the responsibility and the diplomatic evasions of those same leaders to create a political challenge which it became impossible for them to ignore" (p. 88). In a similar fashion, President Ma Ying-Jeou's slow response to the typhoon victims' suffering was amplified by mainstream media to frame him as the major culprit in the tragedy and pressure him to provide a satisfactory solution. These media narratives of blame and accountability often have political consequences. A month after the typhoon, Premier Liu
Chao-Shiuan resigned in a gesture intended to assume full responsibility for the government's disastrous crisis management.
Even though journalists use repetitive frameworks to cover natural disasters, there are also times they are caught in ambiguous and chaotic situations that require them to
"improvise" an interpretive framework for an unfolding event (Cook, 1998, p. 80). When asked how they interpret ambiguous developments, most informants mentioned their colleagues as their best "sources" and "sounding board" (Informants N4, N5, N7, N6, T1 and T7). According to a newspaper journalist, "we talked to each other [colleagues] to check if we shared a similar understanding of the situation... By doing so, we ensure that we are making the right judgment and no one gets a big scoop" (Informant N4). This collaborative process is known as "pack journalism" (Crouse, 1973; Matusitz & Breen,
2007, 2012) and sees reporters create unanimity in their news coverage and develop their membership of this "interpretive community" (Zelizer, 1993).
Timothy Crouse coined the term "pack journalism". In his book The Boys on the
Bus, Crouse (1973) revealed that during the 1972 presidential election in the United
States, a pack of journalists closely followed the political candidates to cover their campaigns. Sharing the same bus, the journalists ate, drank, gossiped and compared notes
66 with each other for months. This resulted in homogenous news content across news platforms, where even the most critical journalists "cannot completely escape the pressures of the pack" (Crouse, 1973, p. 15). Other scholars indentified similar journalistic practices in the modern news industry: a massive number of journalists pursue one unfolding story, cite the same sources, and produce similar news coverage which often follows the angle set by those with the most journalistic experience or working for the most prestigious news media (Matusitz & Breen, 2007, 2012). This consensus-building process is further enhanced by new technology (e.g., smart phone, instant message app) and via social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) where journalists' informal networking becomes visible to the public (Mourao, 2014).
The most harmful and unethical consequence of this standardized news content is the absence of independent reporting (Matusitz & Breen, 2007). Illustrative examples of this loss of independence in mainstream coverage of Typhoon Morakot included overestimated fatality numbers and unconfirmed rumors repeatedly published by different media. Additionally, four major newspapers collectively dropped the Morakot story on September 3 to place the next breaking news story—bird flu—on their front pages, as if the problems caused by the typhoon had all been resolved. When poor living situations of aboriginal victims in the typhoon’s aftermath demanded investigation, most mainstream media sided with Tzu-Chi and ignored the story. Only a small group of alternative journalists from 88news, who remained "journalistic outsiders" and had not adopted the perspective of the mainstream interpretive community (Berkowitz &
TerKeurst, 1999, p. 129) broke the silence and gave the story the media attention they felt it deserved. The alternative Morakot story told by 88news will be discussed in Chapter 6.
67 Using shared interpretive frameworks of factual information, human interest stories, and attribution of responsibility, mainstream journalists not only developed a collective representation of Typhoon Morakot, but also united as an interpretive community (Zelizer, 1993). However, this community is not egalitarian and remains male dominated. The next section will discuss different opportunities and challenges male and female journalists faced during their Morakot assignment and how their varying self- concepts led to different degrees of journalistic authority.
The Gender Boundary in Disaster Reporting
While the concept of pack journalism developed by Crouse (1973) has attracted great attention in media scholarship, less discussed is the "irresistible combination of camaraderie, hardship, and luxury" cultivated among reporters (p. 371), an exclusive male fraternity specialized in political communication. The term "boys" in the title of
Crouse’s book thus not only captures the physical reporting situation, but also the gendered notions associated with campaign coverage (Mourao, 2014). Politics is not the only subdomain in journalism deemed a male specialty. Studies have found that gender plays a role in beat divisions, according to which hard news (e.g., political, foreign, financial, etc.) is considered "masculine" whereas soft news (e.g., culture, health, family, human interest, etc.) is "feminine" (Tsui & Lee, 2012; Van Zoonen, 1998; Voinche,
Davie & Dinu, 2010). Furthermore, masculine newsbeats are often treated as more significant than feminine newsbeats in terms of their social impact and source credibility.
Therefore, the constant assigning of female reporters to cover "softer" and less substantive stories (Danilewicz & Desmond, 2007) impedes their chances of establishing journalistic authority (Steiner, 1998). To build up their professional identity, women
68 journalists often downplay their gender identity to demonstrate that they can do journalism just like men.
Despite numbers of female reporters in Taiwan increasing from 37.7% of the total in 1994 to 42.5% in 2004 (Lo, 2004), men continue to dominate the Taiwanese news industry. Statistics also show that Taiwanese female reporters are more likely than their male counterparts to quit journalism jobs within five years (Lo, 2004). This male domination extends to disaster reporting and is reflected in this study’s interview pool, which contained only five female journalists, four of whom worked for television and two of whom no longer work as journalists. As a senior reporter noted, "Even though the supervisor will ask for volunteers, we all know that unmarried male journalists are preferred for this kind of mission [disaster reporting]" (Informant T3). As this reveals, an unspoken masculinist ideology continues to dominate the Taiwanese news industry. First, given the unexpected and dangerous nature of disasters, male journalists are seen as more capable of handling the job than their female counterparts. Second, their single status (i.e., unmarried) means they are more flexible and cheaper to compensate in the event of an accident (i.e., the news company does not have to support his family). A close reading of informants' testimonies explains why disaster reporting in Taiwan continues to be designated as a male arena, with masculine characteristics extolled as representing true journalism and reinforcement of gender stereotypes.
Journalists used the analogy of war to describe their experiences covering
Typhoon Morakot. As one informant recalled,
I was assigned to replace a colleague who had been parachuted to Kaohsiung for a week to cover the typhoon. Before I took off, I asked him what I should prepare? He didn't say much but asked if I had seen any war movies recently. I said yes and
69 asked why. Even now I still clearly remember his answer: "because what you are going to see is even worse than those images." (Informant T9)
Others remembered seeing "body parts floating on the river" (Informants T3 and T6) and described "the smell of dead bodies as something horrifically unique and unforgettable"
(Informant N9). These accounts are not surprising. As Kitch and Hume (2008) noted,
"war [is] the reference most often used to describe the devastation resulting from… disasters" (p. 11). Together these candid visual and olfactory memories create a parallel between natural disaster sites and war zones. If covering a natural disaster is similar to a military mission, it seems more logical and "safe" (Informants N9 and T4) to ensure the
"soldiers" (Informants N4, T3, and T9) sent to the frontline are male.
Indeed, personal safety was the major justification mentioned in interviews for male journalists being better candidates for disaster reporting. According to a newspaper reporter,
There was no electricity or water, and I had to sleep in a half collapsed house with two male colleagues for two nights. This is the kind of environment we had to deal with during Morakot. If you had to dispatch someone to cover the story, you were definitely going to send a male correspondent. It has nothing to do with gender discrimination. It is about personal safety. (Informant N9)
This seemingly logical statement is clearly patriarchal. The hidden message is that female journalists are seen first as women, and hence as vulnerable to violence and harassment and in need of constant male companionship to ensure their safety. Moreover, even if fully capable of self-protection, female reporters are perceived as less flexible because of physiological constraints and gender expectations. As several male informants asked:
"What if they are on their periods and they have to use the toilet frequently?" (Informants
N4 and T3) and "What about their children? The reporting assignment could go on for months" (Informant T8). These inquiries not only belittle the female body as problematic
70 and inferior but also reinforence the traditional gendered division of household labor. The personal safety narrative thus strips female journalists of their professional identity and their opportunity to participate in a key news event.
Male and female journalists also employed different language to express their psychological conditions when covering Typhoon Morakot. Most male informants described themselves as "task-oriented" and striving to achieve journalistic excellence
(Informants N3, N6, N7, T3, and T9). "At that moment, the only thought in my mind was to be the first to hop on a military helicopter so I could get a big scoop from the ravaged mountain village," said one broadcast reporter. "You forget what fear is, you just want to fulfill your responsibility" (Informant T4). This "no-fear" mentality was shared by other male interviewees who depicted the Morakot experience as "pedagogical" and
"empowering" (Informants N4, N7, T3 and T6). As a senior correspondent claimed,
"when you are assigned to cover a disaster, if you don't feel an adrenaline rush, you are probably not going to be a good journalist in the long run" (Informant N7). In the eyes of male reporters, disaster reporting is a rite of passage through which they develop a profound understating of life, death, and humanity—vital elements in journalism. The reward for passing the test is greater journalistic authority.
In contrast, female journalists are more willing to admit that disaster reporting has taken a toll on them. Many described feeling "overwhelmed" and "shocked" by the sight of numerous corpses (Informants T5 and T10) and mentioned the development of post- traumatic stress disorder symptoms, such as "fear of the dark," "insomnia" and "loss of appetite" (Informants T1 and T5). Notably, female informants were surprised to hear that their male colleagues remained psychologically intact despite the emotionally taxing
71 nature of such assignments. They interpreted the "no-fear" narrative as a rhetorical maneuver through which male journalists maintained their "masculine pride" (Informants
T5 and T 10). However, when asked to present a counter example to the masculine domination of disaster reporting, two recounted the exact same story—a story that only reinforced the stereotypes of female journalists as fragile.
A female anchor from one major TV network was assigned to cover a plane crash in 1998...Her team arrived at night. It was really dark and the area was not marked off by police tape, so she didn't notice she was standing on body parts. Once she realized, she had mental breakdown and rushed back to the SNG car. To her, the whole thing was not only scary but also extremely disrespectful to the deceased. She couldn't continue with the live report anymore...Of course her cameraman was very upset because he had to cover her job...For the next ten years, this female anchor became a laughing stock and example of how not to do in disaster reporting. (Informant no. T5)
Overall, the testimonies of female reporters suggest their desire to challenge the masculine culture of disaster journalism and the discrimination they face. However, when they reach for an illustrative narrative from their repertoire, they pull out a story that appears to further that very discrimination. Yet, this openness to their personal emotions facing trauma can add a humanistic perspective to disaster coverage by integrating emotional and psychological unease into the news treatment, an application of "intimate journalism" (Harrington, 1997). Besides adding perspective, this openness can also strengthen advocacy for a system of safety insurance and psychological counseling for professional media workers, which is vital but missing in Taiwan.
It is important for journalists to acknowledge their emotions when covering monumental tragedies. Their feelings of outrage and frustration often transform into compassionate news coverage that attempts to speak on behalf of victims. However, being dominated by the masculine mentality, "[t]he culture of journalism has been to
72 ignore this [emotional casualty], to deny this, to treat it with alcohol and bravado and a certain amount of contempt for the journalist who admits a problem" said psychiatrist
Frank Ochberd (cited in Haynes, 2006, ¶ 28). Although journalists are expected to be
"cool under fire" (Haynes, 2006, ¶ 26) to preserve objectivity, accuracy, and fairness in their news writing, passionate yet critical disaster coverage might have the power to invite the audience to engage with the event and take actions for social change.
Conclusion
Struck by the similarity of mainstream media coverage of Typhoon Morakot, the researcher interviewed veteran journalists who covered this tragic event to understand how institutional, organizational, and individual forces shaped the process of news production. Evidence shows that despite the sudden increase in demand for disaster information that challenged established journalistic norms, reporters’ operations were still heavily constrained by official sources, on-site technological options, and the extension of newsroom control. They also employed standard interpretive frameworks to represent different stages of the typhoon and thus assigned both cultural and political meaning to the natural disaster. This shared interpretation was further enhanced by the practice of pack journalism, through which journalists confirmed both the authenticity of the
Morakot story and their membership of this interpretive community.
Furthermore, male journalists were considered better candidates to cover Typhoon
Morakot for both personal and professional reasons. They are deemed capable of simultaneously protecting themselves and remaining emotionally intact under a chaotic situation. On the other hand, the female body and female sensibility were seen as obstacles to journalistic professionalism, especially in times of disasters. In this way,
73 when journalists employ "double time narration" (Zelizer, 1993) to construct and reconstruct the meaning of this key event, it is always the masculine perspective and the authority of male reporters being recognized and perpetuated.
Finally, it is worth noting that given most interviewees in this research were parachute journalists, they represent an interpretive community whose national and outsider perspectives may differ from local understanding of the disaster. Nevertheless, their testimonies provided a solid foundation for the next two chapters, which focus on newspaper and television coverage of Typhoon Morakot, respectively.
74 CHAPTER 4 FEELING THE DISASTER: AN EXAMINATION OF EMOTIVE TELEVISION REPORTAGE FOLLOWING TYPHOON MORAKOT
What we see above all in the news on our TV screens are the faces of the rulers, experts and journalists who comment on the images, who tell us what they show and what we should make of them. If horror is banalized, it is not because we see too many images of it. We do not see too many suffering bodies on the screen. But we do see too many nameless bodies, too many bodies incapable of returning the gaze that we direct at them, too many bodies that are an object of speech without themselves having a chance to speak. (Ranciere, 2009, p. 96)
"You are witnessing the Golden General Hotel being swept away by the Jhihben
River", CTI anchor Lu Show-Feng told viewers. "The nation is stunned by the image, which looks straight out of a horror movie". These shocking visuals, quickly relayed by every television news channel, revealed the destructive power of Typhoon Morakot.
Given the associated devastation and misery, Typhoon Morakot was already a dramatic and emotional event. Nevertheless, the various news channels showed something far from unmediated reality; rather, they showed a series of carefully edited segments that employed journalistic conventions to ratchet up the drama and emotion, such as aerial shots of swollen landscapes, close shots of teary eyes, animated charts of precipitation volume, and fast-paced narrations by on-the-scene reporters.
Using interpretive visual analysis to examine more than 300 hours of news programs produced by TVBS, SET, and CTI in the week immediately after Typhoon
Morakot, this chapter identifies a variety of approaches, such as commercial interruption, onsite eyewitnesses, dramatization, and cinematic vignette, that broadcast reporters used to tell emotionally powerful stories. While many media critics reduce such media construction to evidence of "weepy journalism" (Pantti, 2005) and "therapy news"
(Mayes, 2000), which exploits public emotions (including grief, horror, pride, and
75 compassion) to boost ratings, this chapter explores the cultural function of emotive disaster coverage. In fact, such coverage united a traumatized society and allowed journalists to establish their cultural authority through emotional storytelling .
The Expression of Emotion in Disaster News
Emotions have long been seen as the antithesis of objectivity—the dominant value in Western news reporting. As the "primary sense-making vehicle" in modern society (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013, p. 131), journalism is expected to be the embodiment of reason and rationality, serving to inform the audience and encourage political deliberation, not to elicit emotional responses from the public (Franklin, 1997; Kovach & Rosenstiel,
2007). Thus, emotion-charged reporting styles are often denounced as "sensationalism",
"entertainment", and tabloid journalism (Mayes, 2000, p. 30). Nevertheless, emotion has become an integral component of journalism, reflecting "a larger social trend that is shifting public discourse away from matters of the common good, and towards a preoccupation with the intimate and affective" (Pantti & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2007, p. 4).
The tendency of weaving emotional words into news copy is especially prominent in the context of unexpected tragedy, an area loaded with "tears and trauma" (Kitch, 2009, p.
29), and enforced by particular broadcast genres, such as 24-hour news coverage and talk shows (Aslama & Pantti, 2006). Thus, television reportage of disasters provides a unique opportunity to examine the social function, both integrative and disruptive, of emotive news discourse.
The Integrative Function of Emotive Disaster News
It is well documented that emotive disaster coverage creates a "community of feeling" in which individually experienced feelings are transformed into collectively
76 indulged "emotional energy" with political implications (Berezin, 2002, p. 39). Examples are evident in the news coverage of the assassination and funeral of controversial right- wing Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn. By emphasizing public mourning, Dutch reporters depoliticized a radical politician and his violent death and transformed it into an integrative national tragedy to construct a "sense of togetherness" in that multicultural society (Pantti & Weiten, 2005, p. 311).
As Linenthal (2001) noted, "Some events threaten bedrock convictions so severely that we engage them only by softening the story, reducing the sheer horror of an event...by grasping for comforting and reassuring story lines" (p. 41). Such transformation and closure is typically achieved through repetitive, archetypical, and culturally resonant news narratives told by journalists, so that the audience can comprehend an otherwise inexplicable tragedy (Bird & Dardenne, 1997; Kitch, 2009).
Thus, the story of September 11 progressed quickly from a shocking event initially loaded with "vulnerability and fear" to a profound moral tale celebrating "heroism and patriotic pride"—the qualities most highly esteemed by Americans (Kitch, 2003, p. 213).
Likewise, a local incident involving nine miners rescued after being trapped in the
Quecreek coal mine in Pennsylvania was elevated in the news account to a national miracle and "a parable of brave working-class men and the 'first responders' who saved them" (Kitch, 2009, p. 32).
Clearly, disaster news narratives of this kind, which follow a specific cultural script, not only represent suffering and provide a platform for victims' testimonials, but further guide the audience to develop certain emotional responses and "suggest the feelings that are suitable [...regarding the] given event" (Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen & Cottle,
77 2012, p. 75). Therefore, by framing the 2011 Haiti Earthquake as a humanitarian project, with the core message "the fate of the dark world [is] in the hands of a benevolent white one" (Balaji, 2011, p. 50), the US media successfully prompted American citizens to show their generosity. In contrast, in covering the Fukushima Earthquake, the US media, perplexed by "Japanese stoicism" (Roan, 2011, ¶ 4), failed to produce emotionally gripping stories. The tone of US coverage explains the slowness and limited scale of donations from the US (Dorell & Grossman, 2011, ¶ 28).
Acknowledging the integrative function of emotive disaster coverage, Pantti,
Wahl-Jorgensen, and Cottle (2012) further encourage journalists to reflect on their own emotions to engage larger audiences. This does not suggest that news workers need to be excessively emotional, but rather that they should combine an informative, fact-based reporting style with their deeply felt raw emotions (Ward, 2010). Realization of this goal requires following two rules. First, rather than becoming a gimmick to boost ratings, the display of journalists' emotions must be authentic, naturally timed, modestly proportioned, and of suitable duration. Overuse of emotions only causes "compassion fatigue" among viewers (Ward, 2010, ¶ 13). More importantly, "journalists should not use emotions to make themselves the center of the story and to engage in self-congratulation" (Ward,
2010, ¶ 16). Consequently, by representing the disaster using an "emotionally engaged" approach, journalists have a better chance of reconnecting with their estranged audience and "generat[ing] a new moral imaginary when bearing witness to human suffering"
(Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen & Cottle, 2012, p. 73).
78 The Disruptive Function of Emotive Disaster News
Nevertheless, other scholars contend that "disruptive events" (Katz & Liebes,
2007, p. 157)—whether natural or man-made—are prioritized in the news hierarchy simply to maintain viewership. Fierce competition among media organizations and innovations in broadcast technology further amplifies this news preference. In his article
"Why We Love Disaster Stories", Andrew O'Connell (2014) contemplated the attraction of tragedies and asked two questions: "Are we simply fascinated by others' misfortune?
The worse their luck, the greater our thrill? Or is it a need for catharsis—for acknowledgment of, and release from, all our repressed anxieties about the things that could harm us?" (¶ 3). O'Connell's queries echo a critical view in journalism studies that contends disasters are often dramatized as "spectacles" while their distant victims are portrayed in a way that reconfirms the status of viewers as "safe spectator[s]" (Pantti,
Wahl-Jorgensen & Cottle, 2012, p. 77).
Focusing on television coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Bates and Ahmed (2007) coined the term disaster pornography to highlight similarities between disaster news and pornography. According to their analysis, visuals of suffering and the scale of death were heightened in Katrina stories to "appeal to the thanatotic interest" among news consumers
(Bates & Ahmed, 2007, p. 191), much as female bodies are objectified and hypersexualized in pornography to invoke viewers' "prurient" desires (Bates & Ahmed,
2007, p. 190). As such, although many people were shown in Katrina coverage, they were portrayed as mere "objects" to satisfy the audiences' "voyeuristic desires" and strengthen the distinction between the powerful and safe home viewers who were able to assist and the subordinate and endangered victims who needed help (Bates & Ahmed,
79 2007, p. 190). Furthermore, given the lack of "additional literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" in news accounts of Katrina (Bates & Ahmed, 2007, p. 190), it was difficult for viewers to place these "superficial" visuals in a larger social context and be motivated to call for social justice for sufferers (Bates & Ahmed, 2007, p. 190).
Similarly, Liebes (1998) analyzed Israel television's live coverage of suicide bombings targeting buses in 1996 and proposed the concept of disaster marathon to describe a new broadcast genre in the making—a genre in which a disaster becomes a
"non-stop" and "open-ended" media event, whose story-telling energy derives from dramatic visuals and the collective emotions arising from conflict, anxiety, and disagreement (p. 71). The rise of this new broadcasting mode has important implications.
First, in the case of disasters with human perpetrators, the non-scripted nature of disaster marathons makes them akin to "co-productions" between broadcasters and perpetrators, with the former unwittingly publicizing the anti-establishment agenda of the latter (Katz
& Liebes, 2007, p. 164). Second, because of their involvement and suffering, "victims are granted expert status" (Mayes, 2000, p. 31) to the extent that their opinions dictate government response to the problem. As Liebes (1998) concluded, "the 'open-studio' disaster marathon...maximizes the structural flaws of the dominant new electronic press, plays into the hands of the ruthless violators of democratic decision making and gives voice to the least 'considered opinion' of the distraught representatives of the public" (p.
83). As such, informative news reporting, which serves to facilitate true democracy, has been replaced by a televised open forum that is built on and "incites collective hysteria"
(Liebes, 1998, p. 83) for economic purposes through a "disaster time-out" (Liebes, 1998, p. 76).
80 Method
The aforementioned literature illustrates the role of emotions in disaster news, including their sociopolitical consequences. To better understand how and what kind of emotions were expressed and constructed in television coverage of Typhoon Morakot, this chapter employs Wojcieszak's (2009) "interpretive framework for visual analyses" to examine the relevant textual, visual, and audio strategies (p. 459). The research goal here is not to "codify or quantify the coverage" (Wojcieszak, 2009, p. 462), but to inductively identify the recurring image/text/audio relationships in Morakot stories, relationships that constitute and routinize the formats for emotional expression.
The research data used in this chapter were gathered from three top-rated
Taiwanese television channels in 2009—TVBS, SET, and CTI—identified by Lin's (2009) research that used a "minute-by-minute rating" competition of Taiwanese news broadcasts (p. 79). Once the news channels were selected, relevant coverage was accessed from the Democratic Progressive Party's news archives, with the study sample comprising a week's worth of Typhoon Morakot coverage (August 7‒Auguest 14). The final sample included 138 hours of news programming from TVBS, 108 hours from SET, and 96 hours from CTI. Analyzing the three channels and relevant news stories during this time frame, this chapter aims to avoid any idiosyncrasies related to specific stations while securitizing the general and evolving pattern of public emotions captured by and/or created in the broadcast news on Typhoon Morakot. The text was analyzed using
Wojcieszak's (2009) visual analysis framework, a technique developed to examine interconnectedness between image, text, and audio messages within individual newscasts.
81 Despite the moving image being the signature feature that differentiates television from other media, most research on broadcast news focuses on either "the analysis of information content, or [on] codes of professional ideology shaping information transmission" (Griffin, 1992, p. 123), highlighting a lack of approaches that study the visual structure of television news. Wojcieszak (2009) attempts to answer the call with her conceptual framework, which identifies "the interplay between three modes of information transmission in the broadcast news" (p. 459), provides a tool to break television reportage on Typhoon Morakot into empirically operationalizable dimensions.
In her analysis, the composition of each newscast can be divided into "moving footage
(iconic message)", "on-screen textual elements (linguistic messages)", and "voiceover
(audio messages)" (p. 459). Wojcieszak (2009) further identified different ways these three messages function as "entities" (p. 466) to create the dominant interpretation of each news segment: (1) polysemy reduction, in which linguistic and audio messages work together to reduce "multiple interpretation[s]" embedded in news images (p. 462),
(2) contextualization and acquiring meaning, in which reporters' verbal narratives and on- screen text create meaning from ambiguous, irrelevant, and discontinuous visual images,
(3) reinforcement, in which images are used to evoke "preexisting interpretive schema" (p.
469) and thus guide audience interpretations, (4) contradiction, in which visual images convey hidden messages excluded from or contradictory to the audio and linguistic messages. This kind of discordant presentation "might result [...] in audience distractions"
(p. 473) and decrease the credibility of the news information, and (5) slogano-symbolism, in which "linguistic slogans are incorporated into visual symbols to create a coherent and recurring entity" (p. 474), serving to elicit a specific audience reception. For example,
82 during news coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks, an animated American flag (a visual symbol) and terms like "freedom" and "patriotism" (linguistic slogans) (p. 474) were constantly juxtapositioned in newscasts as slogano-symbolism to prompt a sense of
Americanness and solidarity.
Applying Wojcieszak's (2009) conceptual framework to examine coverage of
Typhoon Morakot produced by three television channels, it is clear that images, on- screen text, and reporter voiceovers all play crucial roles in conveying and constructing public emotions. The next section discusses how journalists employ different visual, textual, and audio strategies to elicit specific emotional responses from the audience and establish their journalistic authority in times of disaster.
Findings
As Fry (2003) noted, "TV news creates drama in the way language is employed; the way subjects, images, camera shots, and computer graphics are chosen; and the way sequences are edited together" (p. 6). Focusing on various production techniques employed by three chosen television channels, this section explores how public emotions of horror, grief, anger, pride, and compassion were witnessed, dramatized, and manufactured in televised Morakot stories.
Switching to "Disaster Marathon" Mode
After Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan on August 7, it quickly dominated the airwaves and became the only story playing on all news channels. This phenomenon supported the observation of Liebes (1998) that when a major disaster news story breaks, television "finds itself charged with the decision of whether or not to switch to a marathon mode, what to show, and when and how to return to the normal schedule" (p.
83 74). The Taiwanese news media began to operate as though a national "state of emergency" had been declared (Liebes, 1998, p. 75), as evidenced by their abandoning scheduled programming and interrupting designated commercial spots. Commercials are the primary source of profit for news channels and networks cater to advertisers, so this behavior of neglecting the source of their primary income was highly unusual.
Starting on August 8, all three news channels began employing split windows during commercial breaks to keep the Morakot stories going. Each one-hour news program in Taiwan typically has three commercial breaks, each lasting about five to six minutes. As shown in Figure 4.1, TVBS used a bigger frame to broadcast a scheduled commercial and a smaller frame to show dramatic typhoon footage in which two first responders and one victim were immersed in waist-deep water. Notably, this unspecified image was used to represent the general devastation caused by Typhoon Morakot rather than any specific incident or disaster site. This interpretation was further enhanced by the message at the top of the screen: "Morakot Sweeps Through". The bottom of the screen was occupied by a bar displaying updates of weather information and typhoon damage.
TVBS added to the sense of drama with a lightning-themed visual effect in the background.
Similar advertisement interventions, visual presentations, and linguistic messages could be found in both CTI and SET reporting. While CTI created a computer-generated graphic to illustrate the trajectory of the typhoon in the smaller frame, SET used nondescript footage to highlight its destructive power. These visuals were accompanied by messages that read "Southern Taiwan Pummeled by Heavy Rain" and displayed against a background of animated lightening plus weather system movement. As one
84 broadcast reporter explained, "the L frame [split window] is an approach to show our audience that this event is so important to us that it outweighs the importance of commercials" (S. Pai, personal communication, August 7, 2014). In other words, the marathon-like, non-stop reporting style was less about ensuring audiences had the latest information than demonstrating network commitment to covering the news.
Learning from experience that their commercials would likely be interrupted in times of disasters, some advertisers even produced special edition commercials that creatively wove together commercial plugs and typhoon preparedness information. For example, a TV commercial for PXMart8 (Figure 4.2), a local supermarket chain, involved a company spokesperson climbing a ladder in pouring rain to change the store banner from "PXMart" to "PX Typhoon Emergency Center". The commercial ended with a textual reminder to viewers that PXMart always offers the lowest prices and can "help you prepare when a typhoon threatens". Similarly, 7-Eleven's TV commercial9 (Figure
4.3), which take the form of simplistic animations, changes from black-and-white to color on the appearance of the company mascot, whose sadness transforms to joy on emerging from a 7-Eleven store—his act of consumption complete. 7-Eleven positioned itself as the "rainbow within the typhoon".
However, juxtaposing commercials with disaster news footage was potentially perplexing and confusing for viewers. Not only were commercials presented in a larger, flashier form than the disaster coverage, and accompanied by sound, but their mundane commercial content potentially degraded the seriousness of the event. Using Wojcieszak's
8 PXMart's special edition commercial for Typhoon Morakot can be retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4QczP4CQAc 9 7-Eleven's special edition commercial for Typhoon Morakot can be retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p61KdfYIawE
85 (2009) conceptual framework, this juxtaposition created a "contradiction between parts of the triad" (p. 471, emphasis original), namely the iconic, linguistic, and audio messages, and thus invited alternative viewer interpretations. Rather than prompting them to take actions to help typhoon victims, the juxtaposition reassured viewers safe at home that continuing their normal lives during the tragedy was a "legitimate" response, as the commercials encouraged them to continue engaging in everyday consumerism. This juxtaposition can also be seen as a business strategy through which television channels maintain viewership. As discussed in the research on television news watching by Lin
(2009), Taiwanese audiences tend to switch channels during commercial breaks and then not switch back. Continuous typhoon footage thus was a way for networks to stem the loss of viewers, especially at a time of high interest in the news.
If non-stop television coverage marked by split screen commercial interjections provided the prelude to Typhoon Morakot, the live broadcast of the collapse of the
Golden General Hotel was the first incident to bring the horror of the typhoon into every living room. On August 9, at 11:38 am, the six-story Golden General Hotel in Taidong
County collapsed into the Jhihben River after surging floodwaters eroded its foundations.
Although there were no injuries since hotel guests had been evacuated two days earlier, television news interrupted other programming to relay the shocking images live.
Live Broadcasting the Horror
Given its visual nature and ability to create immediacy, live reporting is integral to television news. Innovations in media technology further make it "possible for even a small market news operation to go 'live from the scene'" (Tuggle & Huffman, 1999, p.
492). A true live report must meet three criteria: "spatial proximity", "temporal
86 proximity", and "broadcast proximity" (Huxford, 2009, p. 659). The reporter must be physically onsite as the event unfolds and be transmitting the report to a news show in real time. This definition explains why live reporting promotes journalistic authority: it implies the "act of eyewitnessing" (Zelizer, 2007, p. 408) through which reporters assure factualness. However, as Huxford (2009) argued, live reports today are typically merely
"semi-live" (p. 661). Television news often employs visual and narrative codes to
"facilitate the illusion of live coverage and reporters' proximity to breaking events"
(Huxford, 2009, p. 657, emphasis original). This tendency was evident in all three networks' live coverage of the Golden General Hotel incident.
At 11:52 am, CTI TV was the first channel to announce the shocking news. The reportage began with split windows in which a standard shot of anchor Hung Yi-Qing occupied a small frame in the top left of the screen, while an image of the hotel lying in the river occupied the majority of the frame—comprising two-thirds of the screen.
Beneath both frames was a message reading: "Unable to Withstand the Swollen Waters, the Golden General Hotel Has Collapsed", together with the words "Breaking News".
After reading the scripted introduction to the story, the anchor announced that CTI reporter Wu Jia-Hui was onsite with the latest information for viewers. Following the announcement, the split windows were replaced with a full frame image showing a close- up of the Golden General Hotel leaning prior to its collapse. With the camera slowly panning from bottom to top, viewers could sense the building’s instability. Subsequent images of the swelling Jhiben River, which continued to erode the foundation of the tilting hotel, further articulated the gravity of the situation.
87 Although the visuals were self-explanatory, the reporter's voice-over confirmed to viewers understand that a mudslide had pushed the Golden General Hotel to the riverside and caused the final collapse. The narration stated:
At 7 am this morning, the Golden General Hotel was leaning at 20 degrees. By 9 am, it was leaning at 30 degrees. At 11:38 am, the entire building toppled. The way it fell into the water was surreal… like building blocks collapsing. The collapse created a huge splash and terrified the crowds who had gathered to watch. You can hear their screams in the news clip. (Wu, 2009)
Accompanying this narration was a series of dramatic visuals, progressing from close-up details to wide shots that included the surrounding area: a close shot of the hotel as it slowly toppled over, a medium shot of the splash, another close shot of the broken building lying in the river, a ground level shot panning quickly from right to left to capture a group of unspecified people fleeing the scene, and finally another wide shot of the tilting hotel. Similar to Fry's (2003) analysis, this "fast-paced editing sequence" (p. 79) produced by CTI not only "impart[s] an enormous amount of visual information, [but] also create[s] a sense of over-whelming urgency" (p. 80).
This two-minute clip was clearly an edited presentation of what had happened to the Golden General Hotel rather than live coverage. Additionally, without the presence of the reporter in front of the screen, it was hard to tell if the reporter was truly reporting from the scene or just adding a voice-over to the footage. Nevertheless, using techniques, such as a small "Live" caption on top left, text specifying the reporter's location, and verbal descriptions of the progression of the event and public emotions, the clip lent authenticity to the journalistic account, and more importantly, gave the viewer a sense that the event was unfolding and deserved urgent emotional attention.
88 Unlike CTI, which captured footage of the hotel buckling from the opposite riverbank, TVBS managed to cross the river and record the event from a different camera angle. This "spatial proximity" (Huxford, 2009, p. 659) was highlighted as a selling point of TVBS's coverage, released at 12:59 pm, and became a visual illustration of journalistic dedication. The newscast began with an image of several people running from the scene.
Adding to the chaotic atmosphere were their screams, the sound of rushing water, and a close-up of the ruins of the hotel lying in the river. As the event unfolded, it was narrated by a voice-over, saying:
This image was taken by our videographer. When he heard the strange screeching sounds, he knew that the hotel was about to topple over. He immediately urged hotel guests to leave, yet remained himself to capture the magnitude of the event. (Yang, 2009)
This verbal explanation gave new meaning to the earlier images of chaos: the newsman fulfilled the role of a true journalist by risking his life to tell the story, while simultaneously fulfilling his role as citizen by warning others to flee. The news image then moved to the frontal view of the collapsing hotel, which was described as resembling "a bomb exploding in the water" with a splash that "was five stories high"
(Yang, 2009) to enhance the tension and drama. When the visual returned to the studio, the anchor repeated the message: "our reporters risked life and limb to obtain this footage".
Although the reporters were not physically visible, their testimonies dominated the clip, creating a strong sense of their having been physically present and borne witness to events. The "journalist as eyewitness" became the focal point of this piece, emphasized in voice-overs and on-screen texts that read: "The cameraman filmed on the run to capture the moment" (Yang, 2009). As Zelizer (1990) claimed, "By promoting their
89 proximity [to the event], journalists can both claim authorship and establish authority for their stories" (p. 38). Here, both authorship and authority are reinforced visually and orally. The addition to this piece of the heroic element (i.e., ushering others to safety) further elevated the journalists' standing from cultural authority to moral authority.
Consequently, that which is witnessed is not important, and the act of eye witnessing becomes what really matters (Zelizer, 2007, p. 424).
In SET's live coverage, broadcast at 3:56 pm, the first image shown on the screen was that of an onsite correspondent. Standing at the scene wearing a pink rain coat and looking directly into the camera, the female reporter's manner and attire conveyed calm, reassurance, and professionalism, and directly contrasted with the concerned and bewildered crowd in the background. As the camera slowly zoomed in, curious onlookers holding binoculars could be seen in the crowd. At this point, the reporter began to narrate:
Behind me you can see a group of "tourists", some carry digital cameras, others seem to be waiting for something to happen. Why are they so curious? What are they here to see? The answer is the Golden General Hotel, which fell over this morning at 11:38 am after its foundations were cut away by the Jhihben River. Now, let's take a look at the shocking camera footage. (Wang, 2009)
The visual of unspecified people was then replaced with the earlier recorded image of the hotel toppling into the river and the ensuing splash. The reporter remained silent as the footage was shown, letting viewers clearly hear the chatter and screams of the on-site witnesses to the event. Mixing the past with the present created a deceptive "temporal proximity" (Huxford, 2009, p. 659), as if the event were happening in real time and witnessed by the crowd shown earlier.
However, the most important implication of this clip was the use of laypeople as a rhetorical device to establish journalistic authority. First, by emphasizing how the
90 onlookers were cordoned off from the scene by police tape, the onsite reporter not only implied her neutrality and detachment from the crowd, but also distinguished her expert credentials through her proximity to the hotel ruins, which became "a visual [symbol] of journalistic expertise" (Huxford, 2007, p. 669). Second, by patronizingly labeling the crowd as tourists, their gaze became "voyeuristic", "one-dimensional", and
"preconceived" (Fry, 2003, p. 75), transforming the event into a spectacle, while the journalistic gaze became associated with the lofty goal of delivering the unmediated truth.
The journalists thus underscored their position as trustworthy communicators of knowledge, as opposed to amateur onlookers.
Using the strong sense of presence and urgency inherent in live reporting, the three news channels invited audiences to both understand and "bear witness to the horror" of the Golden General Hotel's dramatic toppling (Pantti & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2007, p. 13).
However, by emphasizing their proximity to the unfolding scene, reporters simultaneously established their position as expert story tellers, assuming the role of eyewitness. This authority later became a cultural license for them to dramatize and sensationalize the event.
Dramatizing "Floods of Tears"
Culture shapes the experience and expression of emotion (Pantti, 2005). In
Taiwan, a Confucian society, public expression of emotions is restrained by the doctrine of the mean (i.e., 中庸之道), with overt articulation of personal feelings deemed inappropriate. However, in times of crisis, the power of raw emotion pushes people to breach cultural convention. Journalists normally do not have such overt public emotions to work with. So great was the contrast with everyday news stories that the public
91 expression of personal grief—weeping, crying, wailing—became a news story itself
(Kitch, 2000).
It is no exaggeration to say that television news on Typhoon Morakot was flooded by tears, especially as more and more casualties were discovered and reported from various disaster sites. As Pantti and Whal-Jorgensen (2007) suggested, the discourse of grief is a mechanism to help viewers overcome the initial senseless horror and build empathy for victims. In televised Morakot stories grief was typically characterized by three visual elements: shocking contextual scenes, groups collectively mourning, and grieving individuals. The contextual scenes were dominated by various images. For instance, aerial shots showed the ravaged landscape, the trajectory of the mudslides, and the floodwaters. Visuals of helicopters also became a staple as most roads were impassible, making helicopters the key rescue mission vehicle. A SET reporter went even further to demonstrate the dire road conditions, sitting in the shovel of an excavator as the camera panned over debris (Figure 4.4). These contextual visuals not only served an informational purpose, by using the immersive depiction of the landscape they also encouraged emotional engagement. The second and third classes of visuals were inseparable. In most cases, the visuals began with a wide angle shot, capturing emotional displays of groups of people, mostly in deep mourning, then zoomed in to highlight individual emotions. These images of grief utilized specific visual cues to enhance the emotional narrative. For example, many scenes included comforting gestures, such as hand holding, hugging, and praying, as well as images of children, who were the most vulnerable victims.
92 Most literature documents a gender division in emotional displays; male mourners are portrayed as emotionally in control and restrained, while female mourners are presented as prone to emotional outbursts (Lupton, 1998; Pantti, 2005). Morakot coverage broke from this gender divide and incorporated many male mourners in dramatic emotional states. A TVBS segment on August 10 showed a rescued male victim sobbing on camera and saying that ten members of his family were gone (Gu, 2009). His emotional state seemed to drain him of all energy, such that he had to sit to be interviewed. Although the reporter and onsite volunteers were shown briefly, the victim, or specifically his tear-stained face, occupied the visual center of the clip. Unlike contextual images, the clip was defined by the stark absence of any voiceover and a prominent victim-led monologue. The combination of the words and tears of real-life victims lend more authenticity and magnitude to the disaster than any journalistic coverage (Langer, 1998).
An intimate, two-minute shot highlighting the man's reddened eyes, tears, and sullen look forced the viewer to take in and process his intense personal grief (Figure 4.5).
This kind of emotional display is deemed newsworthy, because it functions as a "social
[indicator] of the plight of a group, whether the group is parents with incurably ill children, wives of soldiers missing in action, or families made homeless by a natural disaster" (Tuchman, 1978, p. 123). As such, individual grief is an essential marker used to represent collective tragedy. Taking in this grief, viewers seek means to process and overcome the emotions, means that journalists seemingly do not provide. The viewing experience thus becomes uncomfortable, almost voyeuristic. In this context, the donation
93 hotline number that the television networks displayed on screen seemed to suggest an action viewers could take to combat what had become collective grief.
Despite the strong link between tears and grief, tears can also indicate other emotions such as anger. A recurrent and steadily growing theme in televised Morakot stories saw tears of anger interjected into the steady stream of tears of grief. An illustrative example is found in a TVBS news clip shown on August 10, in which a typhoon victim broke through security lines to beg President Ma Ying-Jeou to search for his father, believed lost in a mudslide. For two minutes, viewers watched the scene, listening in on the exchange between Mr. Lee and the president. The inclusion of subtitles, colored yellow and red to represent the two parties, further drew viewers into their interaction. Once through the security blockade, Mr. Lee said to the president, "I am a big supporter of yours. I voted for you. Why is it so difficult to see you?" The exchange then immediately took on an unpleasant taste as President Ma replied, "Am I not here now?"
The exchange continued in this spirit, with Mr. Lee pleading with a non-responsive president. Instead of clearly offering support and compassion, President Ma's verbal and nonverbal responses showed little concern for the victims, whether those standing before him or still on the mountain ("Pleading with the President", 2009).
The power of this segment came from both the verbal exchange and the visuals.
First, listening in on the conversation between the victim and the president, viewers might be reminded of traditional Chinese stories concerning interaction between citizens and government officials. Lacking any means to converse directly with authorities, the traditional convention for subjects in Imperial China was to engage in displays of emotion in an effort to cause a passing official's sedan chair to stop, allowing them to air
94 whatever injustice they had suffered (i.e., 攔轎喊冤). The interaction between Mr. Lee and President Ma was a modern reenactment of this tradition, in which the powerless citizen dropped to his knees, wailing to ensure his appeal was finally heard. The visual construction of the clip further enhanced the victim's accusation. The entire story was shot from a high canted angle to achieve a full bird's-eye perspective. As Tuchman (1978) contended, the bird's eye perspective is rarely used with human figures, because it gives the impression of "distortion" and brings into question the factualness of the scene (p.
112). However, this dramatic visual framing invited the audience to take a critical look, analyzing the scene from above (Figure 4.6). The one person viewers were meant to critique was President Ma Ying-Jeou, who was easily identified as the only face clearly visible in the crowded scene, standing at the center of both the crowd and the televised image. The visibility of President Ma contrasted with the source of the action in the scene, namely the victim Mr. Lee. The viewer was shown a visual of Mr. Lee's face for only three seconds of the two-minute segment, yet his highly emotional, almost erratic, state was evidenced in his voice and exaggerated gestures. As such, the faceless victim became a representation of the moral outrage of the community.
A third type of emotional narrative, focusing on heroic acts and pride, is also linked to tears. This is evidenced in a story covering a helicopter rescue mission that resulted in a crash on August 11. The three news channels quickly adopted the hero narrative to describe and pay tribute to the three deceased crewmembers. When their bodies were located on August 13, SET produced three back-to-back segments, lasting just five minutes, that highlighted their heroism from the perspectives of the nation, family, and colleagues. In the first clip, viewers saw the Minister of the Interior, Liao
95 Liou-yi wearing a black armband, a sign of personal loss and grief, to show his respects to the three crewmembers, thus elevating their individual deaths to a collective loss.
Minister Liao also commented briefly to journalists that "their contributions will always be remembered and appreciated", confirming the hero status of the deceased The second clip introduced the credentials of the three crewmembers before switching to a scene of family members mourning. Juxtaposing their past achievements with the current grief only enhanced the sense of communal loss. The voiceover at the end mentioned that despite the great sorrow, the pilot's 17-year-old daughter felt proud of her father who had died doing something he felt was his mission in life. The third segment took viewers to a funeral home to witness the memorial service. Two colleagues provided personal accounts that gave faces to the men behind the heroic deeds. For example, one member shared that the co-pilot had turned down a much better offer from a commercial airline in order to save lives (Wu & Huang, 2009).
In contrast to the coverage of grief and anger, in which the victim functions as the primary narrator, in the hero narrative, journalists take back the power of narration. They not only give partial ownership of the heroism to the audience (Kitch, 2009), but also assign cultural meaning to a senseless natural disaster. The bravery and sacrifice of the three crewmembers were thus interpreted as evidence of the true Taiwanese spirit through which the nation could recover. Although certain repetitive visual cues conveyed a sense of loss, these segments contained few truly dramatic images, such as close-up shots of people wailing hysterically. Instead there were visuals of community leaders, such as
Minister Liao, struggling to restrain tears of collective grief. These relatively understated visuals supported the powerful spoken narratives.
96 The dramatic presentation of emotion in television news, as discussed in this section, has long been seen as evidence of tabloidization—a process in which news material with a political or economic focus has been replaced by human interest stories with entertainment and sensational value (Mayes, 2000; Spark, 1998). Nevertheless, an emotive televisual event, such as the Morakot story, also serves a political function of holding authorities accountable for a tragedy as well as being a unifying function stabilizing the "imagined bereaved community" of the nation that shares common feelings of pain and loss as a result of news consumption (Linenthal, 2002, p. 13). This unifying function is further enhanced by the cinematic vignettes produced by networks to elicit compassion and solidarity.
Manufactured Compassion and Hope
News is about facts. Various narrative and visual conventions are employed to avoid the impression of manipulation and interpretation and create an aura of neutrality and objectivity (Tuchman, 1978). For example, as Tuchman (1978) noted, while fast and slow motion are frequently used in filmmaking to suggest humor or tenderness, respectively, news reporting eschews such time manipulation techniques because they impede the sense of factualness associated with the genuine temporal rhythm (p. 110).
News reporting also relies heavily on quoting others to avoid the appearance of bias. In short, news has been constructed as an untainted lens on our world. This is why SET's production of a cinematic vignette dedicated to the victims and rescue workers, a departure from fact-driven news that is detailed below, was attention-grabbing.
At 9:11 am on August 14, SET broadcast a 1 minute 33 second vignette between two regular news segments to pay tribute to first responders and typhoon victims.
97 Although not of high production value, the vignette was very cinematic, incorporating slow motion and a musical score. The vignette began with first responders donning their gear. Through the ensuing images viewers then followed the responders on a rescue mission. The flood itself became a character as aerial shots conveyed to viewers its immensity and close-ups the intensity of the rushing waters. The vignette concluded with the responders bringing individuals to safety. The musical score was a popular song by
Taiwanese artist Judy Ongg, known for her warm and soothing voice. The song was titled
"Prayer", consistent with the theme of hope and happiness. However, the lyrics were not the sole narrative of the vignette, with subtitles and an information scroll providing additional messages. Although one would assume the subtitles to reflect the lyrics being sung, in fact they introduced a poetic narrative with a theme of heroism (see Appendix B).
In contrast, the information scroll departed from the other three messages in the vignette by providing a descriptive (i.e., non-artistic) message establishing context.
The vignette stood out from the news stories that bookended it both in style and content. While the information scroll shown on the right of the screen functioned as the descriptive element anchoring the vignette as the body of news, it was relegated to an area of the screen that received little attention and so became little more than an afterthought. The slow motion visuals, positive lyrics, and poetic subtitles all built an emotional, not factual, narrative. Presenting the flood in slow motion gave viewers the impression that the water was unsettling, yet tamable. One especially notable scene began with an eye-level view of the water surface, positioning viewers as though about to be engulfed, then first responders entered the scene from a worm's eye perspective (Figure
4.7). This visual demonstrated Mother Nature's dominance and superiority, but
98 simultaneously expressed optimism in the ability of humanity to overcome the destructiveness thrown at it by Mother Nature. The hope of a brighter tomorrow was reinforced through the final scene, which included the following subtitles:
And you cast your fears aside / And you know you can survive / So when you feel like hope is gone / Hold on, there will be tomorrow / In time, you will find the way / That a hero lies in you. ("A tribute to the heros", 2009)
Together the visual and linguistic messages not only represented heroism, but also called for it in the viewer. Through mass action, Mother Nature can be overcome. Rather than promoting individualistic heroism, the faceless first responders in the vignette worked to symbolize collective action and solidarity (Figure 4.8).
Rather than being a further exploitation of emotions in the name of sensational journalism, this vignette was more likely to reflect the journalists' emotional engagement with the disaster. According to Kitch (2009), "Reporters' and editors' willing and consistent participation in such ritual situates them within culture, rather than outside it, and confirms that they too are citizens who react to terrible events with feeling and sometimes outrage" (p. 34). As objective as they may claim to be, journalists are, in the end, like their viewers, just people. In particular, broadcast journalists are in the unique position of appearing more personable because of their visual presence, yet have fewer opportunities to express that personality—there are no editorials in Taiwanese broadcast news. If citizens are strongly affected by a disaster, in terms of economic losses and psychological trauma, so too are journalists. This vignette thus became an outlet for journalists to participate in the grieving ritual, and to shoulder their responsibility as cultural leaders to create an uplifting message to inspire society to continue normal activities.
99 Conclusion
The televisual medium is particularly keyed in to the emotional narratives of disaster. Examining the first week of broadcast news coverage of Typhoon Morakot, it is clear that public emotions of horror, grief, anger, pride, and compassion received special media attention. Nevertheless, these emotions were not only represented, but also constructed through various television news techniques to enhance their intensity.
Switching to marathon mode by interrupting regular TV commercials was the first move television networks made to signal the arrival of a disaster. Live broadcasting from the site and eyewitnessing were then emphasized to communicate the sense of unfolding horror and request the urgent emotional attention of viewers. Subsequently, tears of typhoon victims became a marker to symbolize different emotions, including grief, anger, and pride. While tears of grief and anger were represented by dramatic visual shots and through victims' testimonies, reporters took back the power of narration to articulate tears of pride, or hero narratives. News networks went even further to produce cinematic vignettes with inspiring messages to elicit compassion and solidarity.
Together these televisual techniques not only constructed an emotionally powerful disaster story, but also helped journalists establish their cultural authority as emotionally engaged storytellers.
Such marathon-like, emotive coverage had certain implications. While it created the integral outlet for both viewers and journalists to reflect their emotions and united society in shock at the unfolding disaster, it also forced raw emotions upon viewers without providing any means to digest these powerful feelings. Viewers were typically left with two options, either combat their devastated emotional state through
100 consumerism, as suggested by continuous TV commercials, or make donations to the typhoon victims, as suggested by the on-screen hotline being promoted by the networks.
Whatever their choice, the future living situation of the victims and the social injustice created by the typhoon were not their concern.
101 CHAPTER 5 WHEN A NATURAL DISASTER TURNS INTO A POLITICAL STORM: HOW NEWSPAPERS FRAME POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITIES DURING AND AFTERMATH TYPHOON MORAKOT
In the end, the real power of a hurricane isn't found in its wind speed. It's in what it leaves behind—the lives lost, the lives changed, the memories obliterated in a gust of wind. Anyone who does hurricane reporting for any length of time knows all too well that standing in the aftermath of a storm is much more difficult than standing in the storm itself, no matter how hard the winds blow. (Cooper, 2006, p. 127)
The end of Typhoon Morakot's torrential rains on August 9, 2009 marked the beginning of a political storm that eventually forced President Ma Ying-Jeou to reshuffle his Cabinet and to renegotiate Taiwan's diplomatic relations with both China and the US.
Dumping as much as three meters of rain in just two days, this unusual meteorological event would have caused massive devastation no matter how prepared the government was. However, the Ma administration's handling of the situation, characterized by slow and disorganized relief efforts, lack of cooperation between military and government, and an initial rejection of foreign aid, exacerbated the tragedy. According to an opinion poll conducted by the pro-government TVBS news channel, President Ma's approval rating dropped to 16 percent two weeks after the typhoon swept across Southern Taiwan. In short, Typhoon Morakot became a political mudslide that buried forever the good image of the newly elected president, who had just won office with over 58 percent of the popular vote a year earlier. The public’s discontent and finger-pointing, voiced through the national media, demanded that he pay a political price for his perceived negligence.
Employing framing analysis to examine more than 2,000 news articles in four leading Taiwanese newspapers, this chapter first identifies the dominant news frame in coverage of Typhoon Morakot—the frame of responsibility—and then explores the
102 specific associated framing strategies used by journalists to define the situation, identify those primarily responsible, and justify the solution offered by the government to restore social consensus. Together these news accounts of blame and accountability not only recorded the progression of Typhoon Morakot and its immediate aftermath, but also illuminated ways in which disaster reporting both conveys public anger and politicizes natural disaster.
Literature Review
Both print and broadcast journalists rely on news frames as conceptual tools to convey, interpret, and evaluate information. As Gitlin (1980) noted, frames refer to
"persistent selection, emphasis, and exclusion...which enable journalists to process large amounts of information quickly and routinely: to recognize it as information, to assign it to cognitive categories, and to package it for efficient relay to their audience" (p. 7).
Frames are inevitable in story-telling. News frames are constructed and articulated using both text (e.g., headings, keywords, metaphors, concepts) and visuals (e.g., photos, layouts). By selecting, repeating, and reinforcing "some aspects of a perceived reality" (p.
52), journalists "make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation" (Entman, 1993, p. 52). Consequently, news frames not only guide the narrative and visual composition of news discourse, but also provide the audience "a particular way to interpret or understand a reported event" (Fry, 2003, p. 95).
Within the US and European context, Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) have identified five frames common in news coverage: 1) "The conflict frame" emphasizes contest and tension between two rivals, whether individuals, groups, institutions, or
103 nations. A highly used frame in political news, journalists often "[reduce] substantive political debate to overly simplistic conflict", thus inducing "public cynicism and mistrust of political leaders" (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95). 2) "The human interest frame" personalizes events, issues, or problems using relatable characters (i.e., a human face) or represents them using "an emotional angle" (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95). The employment of these types of frames has long been criticized for dramatizing and sensationalizing the news in an attempt to win and maintain viewership (Bennett, 1995).
3) "The economic consequences" frame focuses on the economic impacts of events, issues, or problems on individuals, as well as on institutional, national, regional, and international levels (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). Examples of this frame are illustrated in the way that many news stories covering the 3.11 Japanese Earthquake dealt with "financial woe"—the consequences of the disaster for the global economy (Pantti,
Wahl-Jorgensen & Cottle, 2012, p. 53). 4) "The morality frame" underscores the moral lessons embedded in an event, issue, or problem. For instance, New York Times coverage of the 1998 flooding in Central America implied that "the sins of their nations and governments" (i.e., corrupt leaders, backward economies) were to blame for the devastation (Lule, 2001, p. 180). To maintain journalistic objectivity, journalists often rely on indirect means of establishing value-laden moral frames (e.g., quotations, inference). Finally, 5) "the responsibility frame" presents an event, issue, or problem in a specific way to "attribute responsibility for its cause or solution to either the government or to an individual or group" (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96). The responsibility frame can further be divided into "causal responsibility" (i.e., the origin of the problem) and "treatment responsibility" (i.e., the remedy of the problem), which generate different
104 sets of questions, focused on either the originator of the problem or solutions to the problem, respectively (Iyengar, 1991, p. 8).
It well documented that certain news frames profoundly influence audience perceptions of political issues and public policies (Iyengar, 1991; Iyengar & Simon, 1993;
Price, Tewksbury & Powers, 1997). Examining the correlation between television news frames and assignment of responsibility, Iyengar (1991) observed that most news stories can be classified as either "episodic"—that is, depicting social issues in light of actual events (e.g., the Sandy Hook school shooting)—or "thematic"—that is, contextualizing discussions within abstract social parameters using general facts and figures (e.g., gun violence in the US) (p. 14). According to his analysis, the episodic news format tends to elicit "individualistic attributions of responsibility" (Iyengar, 1991, p. 16), while thematic news reports lead the audience to assign blame and responsibility to societal and structural causes. Iyengar (1991) concluded that since television news in the US is dominated by the episodic news format, which simplifies "complex issues to the level of anecdotal evidence", its effect is to divert public attention from societal responsibility and
"effectively [insulate] incumbent officials from any rising tide of disenchantment over the state of public affairs" (p. 137).
In the context of disaster reporting, when news media become the primary source of public information, framing maneuvers strongly shape news consumers' understanding of tragic events. Focusing on the framing effect of news image on the attribution of responsibility, Ben-Porath and Shaker (2010) observed that when readers were presented with a fabricated news account of Hurricane Katrina that comprised only text, they were inclined to hold the government accountable for the tragedy. However, when news
105 accounts were accompanied by victim images and vague captions, reader perceptions diverged on racial lines. Specifically, white respondents found structural factors (i.e., government actions) less of a cause for the crisis, while black readers continued to see
Katrina as "a product of government incompetence or indifference in the face of the suffering of an overwhelmingly [black] population" (p. 482‒483). Their findings somewhat confirmed Iyengar's position that "the presence of people as a visual enhancement of a news story" not only personifies a disaster, but also results in a reassessment of who should be held accountable for the situation (Ben-Porath & Shaker,
2010, p. 482). Notably, audience race affiliation is often an essential element when rendering judgment and interpretation (e.g., Hurricane Katrina). Tierney, Bevc, and
Kuligowski (2006) noted that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, most media employed the "civil unrest frame" (p.57)—an embodiment of the disaster myth that contends "panic will invariably break out during disasters and other extreme events" (p. 60)—to portray
New Orleans as an "urban warzone" and the disaster victims as criminals (p.57). An important implication of the civil unrest frame was a greater military presence and strict social control, as well as a discursive construction of "unworthy disaster victims" who were less deserving of humanitarian aid and empathy than regular disaster victims
(Garfield, 2007, p. 55).
As Porath and Shaker (2010) rightly noted, "even minor manipulation in the presentation of news" can clearly yield a different outcome in public opinion (p. 484). In an era when the "interlocking media reach into every phase of our lives" (Klotzer, 2007, p.
28), examining how news frames shape collective understating of events has become crucial. Building on the above theoretical foundation, this chapter employs framing
106 analysis (Entman, 1993; Gamson & Lasch, 1983; Pan & Kosicki, 1993) to assess the dominant news frames applied to Typhoon Morakot in leading Taiwanese newspapers.
The period examined runs from August 7, 2009, when the Central Weather Bureau first warned of the typhoon’s approach, to September 3, 2009, the day the Dalai Lama concluded his four-day humanitarian tour of Taiwan.
Method
The research data used in this chapter were collected from four top-selling
Taiwanese newspapers—Apple Daily, The Liberty Times, United Daily, and China Times.
Although the impact of newspapers is currently controversial given their declining readerships, these newspapers retain significant circulation in Taiwan and so deserve scholarly attention. As indicated in a 2008 survey, 43.9 percent of Taiwanese reported that they read newspapers on a daily basis. When asked which newspapers they had read the previous day, 16.3 percent of respondents named Apple Daily, 13.5 percent The
Liberty Times, 9.6 percent United Daily, and 8.7 percent China Times. Further supporting the significance of these publications, AC Nielsen statistics show that during the second quarter (April to June) of 2008, the average daily circulation of The Liberty Times was
699,450 copies, compared to 509,957 copies for Apple Daily (AC Nielsen, 2008);
Taiwan's total population as of 2010 is 23,123,866 (National Statistics Republic of China,
2010).
Each of these four newspapers provides an online database10 that readers can search for text-only news reports. To include visual elements, such as page layout and accompanying photographs, the news articles referenced in this chapter were further
10In the case of United Daily and China Times, users must pay to obtain full access to news stories older than three months.
107 scanned from physical newspapers archived in the National Taiwan University Library and National Central Library. Weekly-bound volumes of each newspaper were manually culled for words and images relating to Typhoon Morakot. All news on Typhoon
Morakot in the four newspapers was collected, including relevant editorials and letters to the editor. However, given that this study focuses on the national perspective of the
Morakot story, the analysis only included news articles from section A (i.e., the national news section). The final sample consists of 579 stories from Apple Daily, 1098 from
Liberty Times, 1077 from United Daily, and 1065 from The China Times.
The data collection process enabled this study to identify the distinct characteristics of each newspaper in three ways. First, compared to its three counterparts,
Apple Daily emphasized visual elements (e.g., centerfold photographs and bold-color charts) in its page layout and contained relatively little text. While the three other newspapers normally published five to seven stories of varying length on each page,
Apple Daily had only three to five. Secondly, although factual information on Typhoon
Morakot was the main focus initially, The Liberty Times, United Daily, and China Times soon reoriented their second and even front page coverage towards stories assigning responsibility, whereas Apple Daily prioritized human-interest stories. Thirdly, each newspaper has its own alleged political bent. The Liberty Times is known for being
Taiwan oriented and having close ties with Taiwan’s pro-independence opposition party—the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Meanwhile, China Times and United
Daily are considered pro-KMT and China friendly—both devote considerable space to
PRC news. Finally, as a Hong Kong-owned newspaper, Apple Daily is not perceived to be "identified with a particular political party and for that reason was a breath of fresh air
108 for readers shopping for an independent, ideologically less hard-line source of news and opinion" (Weston, 2013, p. 221).
All sampled news articles were subjected to framing analysis to identify the
"syntactical, script, thematic, rhetorical" and visual structures (Pan & Kosicki, 1993, p.
55) embedded in the media coverage of Typhoon Morakot. Framing analysis has long been used to examine critical textual choices in news discourse and thus establish the dominant interpretation of events (Entman, 1993; Gamson & Lasch, 1983; Gitlin, 1980;
Pan & Kosicki, 1993). While the literature on framing is vast and multifaceted, the work of Gamson and Lasch (1983) as well as Pan and Kosicki (1993) can provide a tool to break news texts on Typhoon Morakot into empirically operationalizable dimensions.
Following the same steps as these other investigations, this study focused on examining five news elements, including:
"Syntactical structures": how was the news story structured? Was it told in
the inverted pyramid style or using an anecdotal lead with personalized
story-telling (Pan & Kosicki, 1993)?
"Script structures": how was the information relayed and characterized
(i.e., who, what, when, where, why, and how)? What kind of story-telling
code was used (e.g., metaphors, examples, catchphrases) (Pan & Kosicki,
1993)?
"Thematic structures": what underlying theme and overriding message did
journalists try to convey (i.e., context, causal relationships, consequences,
and appeals to principles) (Pan & Kosicki, 1993)?
109 "Rhetorical structures": what kinds of rhetorical devices were used? Did
journalists voice their own opinions and interpretations? What kinds of
sources were used to enhance accuracy and credibility of news stories (Pan
& Kosicki, 1993)?
Visual structures: what kinds of visual aids were used to enhance the
central message in news stories (e.g., photographs, charts, background
color)?
Applying framing analysis to examine Typhoon Morakot coverage in four newspapers, it is clear that the attribution of responsibility framework dominates, outweighing both factual information and human-interest stories—for discussion of these different frameworks see Chapter 3. This finding is consistent with Lin's (2013) content analysis of Typhoon Morakot news, which found that stories on disaster management and government performance comprised 28.3 percent of total coverage of the event, human- interest stories 12.4 percent, and factual information 12.3 percent. Focusing on the news frames of blame and responsibility attribution, the next section discusses how different framing strategies were used to define the situation and the fundamental problem of the typhoon, identify the main source of blame and present a moral evaluation of the characters, and justify government solutions in order to regain public trust.
From Natural Disaster to Political Storm
Journalists started to closely follow Typhoon Morakot on August 7, 2009. All four newspapers published the Central Weather Bureau’s projection for the path of the typhoon on their front pages along with the standard preparatory information. The next day, after the island had already spent over 12 hours pounded by heavy rains, journalists
110 described the typhoon’s arrival as “timely” (Hsu, 2009, A1) as it would help alleviate the drought. They also employed humorous photos (Figure 5.1) to visually depict the heavy winds. Up to this point, Typhoon Morakot was being covered as a normal typhoon bringing torrential rains, something that was a regular part of life for Taiwanese and not necessarily a threat. Everything changed on day three.
On August 9, journalists began to realize that Typhoon Morakot was anything but
"normal". All four newspapers changed their tone and began to portray the event via headings like "The Worst Typhoon in 50 Years Hits Southern Taiwan Hard" (Wang,
2009, A1) accompanied by action photos of rescue efforts. Both China Times and Apple
Daily changed their usual background colors (blue, red, green) to black to express the seriousness of the event—like American culture, Taiwanese culture associates black with tragedy. On August 10, the whole nation was shocked by the front page news: hundreds of Xiaolin Villagers were missing and presumed buried alive under mudslides. Apple
Daily's front page photo of a dead body lying across floating debris (Figure 5. 2) was controversial, but clearly conveyed that this was a disaster, not simply a weather event.
Angry statements reproaching the government for its slow response to Typhoon
Morakot soon filled almost every page of the four newspapers, including the front page
(A1) and the letters to the editor (A20). According to Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen, and Cottle
(2012), "Disasters can support the political status quo but also accentuate political crisis, and this is particularly true when the blame and responsibility for a disaster can be given to those in power" (p. 165). Over the next 24 days, newspaper journalists collectively employed various framing strategies to portray Typhoon Morakot, transforming a natural catastrophe into an overwhelming political storm.
111 Setting the Stage: Employing Historical Analogies to Define the Situation
Journalists often use analogous historical narratives to clarify the nature of current issues, identify hidden causes, and develop future solutions. Historical analogies, as Edy
(1999) noted, provide vehicles "to make the past relevant to the present by using a past event as a tool to analyze and predict the outcome of a current situation" (p. 77). High- profile historical episodes are frequently simplified in news narratives to fit a "media template" with a fixed meaning that encourages a particular (possibly distorted) understanding of present events (Kitzinger, 2000, p. 61). Employing the usable past to explain the present was a prominent framing strategy in media coverage of Typhoon
Morakot as journalists regularly juxtaposed Morakot with other disasters to covey the situation and assess government performance.
The 87 Flood11 was the first historical disaster to be referenced in coverage of
Typhoon Morakot. On August 7, The Liberty Times published an article next to the projected path of the typhoon saying:
Fifty years ago today, Taiwan experienced the 87 Flood, which took more than 600 lives and destroyed 130,000 hectares of farmland. Typhoon Morakot seems to be a similar weather event that will bring heavy rainfall and possibly trigger mudslides... Experts remind the public to take a lesson from history and guard against the coming typhoon and torrential rains. (Liu, 2009, A1)
The 87 Flood was initially mentioned simply because of its timely anniversary and meteorological similarity. However, on August 9, when journalists realized Typhoon
Morakot had devastated Southern Taiwan, the 87 Flood became a semantic marker that provided "a shorthand explanation of present happenings" (Lang & Lang, 1989, p. 126).
11 The news media coined the term "87 Flood" for the flood that occurred on August 7, 1959. In terms of economic losses and casualties, the 87 Flood ranks third as the third most devastating natural disaster in Taiwan's post-WWII history. The 921 Earthquake ranks first and Typhoon Morakot second.
112 For example, both Apple Daily and China Times emphasized that Southern Taiwan had been drenched with more than 1500mm of rainfall in one day. The downpour not only
"broke the 87 Flood record", but also "gave Typhoon Morakot a place in the history books" (Chen, 2009, A1). Using the 87 Flood as a metaphor to stress the severity of
Morakot, journalists could simultaneously establish public understanding of the current situation and prepare society for further bad news.
The most frequently mentioned historical analogy in media coverage of Typhoon
Morakot, however, was the 921 Earthquake. As Lang and Lang (1989) noted, references to the past in the news act as "a yardstick for evaluating [a] current event and [its] impact" (p. 126). In the wake of Morakot, the 921 Earthquake was continuously referenced by officials, journalists, and citizens alike to assess govement performance.
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan was the first to refer publicly to the 921Earthquake, doing so during a press conference on August 9. Premier Liu said, "Having accurate and up-to-the- minute information is crucial in developing effective relief plans...I learned this from relief efforts during the 921 Earthquake" (Pan, 2009, A2). The smug tone (i.e., confident and guiltless expression) with which Liu delivered this information triggered criticism from the media, as well as from political and military quarters. Many others began sharing their personal experiences in the 921 Earthquake relief efforts, while others used historical data to contrast the rapid earthquake response of the Lee Deng-Hui government with the slow and inept response of the Ma Ying-Jeou government to Typhoon Morakot.
In one editorial, a senior media critic lamented:
When the 921 Earthquake struck in 1999, then-President Lee Deng-Hui rushed to the
113 stricken area...When he saw victims howling in grief, he couldn’t help crying. What about President Ma? He doesn’t really care about people until he needs their votes. He has no compassion or even emotions. (Yang, 2009, A15)
Letters from newspaper readers drew similar comparisons between the performances of the two presidents. In one such letter, a retired military officer recalled his personal involvement in 921 Earthquake relief efforts and questioned the government, asking,
"Why was President Ma reluctant to order army units stationed in northern and central
Taiwan to stricken areas to help victims clean up and rebuild their homes like President
Lee did in the wake of the 921 Earthquake?" (Chang, 2009, A21). Uncharacteristically,
The Liberty Times went so far as to quote the findings of polls conducted by other
Taiwanese media (Wealth Monthly), noting that 72 percent of Taiwan’s 23 million people found President Ma’s crisis management skills far inferior to those of President Lee
(Wang, 2009, A10).
Using the 921 Earthquake as a benchmark to assess government performance yielded unexpected results. During the first couple of days of coverage, the 921
Earthquake seemed to be constructed as a "media template" (Kitzinger, 2000, p. 61) that conjured up a particular way of remembering past relief efforts—a collective memory that unanimously idolized then-President Lee Deng-Hui—and criticizing inefficient current disaster management. However, this one-sided perspective was soon challenged.
As one former journalist argued:
Many people recall the efficiency of the 921 Earthquake relief efforts and use them to underscore the incompetence of the Ma administration’s response to Typhoon Morakot. But is it true that the Lee administration really did such a good job? I clearly recall that one week after the 921 Earthquake, I wrote an editorial entitled "The living have no sleeping bags and the dead have no body bags." I am not defending the government’s relief efforts in the wake of Typhoon Morakot, but it is inappropriate to use the 921 Earthquake as a yardstick exemplifying an
114 ideal disaster response, because relief efforts at the time were far from perfect. (Wang, 2009, A26)
A similar critique by a senior journalist from Apple Daily pointed out how the Lee administration was severely criticized by the media in 1999 (Yang, 2009, A24). The different perspectives in the media coverage reaffirmed the statement of Edy (1999) that
"historical analogies are open to alternative interpretations" (p. 78). The different perspectives further sparked a "mnemonic battle" as different social groups competed to promote the "correct" interpretation of the past (Zerubavel, 1996, p. 295). Memories of the 921 Earthquake thus became contested. The political elite in the opposition party (the
DPP) seized the opportunity to interpret the 921 Earthquake and ensuing relief efforts in a manner that justified their habitual criticism of the performance of their rival party (the
KMT). The director of the Central Executive Committee of the DPP argued:
A well-managed platform is required to receive, organize, accumulate, and distribute relief to affected regions and truly help victims. If the Ma administration had assumed that responsibility, the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot would have been less disastrous. (Chung, 2009, A4)
To deal with this strong criticism, the Ma administration made its own comparisons with the 921 Earthquake, such as claiming Morakot was simply more serious than what the Lee administration had faced in the 921 Earthquake. In a press conference for local and international media, Premier Liu recalled his involvement in 921
Earthquake relief efforts, stating, "our relief efforts [after Morakot] were not perfect, but I believe we did a better job of crisis management than was done following the 921
Earthquake...at least, that’s my opinion" (Tsing, 2009, A1). Following the Premier’s statement, the Minister of Transportation and Communication used scientific data to argue that:
115 While the 921 Earthquake and Typhoon Morakot were both serious natural disasters, their different natures required different kinds of relief efforts and necessitated different response speeds. While the military was able to enter stricken areas immediately after the 921 Earthquake, flooding prevented it from doing the same after Morakot. (Lan, 2009, A2)
By presenting logical explanations for the different responses to the two disasters, the government attempted to defend its actions and regain public trust.
Hurricane Katrina was the last historical disaster the media suggested could offer
"[a lesson] for making predictions" regarding the political impact of Typhoon Morakot
(Lang & Lang, 1989, p. 126). On August 10, China Times first drew the parallel between
Typhoon Morakot and Hurricane Katrina in its editorial "Taiwan's Katrina". The editor summarized Katrina as a natural disaster that shocked the whole world not only because of its devastation, but also because of the poor response of the US to the disaster (i.e.,
"the way the richest nation in the world [the US] handled Katrina was no better than that of a third world country") ("Taiwan's Katrina", 2009, A19). The article went on to criticize President Ma for repeating President Bush's mistake and warned that this would become the biggest setback in Ma's political career, much like Hurricane Katrina had left an indelible stain on the Bush presidency. Later, on August 20, another editorial lamented that both Bush and Ma failed to play the roles of "decisive commander in chief, compassionate missionary, and national spokesperson who served as the voice for the people" in times of crisis and thus lost public confidence (Wang, 2009, A20). In short,
Hurricane Katrina was underscored in the news narrative as a political lesson that
President Ma had failed to learn from and as a permanent blight on his political career.
Although Hurricane Katrina was a much more complex symbol in the US, touching on
116 issues of race, poverty, and social injustice, Taiwanese media critics simplified the story to merely create parallels between incompetent political leaders in Taiwan and the US.
The 87 Flood, 921 Earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina were used in media coverage to define Typhoon Morakot not only as a natural catastrophe, but also as a sociopolitical disaster amplified by human negligence. As mentioned in Chapter 3, Pantti,
Wahl-Jorgensen and Cottle (2012) suggested that identifying a person on whom to assign blame is just as important as finding a hero to boost morale in times of crises. The "blame game" is a way that the media reflects on and voices public anger and collective dissent.
The next section will discuss how newspaper journalists quoted international news outlets as sources to frame President Ma as the person primarily responsible for the mishandled response to the disaster.
Identifying the Culprit: Quoting Foreign News Sources to Play the Blame Game
As the number of casualties rapidly climbed, the national media voiced criticism of incompetent public officials, failed evacuation plans, and inefficient relief efforts.
Similar to Kitch and Hume's (2008) observation of the development of tragic news event in the American context, Taiwanese society collectively moved from the initial "state of confusion and grief to one of anger, and the press reported that progression" (p. 37).
Public outrage was candidly described in a statement by Wang Chien-Shien, President of the Control Yuan─a governmental institution in charge of political accountability investigations, who said:
I was extremely sad [to see the devastation caused by Morakot]. I want to blame someone, but I don't know who to blame. I want to grab a knife and stab someone, but I don't know who to stab. I believe the whole nation shares this feeling of bitterness and depression. (Lin, 2009, A6)
117 Quoting Wang let journalists maintain journalistic standards of objectivity and impartiality yet still describe the public's deep anger. It also fulfilled their social responsibility to represent public concerns and hold the powerful accountable.
With pressure mounting, President Ma Ying-Jeou became the first to play the blame game, criticizing "the country’s Water Resources Agency for ineptitude and
[accusing] the Central Weather Bureau of failing to predict rainfall that soaked some parts of the country for three or more days" (Jacob, 2009, ¶ 9). However, on August 13, public anger started to focus on President Ma himself as the media reported the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) had rejected offers of international assistance from the US,
Japan, and elsewhere. Given that President Ma had been trying to forge closer ties with
China after being elected in 2008, the decision to delay acceptance of foreign aid was interpreted as a gesture to distance Taiwan from its established international allies, while simultaneously increasing dependence on China and appealing to Beijing (Chu, 2009,
A8). Although the Ma administration denied that Beijing had influenced its decision and eventually did accept US aid, the public was left with the impression that the government, and specifically President Ma, had prioritized cross-strait relations—the relations between China (PRC) and Taiwan (ROC)—over Taiwanese lives and national sovereignty.
Public outrage further intensified when, during an interview with an independent reporter affiliated with CNN, President Ma attributed responsibility to victims for failing to evacuate.
Reporter (question posed in English): Should Taiwan not have been more prepared for this weather that was coming?
118 President Ma (replying in English): No, this area, this is the first time in many years [it has been affected]. That is why they [the victims] were not fully prepared. If they were, they should have been evacuated much earlier...they stayed in where they lived...they didn't learn...they didn't realize how serious this disaster was.
This exchange was controversial and widely criticized for two reasons. First, President
Ma appeared eager to blame others yet reluctant to "shoulder all responsibility for the shortcomings in his government’s response to Typhoon Morakot," including the absence of effective information updates, lack of cooperation between the government and military, and disorganized relief efforts (Ko, 2009, A4). Secondly, he referred to the typhoon victims six times as "they". At a time when society expected the president—the ultimate national figurehead—to exercise his "rhetorical power to placate survivors and unite the nation" (Wang, 2009, A20), Ma's remark further exacerbated the cracks the disaster had wrought in the social fabric, prompting all four newspapers to use editorials to pose the same question in different ways: "If the victims are they, then who are we?"
("Victims are they", 2009, A19). As a unique genre in journalism, editorials allow "the institutions of the press [to] take the lead in establishing the dominant interpretative frameworks within which ongoing political events are made sense of" (McNair, 2000, p.
31). Using editorials to question the president's perspective on national identity, the journalists functioned as advocates who guided how people should feel; thus they went beyond merely reflecting how people felt.
On August 14, The Liberty Times published a news story on its front page entitled
"President Ma Target of Anger for Failing Typhoon Victims" (Figure 5. 3). The first half of this story was a translation of excerpts from a New York Times article that conveyed the controversies surrounding the Ma administration's handling of the disaster. The second half was a description of other foreign critiques (e.g., CNN, AP, The Wall Street
119 Journal, Agence France-Presse) intended to demonstrate that President Ma was under siege at home and abroad. Accompanying this story was a photo of graffiti on a damaged road reading: "Fuck the Government!" By weaving together a series of foreign sources and powerful visual messages that sizzled with anger, this front page story clearly positioned President Ma as the party most responsible for amplifying the extent of the tragedy.
Nevertheless, this presentation was relatively unusual, because in the field of global news making, local media tend to rewrite international news employing discursive means, so as to "impute different causes and effects to reality to advance national interest and promote national legitimacy" (Lee, Chan, Pan, & So, 2002, p. 5). In this way, the same global event can generate two journalistic representations: one from the international perspective, which serves to perpetuate the foreign elite's perception of
"otherness"; another from the local perspective, which functions to defend the domestic government's position and "[safeguard its] geopolitical interests abroad" (Lee, Chan, Pan,
& So, 2002, p. 5). The unconventional coverage of The Liberty Times, which allied with foreign sources to challenge the local government, redrew the line between "us" and
"them" and understanding its logic required an alternative reading. First, since The New
York Times is a well-respected and credible global news outlet, following its news agenda became a way for The Liberty Times to justify its assessments of the news story (i.e.,
Typhoon Morakot as a political storm) and the associated framework (i.e., President Ma as the target of anger). Furthermore, the coverage "reflected a yearning among Taiwanese for an end to their nation's extended diplomatic isolation and marginalization under the
One China policy" (Su, 2014, p. 484). By publishing a series of international news stories
120 on Typhoon Morakot, The Liberty Times showed Taiwan's global visibility, comforting readers in two ways. It reminded them the world had not been forgotten Taiwan in its hour of need, and it indirectly acknowledged Taiwan as an independent political entity distinct from Mainland China.
The tendency to employ foreign sources to set the theme of the local news agenda became even more prominent when, on August 18, all four newspapers reported an online "Quickvote" conducted by CNN that asked: "Should Taiwan's leader step down over delays in relief efforts to typhoon victims?" 82 percent of 14,000 voters responded
"Yes" (Zheng, 2009, A1). Notably, the CNN poll was not merely used to support other news stories, but each of the four newspapers made it integral to a story headline. The
Liberty Times made the Quickvote a front page story (Figure 5. 4), Apple Daily published it on page A7 accompanied by a chart, United Daily positioned it on page A6, and China
Times covered it on page A14 as part of an editorial. Although a few media commentaries suggested the CNN poll lacked validity and represented foreign interference in Taiwan's domestic affairs, most coverage applauded it as a true reflection of public opinion that
"popped the bubble of President Ma's lies, hypocrisy, and arrogance—something
Taiwanese media has failed to achieve" (Jin, 2009, A15).
From the CNN interview with President Ma and the front page story by The
Liberty Times that quoted several international news outlets as sources to CNN's online poll, for almost a week (August 13‒18) foreign media coverage of Typhoon Morakot strongly influenced the local news angle. The influence included public perceptions of who should be held responsible, and political responses, and created an extended "CNN effect" (Kogen & Price, 2011; Livingston, 1997). The concept of the CNN effect
121 originated in the early 1990s with the rise of CNN—a novel, global, real-time, 24-hour media organization focused on live breaking news coverage of international humanitarian crises—and the phenomenon began to profoundly impact the formulation of US foreign policy. Livingston (1997) unraveled the CNN effect as three inter-related media effects on political decision-making: media as "agenda-setter," "accelerant," and "impediment"
(p. 2). First, by presenting and repeating selected incidents of distant suffering, the media reprioritize US foreign policy so that "what would have been handled by mid-level officials in a routine fashion instead becomes the focus of high-level decisionmaking"
(Livingston, 1997, p. 6). Additionally, real-time media not only demand an accelerated, instant diplomacy, thus decreasing the time available for officials to reflect on situations and weigh options, but can also impede decision making by revealing public opposition to particular policies.
While the concept of the CNN effect has attracted substantial attention in media scholarship, the focus has been on the relationship between media influence and US foreign policy. As such, CNN's coverage of Typhoon Morakot and its impact on
Taiwanese news and politics illustrate an extension of this very effect. This extended
CNN effect occurs when domestic media (e.g., in Taiwan) pick up CNN's coverage of an international disaster (e.g., Typhoon Morakot) and use it to set their own news agenda, thereby forcing decision-makers in their country to respond to and provide solutions to the situation. As the following section shows, facing heavy criticism from both foreign and local media, the Ma administration initiated a series of "image-repair" strategies, attempting to regain public trust and restore public consensus.
122 Searching for Closure: Using Media Events to Restore Public Consensus
News framing of responsibility often has political consequences. By first shaping the meaning of the disaster and then passing moral judgment on parties considered accountable, news frames determine the trajectory of political action. According to
Entman (1993), "[f]rames call attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring other elements, which might lead audiences to have different reactions. Politicians seeking support are thus compelled to compete with each other and with journalists over news frames" (p. 55). From this perspective, a staged media event—an international press conference held by President Ma Ying-Jeou, Vice President Siew Wan-Chang, and three cabinet members12 on August 18—can be seen as the first step by the Ma administration to "recover the attention of the media that had been led astray from the realm of official sources" (p. 63), as Jaasaari (2009) put it in describing the Finnish response to the 2004
Southeastern Tsunami, and to negotiate the news frames used to cover its crisis response.
President Ma started the press conference with an official apology and emphasized that "as the leader of the nation, he would take full responsibility for all mistakes made during the disaster" (Ko & Lu, 2009, ¶ 4). He then led the other officials in a deep bow, held for seven seconds, thus acknowledging responsibility to the public, and especially those who lost loved ones during Typhoon Morakot. Bows are requisite for public apologies in Asian cultures, adding another layer of meaning to the verbal declaration. By assuming a physically lower position, the person bowing creates a visual manifestation of sincerity and regret. Normally, "the depth of the bow should match the level of regret, allowing observers to make judgments about how sincere the apology
12The three cabinet members were: Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-Ming, Vice Premier Paul Chiu, and Central Emergency Operations Center Commander Mao Chi-Kuo.
123 really is" (Caronna, 2010, ¶ 1). Consequently, using both rhetorical tactics and body language, President Ma attempted to "repair" the news framing of responsibility by adding new facts (i.e., a confession by the person responsible) and creating a visual spectacle of remorse to distract news readers. This strategy worked in the sense that the visual image of President Ma's deep bow became the front page photo in all four newspapers on August 19. Apple Daily even provided a close-up shot showing tears in his eyes, thus indirectly confirming his sincerity (Figure 5. 5).
Nevertheless, the most important information President Ma conveyed at the press conference was his promise to "punish" the responsible officials, which he expressed together with hopes that the punishments would be finalized by early September (Jiang,
2009, A1). Journalists quickly interpreted this as a sign of "a large-scale cabinet reshuffle" (Jiang, 2009, A1). President Ma's remarks on punishment of officials were politically and strategically significant in two ways. First, by attributing responsibility to his cabinet members and promising to hold them accountable, he repositioned himself as the person capable of alleviating the problem and providing a solution (treatment responsibility), rather than as the originator of the problem (causal responsibility)
(Iyengar, 1991). Second, he created a new media agenda within which discussion was confined to an area within which he controlled powerful resources relevant to directing attention to specific issues (i.e., candidates for premier) and initiating debate (i.e., candidate qualifications).
Three weeks after Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan, politicians, the news media, and the public reached their first tacit agreement on a remedy to the situation—a large- scale cabinet reshuffle. All four newspapers prioritized the story. In its front page
124 coverage on August 20, Apple Times reported that Premier Liu had already offered his resignation verbally while three cabinet members would step down in September.
Headshots of the officials were juxtaposed with an image of a little boy holding up a sign saying: "Find out who’s responsible!" (Figure 5. 6). This image of a child, representing innocence and a basic understanding of good and evil, both underlined the need for a cabinet reshuffle and highlighted the moral simplicity of the situation—the solution was so clear that even a child knew what had to be done. Furthermore, China Times conducted an opinion poll, emphasizing that more than 47 percent of Taiwanese citizens considered a cabinet reshuffle essential to give both the Ma administration and the nation a fresh start (Wu, 2009, A2).
Although the four newspapers applied a consistent news frame to ministerial changes, they clearly differed in their portrayals of President Ma. This phenomenon reinforces Entman's (1993) observation that "many news texts exhibit homogeneous framing at one level of analysis, yet competing frames at another" (p. 55). The divergence in framing is a reflection of the newspapers’ partisanship. For example, after President
Ma visited Xiaolin Village to pay his respects to victims, China Times published a photo
(Figure 5. 7) on its front page showing him solemnly embracing a crying girl who had lost her mother in the typhoon. In the photo, both the president and the girl’s eyes are closed, suggesting shared pain. Given the similarity between its own ideological position and that of the president, China Times thus started to paint Ma in a redeeming light to help repair his image as national leader. Apple Daily, as a Hong Kong-owned newspaper not allied with any particular political party in Taiwan, placed this same event on page
A2 and emphasized the typhoon victims rather than the president. The photo
125 accompanying the story (Figure 5. 8) is dominated by an agitated female villager clenching her fist as she makes demands, while the note-taking president and other officials fade into the background. Meanwhile, The Liberty Times, a pro-independence and pro-DPP news outlet continued to harshly criticize President Ma, gave his visit to
Xiaolin Village front page coverage but took a completely different angle. The paper described the president swarmed and confronted by approximately 400 angry victims who shouted: "The bureaucracy of the Ma administration is even more despicable than
Chen Jinxing [the most notorious murderer in the history of Taiwan]" (Su, 2009, A1).
Two photos accompanied the story. The first presented the praying President Ma surrounded only by journalists, his continued remoteness from the villagers suggesting unpopularity and isolation. The second, similar to the abovementioned Apple Daily photo, featured several children holding signs that read "Stop ignoring the victims", making a visual accusation that stressed President Ma's slow and inadequate response to the disaster (Figure 5. 9).
The Dalai Lama's humanitarian visit to Taiwan was the second media event to help restore public consensus. Seven DPP leaders at the city and county levels invited the
Dalai Lama to come and offer spiritual encouragement to typhoon victims and pray for
Taiwan (Ko & Hsu, 2009, A2). As both a religious leader and political icon campaigning for a free and independent Tibet, the Dalai Lama has long been inspirational to the DPP, naturally enough given DPP seeks de jure independence for Taiwan. However, in the eyes of KMT members, the Dalai Lama was a controversial figure whose presence in
Taiwan could upset China and "rattle the recent cross-strait detente" (Ko & Hsu, 2009,
A2). KMT legislators thus described the invitation as tantamount to an "attack on Pearl
126 Harbor" launched by the DPP to wring political currency from the disaster (Chen, 2009,
A1). However, a DPP spokesman underscored the humanitarian nature of the event and urged President Ma "not to bow down to Beijing by refusing the Dalai Lama a visa" (Hou,
2009, A6).
Just when most thought the "China factor" would prevent President Ma from allowing the Dalai Lama's visit, on August 27, a spokesperson for the Presidential Office announced that, motivated by humanitarian considerations, the government had agreed to let the Dalai Lama visit Taiwan to perform religious rituals for typhoon victims. This unexpected decision helped redeem President Ma's earlier mistake of rejecting international aid and let him prove he was more than just a puppet of Beijing. Although the Ma administration remained vulnerable and its approval ratings remained abysmal, media commentaries started to ask the nation to give President Ma "a second chance"
(Hao, 2009, A14). In one editorial, the China Times suggested that the president "regard
Typhoon Morakot as a political crime he had committed and use the last two years of his term to atone for his sins" (Nan, 2009, A14). Media events thus were created to restore social order and re-center the "de-centered media ritual of critique" (Durham, 2008;
Couldry, 2003), ending the political drama that had seized the media's full attention. Soon after the Dalai Lama left Taiwan on September 3, all four newspapers ceased coverage of both Typhoon Morakot and the related political storm and moved on to a fresh threat to
Taiwan─bird flu.
Conclusion
Focusing on the news frame of responsibility used to represent Typhoon Morakot, this chapter analyzed coverage of the event in four leading Taiwanese newspapers to
127 examine framing strategies used by both journalists and political elites to influence public opinion on the assignment of blame and accountability.
In the wake of the disaster journalists first used historical analogies, such as the
87 Flood, the 921 Earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina, to define the situation, assess government performance, and predict the impact on President Ma's political career. Next, several foreign media were quoted to support and enhance local media's news judgment and comfort news consumers with a sense that the world had not forgotten them in a time of crisis. Aligning with foreign sources to challenge the domestic authority not only redrew the boundary between us and them, but also created an extended CNN effect, forcing the local government to provide solutions to the problem caused by Typhoon
Morakot.
To regain public trust, in the later phase of the disaster the Ma administration began to use staged media events to refocus distracted media attention and bring discussion of the news back within its own terms of reference. This strategy worked in a sense that the reshuffle of cabinet members became the first example of public consensus in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot. Additionally, allowing the Dalai Lama's humanitarian visit to Taiwan helped assuage collective dissent and restore social order.
Newspapers politically aligned with the sitting president, such as China Times and United
Daily, started to present President Ma in a redeeming light and help repair his image as national leader. With Taiwanese society facing a fresh threat (bird flu), they asked the public to give the president a second chance and let him atone for his political sins.
The study findings not only suggested the power of news frame in relation to the assignment of blame and accountability, but also documented various approaches (e.g.,
128 editorials, letters to the editor, foreign sources and opinion polls) that the media use to express public anger while maintaining journalistic objectivity in disaster reporting.
129 CHAPTER 6 AN ALTERNATIVE "CHRONICLE OF CHAOS"13: A CASE STUDY OF 88NEWS' CONSTRUCTION OF ABORIGINAL VICTIMS DURING AND AFTER TYPHOON MORAKOT
In the township of Laiyi, a beautiful canyon was formed by the Laishe Stream which runs through the mountains and woods there. According to legend, the people of the Paiwan Tribe are the descendants of the Sun and are sheltered by their god, but in an instant, their lands were changed and the canyon was leveled. Only the teardrops of their merciful ancestral spirits remained on the sides of the mountains. What will be the next step for the Paiwan people? Will the Sun shine once again on their canyon? (Hung, 2012, p. 6).
Due to the high death toll, staggering economic losses, and the Ma administration's disaster management, Typhoon Morakot dominated mainstream news in
Taiwan for more than a month after it struck the island on 8 August 2009. During this time period, news coverage focused on the tears of victims, the ravaged landscape, and disputes among politicians as described in the previous two chapters. However, mainstream journalists rarely touched on the fact that the communities most affected were those of Taiwanese Aborigines nor did they discuss the situation in these communities during and after the disaster.
In response to this lack of public attention, a group of independent journalists created the 88news website14 a month after Typhoon Morakot to record its aftermath and the rebuilding of affected rural villages—topics neglected by the mainstream media.
Funded by reader donations, this non-profit news site aimed to be a mouthpiece to bring marginalized aboriginal voices into the national discourse, a bridge to foster understanding between affected aboriginal communities and the public sector (i.e.,
13 This title is a play on Sue Robinson's (2009) article "A chronicle of chaos: Tracking the news story of Hurricane Katrina from The Times-Picayune to its website", Journalism, 10, p. 431-450. 14 http://www.88news.org/
130 government, NGOs, and religious organizations), and a source to inform governmental response to future disasters. The content of the website offered a "news mosaic" of fact, opinion, quotations and dialogue (Robinson & DeShano, 2011, p. 970), and told a different Typhoon Morakot story focused on the affected aboriginal communities.
This chapter examines an alternative disaster story told by a group of independent journalists and their employment of communication technology and computer networks to make political interventions in times of crisis. Based on in-depth interviews, this chapter explores the goals and mission of 88news writers, as well as their incorporation of both traditional and new journalistic norms into news production. Furthermore, applying narrative analysis to closely read 1,396 news articles on the website, this chapter explores how the law and charity were used to enhance Han Chinese supremacy, as well as the discursive move through which Aborigines sought to regain their agency. Thus
Typhoon Morakot presents not only a physical crisis, but also a symbolic crisis to which
Taiwan's Aborigines responded by negotiating and reclaiming their ethnic identity and cultural heritage in a Han Chinese-dominated society.
Alternative Media and Active Citizenship
Journalism provides citizens with the information necessary to realize and maintain freedom and self-government (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007). Deuze (2005) suggested that journalists are the "representative watchdog," and thereby serve the public good (p. 447). The public can benefit from journalistic information, because journalists are "trained observers" who believe in the "virtues of restraint, of confirmation, of accuracy, balance and fairness" (Gup, 1999, p. 35). Professional journalists strive to refrain from allowing personal prejudices to influence their reporting, so as to maintain
131 objectivity and non-partisanship. These values not only serve to legitimize journalistic scrutiny of the inclusion of a particular news item, a practice known as gate-keeping
(Lewis, 2012), but also establish the cultural authority of journalists as accountable truth- tellers (Deuze, 2005). In short, citizens rely on news writers to produce and disseminate
"independent, reliable, accurate and comprehensive information that [they] require to be free" (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007, p. 3). By doing so, news writers fulfill their duty as journalists.
Distinguishing Alternative Media from Mainstream Media
The contemporary reality is that most news outlets are owned by media conglomerates. Journalism is often used to "promote their conglomerate parent's products, to engage in subtle lobbying or corporate rivalry, or [is] intermingled with advertising to boost profits" (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007, p. 3). The increasing dissatisfaction with mainstream media has caused both academics and the general public to turn to alternative media, attracted particularly by their potential to realize democracy and political participation. According to Hass (2004), "alternative media [can] be defined as media devoted to providing presentations of issues and events which oppose those offered in the mainstream media and to advocating social and political reform" (p. 115). Jankowski
(2003) identified several features that differentiate alternative media from their commercial counterparts, including 1) "objectives" (i.e., empowerment of the politically disenfranchised), 2) "ownership" and "control" (i.e., shared, community-based ownership), 3) "content" (i.e., locally oriented content), 4) "production" and
"distribution" (i.e., amateur producers who develop and disseminate content electronically), 5) "audience" (i.e., a relatively small, geographically situated community),
132 and 6) "financing" (i.e., non-commercial financial structure, although sponsorship and advertising might be used) (p. 8). Consequently, alternative media, which serve as another possibility juxtaposed with the established media and professionalized journalistic practices, imply innovations of deinstitutionalization, decapitalization, and deprofessionalization (Hamilton, 2000).
Examining both end product and production process, scholars argue that alternative media simultaneously perform the two functions of being "counterinformation institutions" and "agents of developmental power" (Downing, 2001, p. 45). The concept of "counter-information" here is not only defined by alternative journalists' critique of mainstream media, but also by the different values and frameworks they employ in their coverage (Atton, 2002). As Atton (2003) notes, "[a]lternative media privilege a journalism that is closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of 'objectivity' with overt advocacy and oppositional practices" (p. 267). In a newsroom where political agendas and personal perspectives are valued above non- partisanship, alternative news writers are allowed to let their distinctive motives, biases, and judgments enter news reporting. They thus create a "discernible human voice" and establish media platforms that are something other than mere information portals
(Lennon, 2003, p. 77). In integrating this human voice, alternative journalists, generally speaking, seek to be forthcoming and transparent, thereby encouraging readers to reach their own conclusions. Transparency thus is crucial for alternative news writers in establishing their accountability and authority.
The sourcing practices of alternative journalists and their "nearness" to sources also differ from those of mainstream media (Reader, 2012, p. 5). While commercial
133 media rely on official and institutional figures as their primary sources, alternative media invert this convention by offering a voice to ordinary people whose opinions mainstream media often relegate to human interest stories (Atton, 2009). New Zealand’s City Voice is a prominent example of an alternative newspaper that allows "voiceless" and
"marginalized" ordinary people to use their everyday knowledge to represent themselves directly. As two of its reporters stated:
We aimed to report on the views and life experiences of ordinary people. If we were writing about schools, we aimed to interview the students; if the subject was prisons, we would interview the prisoners; if it was drugs, we would interview the drug addicts. (Collins & Rose, 2004, p. 34)
By placing "the voice from below" at the top of the news information hierarchy (Atton,
2009, p. 269), this populist approach to reporting constructs a people-first reality that differs from the mainstream media representation. Furthermore, it empowers ordinary people to become reporters of their own life struggles and mobilizes them to participate in social movements (Hass, 2004). As Rodriguez (2001) noted, "what is most important about [alternative] media is not what citizens do with them but how participation in these media experiments affects citizens and their communities" (p. 160). She continued, "By participating in these media experiences, reshaping their identities, reformulating established social definitions, and legitimizing local cultures and life styles on the personal as well as the local level, communities are actively enacting citizenship"
(Rodriguez, 2001, p. 158). Thus it is by "encouraging and reflecting a culture of participation" that alternative media transform an informed citizenry into an active citizenry capable of promoting social change (Harcup, 2011, p. 17, emphasis in original).
134 Alternative Media in Taiwan
Alternative media follow a unique development course in each society. In Taiwan, scholars coined the term "guerrilla media" to describe these "outlawed, resource-poor, low-cost, small-scale, and technologically crude channels of communication" that activists have integrated into social movements for decades to produce counter- hegemonic narratives (Lee, 2003, p. 163). Taiwan’s alternative media first appeared in the late 1970s in the form of Dangwai ("outside the party") magazines—periodicals published by local politicians to challenge the authoritarian KMT regime and to mobilize specific segments of the indigenous population (i.e., the Hoklo and Hakka) to pursue political and cultural liberation (Lee, 2003, p. 166). At that time, the government owned or tightly controlled the press, which was consequently limited to nationally sanctioned perspectives (Ke, 2000). These Dangwai magazines thus provided a vital conduit for the alternative political agenda of social movements despite persistent fining and imprisonment of their editors and publishers, as well as repeated efforts to ban the magazines and shut them down.
An illegal cable television station, informally known as “Channel Four” to set it apart from the three government-owned television channels, and underground radio stations entered the alternative media landscape after martial law ended in 1987 (Ke,
2000; Lee, 2003). Following in the footsteps of Dangwai magazines, these television and radio programs broadcast vociferous and unrestrained anti-KMT rhetoric with an emphasis on ethnic and class differences. Through phone-in talk shows these new media offered marginalized members of society a voice (their loyal audience was heavily dominated by working-class people and taxi drivers), they also encouraged inflammatory
135 and abusive language and stoked "polarizing ethnic hatred"—an issue that remains unresolved despite Taiwanese society having become more liberal (Lee, 2003, p. 170).
As Hass (2004) noted, "[a]lternative media tend to flourish during periods of social and political upheaval, while languishing during periods of relative social and political calm"
(p. 117). The emergence of guerrilla media in Taiwan reflected the nation’s political transition and made a solid contribution to social change. These media provided a forum for alternative political ideologies to be heard and discussed during a time of repression.
However, the opening of Taiwanese society has caused alternative media to lose their common cause and gradually become fragmented, commercialized, and sensationalistic
(Atton & Hamilton, 2008).
The late 1990s saw the emergence of online alternative media in Taiwan. In contrast to their predecessors, which focused on macro political transformation, these online media address individual social issues, such as human rights in the military and representation of the LGBT community. The internet has allowed alternative media to enjoy mass readership and civic participation despite minimal financial support and human resources. The internet thus has become a new medium that allows grassroots organizations and social activists to produce "a 'heteroglossic (multiple-voiced) text' that gives full, heterogeneous voice to all those Others" (Atton, 2002, p. 9). Following this trend, 88news, an online news website initiated by a group of independent journalists, was established to investigate social problems triggered by Typhoon Morakot. Dedicated to a single event, the website aimed to engender critical public discussion of the government's recovery efforts during and after the disaster. Focusing on the website’s news production process and content, this chapter asks three questions:
136 RQ1: What goal and mission did 88news writers hold when working for an
alternative news outlet?
RQ2: How did they incorporate both news values of traditional journalism and
new norms of alternative media into their news production?
RQ3: What kind of news narratives did they produce under the influence of both
traditional and new journalistic norms?
Method: A Case Study of 88news
To answer these research questions, four persons involved with 88news were individually interviewed between August 2013 and August 2014. The researcher first met the chief editor at an academic conference where she, Feng Xiao-Fei, was the guest speaker. After the researcher expressed interest in their 88news project, the chief editor referred her to the first informant in the interview who was an 88news journalist who primarily covered events in Kaohsiung County. Another 88news journalist was introduced to the researcher by the first informant after the interview. Subsequently, the chief editor of 88news and the co-founder of 88news, who is also an associate professor in the Journalism Department at Fu Jen Catholic University, were both interviewed.
The recruiting process was by no means smooth, not only because 88news had only twelve journalists in the span of four years, but also because some of the 88news staff held a degree of animosity toward all established political parties, including the
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to which the researcher has a familial connection. In their perspective, even though KMT was the ruling party when Typhoon Morakot happened and thus held the primary accountability for the tragedy and for the mistreatment of the aboriginal typhoon victims, DPP also ruled Taiwan from 2000 to
137 2008 and therefore had some level of responsibility for the continued marginalization of aboriginal community. In fact, during the interview process, one informant said to the researcher, "You have some nerve to do a project like this. You know for sure that you are going to hear some harsh criticisms on both political parties (i.e., KMT and DPP)"
(personal communication, August 1, 2013).
Using face-to-face interviews and email follow-up, the four informants were asked to describe how they perceived themselves as journalists, their daily journalistic practices, and the process of news writing and production in the digital environment. In addition to the questions posed to the mainstream journalists, these four informants were further asked to describe their perception on mainstream news coverage of Typhoon
Morakot and their purpose of covering this event from a different angle. These partially structured interviews were guided by such primary questions as: "What do you consider to be your role as an alternative/independent journalist?" "Where and how do you obtain your news information?" The interview protocol and detailed demographic information can be found in Appendix B and Appendix C, respectively.
Even though there were only four informants interviewed, they were representative of the four years of work done by 88news. Similar patterns quickly emerged in their interviews in terms of news production and their position as a different voice which spoke for the aboriginal victims. Given that several articles disclosed behind-the-scene operations, the 88news website itself also became a resource to understand their journalistic practices to a deeper level. With the extent of behind the scenes information provided on the website, the researcher felt saturation has been achieved by the fourth interview, and given the difficulty of securing further respondents,
138 she ceased to conduct interviews. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and then translated from Chinese to English by the researcher. The resulting texts were analyzed using "open coding" to search for high-level concepts (i.e., thematic patterns) and dominant categories and sub-categories, as discussed in Chapter Three (Strauss & Corbin,
1998).
Furthermore, 1,396 news articles on the 88news site were examined using narrative analysis to determine the presentation in its master storyline of the news elements of what (context/plot), when (timeline), where (physical setting), who
(characters), why (motivation), and how (solution/action) (Robinson, 2009). The findings illuminate how 88news journalists defined themselves, how their ideology influenced their journalistic practices, how they incorporated both traditional and alternative journalistic norms, and how all of these elements shaped the news narratives they produced.
Manufacturing an Alternative Voice: News Production by 88news
The 88news website went live on September 27, 2009 and ceased operations on
August 27, 2013. Over the course of four years, it produced 1,396 news stories on
Typhoon Morakot and its aftermath, generating 8,452 comments. A well-known
Taiwanese journalist commended the website in an article entitled Thank you, 88news.
He said, "In Taiwan, we need more alternative media like 88news, which chose to focus on corners forgotten by the mainstream media, bringing the invisible into the light of day" (R. Ho, 2013). To understand how the alternative voice of 88news was forged, this section discusses the objective, mission, and news production process of the website.
139 Objective, Ownership, and Financing
The operation of 88news was completely dependent on citizen support and trust.
As indicated in its mission statement, it was important for 88news to be funded exclusively by its readership, rather than government or corporate monies, to ensure its coverage remained untainted. Therefore, unlike websites that rely on commercial ads or sponsorship, 88news has an extremely clean layout, featuring only news and comments.
Reader donations were sufficient to fund a chief editor and three full-time journalists at any given time (a total of twelve journalists served 88news over the course of its four years of operation). The chief editor, Feng, Xiao-fei, a legendary figure in Taiwan's news industry, gave up a well-paying mainstream journalist position to start a non-profit community newspaper (Jhongliao Community Newspaper) in the wake of the 921
Earthquake in 1999. The 88news website thus was her second endeavor to cover a major natural disaster from an alternative perspective. Only one of the journalists who wrote for
88news was a journalism major in college and thus had reporting experience before covering Morakot. The other news writers were grassroots activists without any journalistic training. 88news aligned with the Journalism Departments of Fu Jen Catholic
University in Taipei and Chi-Mei Community College in Kaohsiung to recruit students to work as volunteer journalists.
Independent journalists with 88news had three aims in creating the site: (1) to provide a space where the voices of the aboriginal victims of Morakot could be heard; (2) to forge a dialogue between the affected population and society as a whole, especially during the process of rebuilding communities, and (3) to act as a source informing
140 governmental response to future disasters (88news Mission Statement). According to the chief editor,
After Typhoon Morakot, I witnessed waves of mainstream journalists rushing into affected areas to get first-hand disaster coverage, but almost all of their news stories were written from the macro, national, or Taipei [i.e. capital city] perspectives. The everyday lives of the victims during and after the disaster seemed too run-of-the-mill and trivial to be included... I wanted to create a platform for those affected, so they could speak for themselves and communicate their true needs with outside groups and the government. (personal communication, August 9, 2013)
The independent journalists employed their writing to fill the information vacuum left by the mainstream media and to create an alternative public sphere in which the culture of aboriginal communities could be shared and maintained. An alternative media space, such as 88news, thus should not be seen as simply a news outlet offering counter- hegemonic information. Rather it should be considered a "process of cultural empowerment" through which local community members can "mak[e] sense of the world and [their] place in it" (Forde, Foxwell & Meadows, 2003, p. 317). These communication practices are vital to permit social change. The chief editor concluded, "I think civic dialogue is the key to fostering community thinking and to driving any future reform of government disaster management" (personal communication, August 9, 2013).
Despite all the effort they poured into the site, the 88news staff did not see themselves as having sole ownership over its content. They considered themselves
"charged by the community with the task of recording the aftermath of the disaster. As such, the website and its content belonged to the public" (personal communication,
August 1, 2013). As stated in their last article on August 27, 2013,
Community rebuilding is a public endeavor, not the achievement of individuals or an individual organization. It is our responsibility and obligation to record what we have seen in the affected areas and share our feelings with the outside world.
141 We have simply been walking around affected areas on behalf of the victims. We cannot claim anything of the happenings there, whether tears or laughter, as our own. (Feng, 2013, ¶ 4).
Thus 88news staff regarded their role as one of bearing witness to the victims and survivors of these aboriginal communities; however, they did so not as distant external observers but rather as participants in the rebuilding process. With this view, 88news strongly encouraged readers to share and forward their articles, so as to draw more attention to the issues treated, provided the stories were not used for profit and the source/author was identified.
Production and Distribution
The ethos of each news organization impacts its story framing and source selection and thus produces news stories with different voices (Harcup, 2003). On the
88news website, aboriginal victims' daily routines and information on their recovery from
Morakot were deemed most "newsworthy"—news that the community needed to know.
The appetite of the website for news paralleled the practice of community journalists who place local information at the core and rely on "the trivial and the routine [to] provide observable clues on community life" (Reader, 2012, p. 15). As one 88news journalist recalled, whenever she had insufficient material for a news story, the chief editor would instruct her to see "what the typhoon victims have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where they go to chat with friends, what they pass on their way back home" (personal communication, August 3, 2013). This advice initially struck her as bizarre, given how it differed greatly from mainstream news coverage, but gradually she was able to see the
"unusual beneath the usual of community life" and "discover serious news in the banal"
142 (personal communication, August 3, 2013). 88news writers thus became the "chroniclers of local minutiae and the concerns of everyday life" (Reader, 2012, p. 16).
Unlike traditional journalists who only worked their assigned beats, 88news writers looked for, investigated, reported, and followed up on any topics related to
Typhoon Morakot that interested them.
My daily routine starts with searching for a topic to write about. Sometimes, I type keywords into Google to see what comes up, or I read mainstream newspapers to see what they are covering, or I chat with friends [i.e., victims] to see if anything new is happening. (personal communication, August 1, 2013)
Each journalist produced an average of two to three articles per week. They also coordinated to cover specific unfolding events (e.g., new typhoons threatening Taiwan) or at specific times (e.g., anniversaries). After completing an article, they would send it to the chief editor for layout and visual design and upload to the website. Meanwhile, the chief editor did not alter, verify, or revise the content, but rather gave the independent journalists full autonomy in their news production. In other words, the independent journalists were simultaneously "information gathers, synthesizers, gatekeepers, and distributors," (p.971) as Robinson and DeShano (2011) characterized "citizen journalists."
Traditional Journalistic Values
Their self image as independent journalists working for an alternative media did not mean these news writers completely discarded traditional journalistic norms.
However, 88news staff expressed mixed feelings on certain news values, such as objectivity and maintaining distance from sources. The differences among their views reflect their various levels of journalistic training. For example, the chief editor,
143 professionally trained and socialized according to the values and routines of traditional journalism, believed that "news differs from personal opinion". She continued,
as a professional journalist, you must verify the facts to maintain the objectivity, accuracy, and credibility of your reporting. I saw many independent/alternative journalists that lacked objectivity, because they were so absorbed by their own views, causing them to lose their professionalism. (personal communication, August 9, 2013)
Therefore, the chief editor asked 88news journalists to employ fact-checking to set their biases aside, especially when covering stories containing material that conflicted with their personal values. This could be seen in a series of stories about the Great Love
Village, a permanent housing project built for the typhoon victims by the Buddhist Tzu
Chi Foundation. Even though 88news had serious reservations about the project, its writers provided the same interview opportunities to both perceived victims (e.g., aboriginal residents) and perceived "villains" (e.g., government officials and Tzu Chi representatives). For example, on October 12, 2009, the chief editor held an exclusive interview with Lin Bi-Yu, the Executive Vice President of Tzu Chi, so she could explain their vision regarding the permanent housing and clarify some misunderstandings. The interview was transcribed verbatim and posted on the site where it had received 14,025 views by May 10, 2015.
However, despite the chief editor's insistence, it was difficult for 88news writers to maintain non-partisan presentation of information for both external and internal reasons. After 88news ran a series of negative stories on Great Love Village, Tzu Chi declared it a non-neutral, radical organization with biased views, and refused further contact. As one journalist recalled,
I admit that I strongly disagreed with the way Tzu Chi managed the permanent housing, however, I still called and asked them to explain their stance every time I
144 wrote something about them. In the beginning, they assigned a PR representative to take my questions, but after about a month, the rep began refusing to take my calls, or would promise to 'get back to me' on questions but never do so. (personal communication, August 1, 2013)
Being ignored in this way made it difficult for 88news to provide balanced coverage that included accounts from both sides.
The emotional proximity the 88news writers felt toward the aboriginal community also impeded their ability to remain neutral in their coverage. "I see myself as a human first, an [aboriginal] community member second, and a reporter last", said one journalist,
"If my story was not going to improve their living situation, I saw no point in writing it"
(personal communication, August 1, 2013). Focusing on the close ties between community journalists and local community members, Lauterer asked whether this
"community connection" would make the journalists "too timid to do the difficult stories" and "too familiar to recognize the emerging trend" (Cited in Reader, 2012, p. ix).
Lauterer’s concern that the interview would become an "inner-view" (Lauterer, 2006, p.
162) was shared by the chief editor of 88news, who lamented,
Our journalists became too invested emotionally in the situation and started to see themselves not as news workers, but as members of the affected communities. As a result, 88news became increasingly like a community newspaper in the last year of its operation. Our journalists stopped their fact-gathering and verification work and began writing stories based on their personal views. I think it was my fault for not demanding high standards. As a journalist, your reporting must follow journalistic procedures. They could have done a better job. (personal communication, August 9, 2013)
New Norms of Transparency
The 88news writers, who had minimal professional training, incorporated a different set of values in their news production, including "disclosure transparency" and
"participatory transparency" (Karlsson, 2010). This ethos was translated into their
145 journalistic practices. For example, 88news journalists strived to achieve "disclosure transparency" by revealing in detail the steps involved in their information-gathering.
Through the website’s RSS feed for user comments, the 88news writers constantly provided behind-the-scenes information about their work (e.g., their choice of sources) to demystify the news production process. They also relinquished their authority in news interpretation and published raw materials (e.g., official government documents or lengthy meeting minutes) on the website. By doing so, they believed they were providing readers "a reference to hold the government accountable for its community rebuilding efforts" (personal communication, August 3, 2013).
Furthermore, 88news realized "participatory transparency" by inviting both online and offline readers to participate in the news production process. For instance, two bloggers, who regularly contributed to 88news, eventually became its non-paid external journalists. Although the reporting by this pair usually expressed their personal opinions and judgments, 88news writers praised them for "always being on the spot, listening to victims’ needs, discovering untold stories, and then reporting them authentically"
(personal communication, August 1, 2013). Another example of "participatory transparency" is found in a news article entitled Let the tribe tell its own story, published on July 31, 2013. As described, the 88news staff went to a rural Bunun tribal community to help it develop its own voices by "searching for the one thing that makes them unique, special, or that requires the most public attention, and developing that one thing into a news report" (Su, 2013, ¶ 1). The news articles written by the aboriginal community were later published unaltered on 88news. As Atton (2002) noted, this process of transforming the news source into a "native reporter" is empowering. It demonstrates the democratic
146 power of alternative media that alter individuals' self-perception and further mobilize them to "exercise their own agency in re-shaping their own lives, future, and cultures"
(Rodriguez, 2002, p. 79).
Although tensions still exist between mainstream and alternative media, recent scholarship suggests a synergetic relationship has also been formed between them
(Harcup, 2011). While mainstream media remain the primary news gatherers and information providers, alternative journalism, operating with different sourcing practices, continues to securitize, dissect, and extend its stories (Singer, 2007). Keeping the community in their hearts and incorporating both traditional and new journalistic norms into their practices, 88news writers see themselves as "a continuum of the mainstream media" and "a necessary outlet for dissonant voices" (personal communication, August 9,
2013). Although the project has stopped and the website no longer publishes new contributions, the 88news staff believe the website’s four years of news production "will remain in our readers' hearts and become an eternal archive" (Feng, 2013, ¶ 3). What lingers in the 88news archive and its readers' hearts is an alternative disaster story untold by the mainstream media.
A Disaster Story Untold: Regarding the Pain of the Minority
On viewing the 88news site, the reader first sees the site logo, which is reminiscent of a traditional Chinese paper cutting. Prominently displayed at the top left corner of the page, the visual mimics aboriginal totems and represents seeking truth from an alternative perspective. An androgynous figure can be seen rising from a lotus blossom. A clover, representing the heart, is cut into the center of its chest. Light shining from the figure's heart and hands illuminates the world. The message of the logo is
147 complimented by the slogan which comprises four Chinese characters that read "Remain watchful. Help each other" (守望。相助). By separating the four characters in the middle with a period, the designer dissects what is a traditional Chinese idiom into two parts.
The first part references the greater mission of journalists, who must constantly be on the lookout for (守) and seeking out (望) news stories, while the second half indicates a community formed on the basis of mutual support (相助). Next to the slogan sits a counter of the number of days that have passed since Typhoon Morakot. Together, the visual and textual forms reveal the fundamental position and mission of 88news as an alternative discursive space by and for the affected aboriginal communities.
The controversy concerning the Great Love Village project was the main focus of
88news from its inception. Of the 1,396 news articles it produced, 438 (31%) highlighted the agonizing aftermath living conditions faced by the displaced aboriginal victims. The coverage of the permanent housing presented both the undiluted experiences of the displaced and the state of race relations in Taiwan. This alternative disaster story told by
88news thus portrayed Typhoon Morakot as a "racial event" as it renewed a national discourse regarding issues of race, racism, and racial inequality (p.106), Doane (2007) observed similar activity around Hurricane Katrina. A close reading of the articles on this topic revealed the use of law and charity to strengthen the supremacy of Han Chinese and a rhetorical war waged by Aborigines in their fight for full citizenship.
Controlling Race Through Law and Charity
In the immediate aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, the government evacuated the
Aborigines from their mountain communities to take up residence in various designated military bases and schools. As documented in the official records, these emergency
148 shelters hosted as many as 4,200 people at any given time (Chiu, 2010). The relocation of displaced victims thus became the most pressing issue facing the government. Therefore, when the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation proposed building permanent houses for the evacuees, the government was more than happy to "outsource" its responsibility for the matter to a prestigious religious group (Hsieh, 2010, ¶ 22). The government believed this would permanently resolve the typhoon victims' living situation, and moreover would be fully consistent with environmental policies.
As the most influential humanitarian organization in Taiwan, the Buddhist Tzu
Chi Foundation was established by Dharma Master Cheng Yen in 1966 to promote the
Buddhist value of "Great Love"—unselfish love that embraces all humanity—and the humanitarian spirit of Chinese culture, particularly the idea that “when others hurt, we feel their pain; when others suffer, we feel their sorrow” (Tzu Chi Missions, 2009).
Operating under these core values, this foundation is devoted to "spreading Great Love through its work in the fields of charity, medicine, education, and culture", especially in times of disasters (Lin, Shu, & Chen, 2010, p. 6). For example, as described in its introductory pamphlet, when a typhoon warning is issued by the government, the foundation immediately sends volunteers to local communities and disadvantaged families to promote and assist in disaster preparedness. If the typhoon causes a disaster,
Tzu Chi volunteers rush to the site to distribute "hot meals, emergency cash, material supplies, and medical treatment" (Lin, Shu, & Chen, 2010, p.15). They also participate in efforts to clean up the aftermath and create jobs so that victims' lives can return to normal.
For years, Taiwanese expressed their appreciation by calling Tzu Chi volunteers
"angels in blue"—a play on their blue uniforms. In their eyes, the foundation is a moral
149 guide that enriches the spiritual life of Taiwanese. Local admiration motivated the foundation to extend its work into international disaster relief efforts. In 2003, Tzu Chi became the first Non-Government-Organized (NGO) charity group in Taiwan to attain association status with the United Nations (Tzu Chi Missions, 2009). The founder,
Master Cheng Yen, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and earned "a reputation as the Mother Teresa of Taiwan" (Chen, 2007, p. 186). Founded as a local charitable organization with only 30 members, Tzu Chi quickly grew into a global humanitarian institution with numerous volunteers in 50 countries and 502 offices worldwide, as well as becoming a business conglomerate that owns a university, hospital, and television network. However, the Great Love Village project launched after Morakot caused many to start questioning the true intentions of Tzu Chi and to see the foundation as "a new hegemony disguised as a charity" (¶ 19), as described in a 88news article
"Charity hegemony, hands off mountain tribes" (Hu, 2010).
Tzu Chi gained its first experience in permanent housing construction in 1994 when Typhoon Doug flooded the Mukabubl tribal community, located in central Taiwan.
Working with the local government, Tzu Chi spent two years building 30 housing units for victims. This housing was later featured in their television drama Moral Moonlight— story of a successful Tzu Chi member. The Mukabubl experience helped Tzu Chi persuade the government that it was capable of planning and managing disaster housing in the wake of Typhoon Morakot (Pnn, 2010). Tzu Chi proposed that if the government provided land, the foundation would build permanent housing for Morakot victims for free (S. Ho, 2013). The Executive Vice President of Tzu Chi further proclaimed, as reported by 88news, that "Great Love Village will become a role model for international
150 disaster housing. It will be the first thing that catches your eye when you look down at the
Earth from space" (Pnn, 2010, ¶ 11).
On August 28, 2009, immediately after the Legislative Yuan passed the Morakot
Post-Disaster Reconstruction Law, Premier Liu Chao-Shiuan announced that this time the government would only provide very limited temporary housing. Instead the government sought to work with humanitarian organizations to build permanent houses, seen as a long-term solution to the living situation of the typhoon victims. The aboriginal tribes were to be required to move into these permanent houses if experts deemed their mountain area homes unsafe or uninhabitable (S. Ho, 2013). Immediately following the government's actions, on the same day, Tzu Chi held its first press conference introducing the Great Love Village project to the affected communities. During the meeting, Tzu Chi representatives described the planned housing in glowing terms and announced building costs of around US$83,000 per unit. Typhoon victims would be provided units for free on two conditions: 1) they give up their rights to return to and rebuild their damaged communities in the mountains and 2) while the houses could be passed to their children, they could not be sold for monetary profit. A third condition, which only became clear in retrospect, was that residents would be expected to follow Han Chinese and Buddhist cultural and religious customs—both of which sometimes conflicted with the cultural heritage and Christian beliefs of the aboriginal people (S. Ho, 2013). Effectively then, the
Aborigines were asked to give up their racial and cultural identity in exchange for shelter.
Whether to accept permanent housing or return to their damaged native tribal communities became the ultimate quandary for most aboriginal victims after Typhoon
Morakot. Resolving the dilemma was not easy. As the mayor of Namasia Township put it,
151 We thank the government and Tzu Chi for their willingness to help us [Aborigines]. However, the thought of living in the permanent houses only makes us anxious. It makes us feel like we will never be able to return to our mountain tribal areas. Why can't we live in the temporary houses for five or ten years until the mountain areas are safe again? Why don't we have that option? If we stay in the permanent houses, we will be assimilated into Han Chinese culture and eventually lose our aboriginal roots. (Ho, 2011, ¶ 26)
The dilemma even caused internal division and mistrust within aboriginal tribes since a uniform decision was impossible. For those who wanted to return to their tribal lands in the mountains, accepting a housing unit from Tzu Chi would be a betrayal of their identities and ancestors. However, others wanted to live in the permanent housing, and insisted that return to the tribal lands was selfish "because not every Aborigine wants to remain marginalized in the mountains" (Ho, 2011, ¶ 16). For several months, tensions existed among the victims, the government, and the Tzu Chi Foundation. In early 2010, some of the affected aboriginal communities finally relented and agreed to move into
Great Love Village. After moving in, they realized their concerns were not unfounded.
On February 10, 2010, at the inauguration ceremony of the Great Love Village, the Executive Vice President of Tzu Chi gave a speech to mark a new beginning for those impacted by Typhoon Morakot. She stated,
Those [Aborigines] moving into the permanent houses today are not victims but truly blessed individuals. After settling into Great Love Village, they will have the opportunity to transform themselves from a minority to one of the elite Han Chinese... Guiding them according to the notion of "do the right thing, take the right path, have the right thoughts", Tzu-Chi will be involved in this transformation to ensure inhabitants become better fathers and mothers so their children will be moral and upright (Chung, 2011, ¶ 5).
Rather than offering disaster victims a better future, the key message here was the reiteration of a racial hierarchy between the Han Chinese and Aborigines, and of a power differential between resource givers and takers. This depiction positioned the victims as a
152 doubly disadvantaged minority—both racially and financially—thus further dismissing their right to agency. It further sanctioned Tzu Chi's "beneficent intervention" in the
Aborigines' way of life in Great Love Village, from the organization of their physical environment to the regulation of their daily conduct.
Converting Race Through Physical Environment
A collection of inscribed stones dotting Great Love Village formed an extremely eye-catching but controversial piece of landscape architecture (Bernstein, 2010). Each stone was inscribed with a message written by a victim and chosen by Tzu Chi to represent victims' experiences during the disaster and its aftermath. As Choi (2008) suggests, "narratives are functional devices that efficiently politicize past events to accommodate present power relations" (p. 371). In the case of Great Love Village, the stones conveyed narratives framed so as to encourage the aboriginal people to convert to
Tzu Chi's religious and cultural beliefs. These stone texts thus are instructional as they framed both how Tzu Chi felt Typhoon Morakot and its aftermath should be remembered and the state of race relations in Taiwan.
Three themes were woven into the texts chosen for the stones. The first theme, the reenactment of the disaster, problematized the past and provided a constant reminder of the victim status attached to the displaced Aborigines. The first type of disaster reenactment messages were first-person testimonies that gave readers a sensory experience with a visual form. For example, two messages read: "I saw a dead body on the road in the early morning" (Figure 1); "I saw someone being buried alive, swept away by the mudslide". These messages presented visuals that let readers understand how individuals had battled to survive during the disaster. Another type of disaster
153 reenactment message shifted the focus to the larger community and the macro impact.
For instance, "More than two hundred Xiaolin Villagers died, including my brothers, aunts, and uncles..."; "my classmates and our beautiful mountain tribal community were taken away by the disaster". These two texts captured two events during Morakot, but also trapped its victims in their difficult past. They presented disaster reenactment in a way that fulfilled the national environmental discourse (i.e., let the mountains rest). The emphasis on negative memories disinclined aboriginal victims to return to the mountains, fostered a rupture between them and their cultural roots, and thus created void that was vulnerable to being filled with Tzu Chi's ideology.
The second theme, which accentuated humanitarianism and benevolence, addressed the idea that Tzu Chi was doing a great deal for the Aborigines, who in return should be grateful. Examples included: "I'm grateful, because wherever there is a disaster, there is Tzu Chi" and "Tzu Chi is the most benevolent religious organization of all".
These messages had a heroic and mythical aspect, and put the foundation on a pedestal.
Although the practice of Buddhism is based on being the source of your own salvation, the Aborigines view Tzu Chi through a Christian lens and see the organization as a savior.
These messages with a religious intonation thus carried Tzu Chi to new mythical heights in their eyes. This theme is further exemplified by messages emphasizing Tzu Chi's disaster relief efforts (e.g., "Tzu Chi provides my parents with a permanent house, so I don’t have to worry about them in their later years") and spiritual guidance (e.g., "Tzu
Chi has helped me find new direction in life"). These type of messages also emphasized appreciative actions, including "I want my kids to join Tzu Chi" or "Everyone should watch Great Love TV to learn to appreciate all life’s blessings". One quintessential
154 example read "I wish I could sell what little I have and donate half of it to Great Love
TV". With this message, Tzu Chi implied that charity is not free. They encourage and expect a return on their charitable investment, via a financial or cultural commitment from the recipients of their largesse.
The third theme, which emphasized the future of the Aborigines, involved renewal through departure. Starting with a message that read "What has passed has passed, life goes on", these texts established a critical distance between the aboriginal victims and their difficult past. The initial message was followed by narratives such as "I watch Great Love TV all the time and my relationships with my husband and family are getting better and better", demonstrating the progression of a recovery and rebirth.
However, religious conversion is essential to this renewal, as reflected in the message:
"Tzu Chi made me realize that the only way to achieve excellence in life is through practicing Buddhism". Consequently, messages with this theme focus on remembrance, and on forgetting the foundation on which the notions of recovery, rebirth, and a foreseeable future rest.
Besides the three themes that portrayed the ideal progression of life after the disaster, the unwritten message conveyed by the chosen stone texts was that of the historic inferiority of Aborigines who "need the beneficial hand of a 'Han' leader to guide them" (Taipei Times, 2011, ¶ 7). As President Ma Ying-Jeou proclaimed at a public event,
"Aborigines are not ready for autonomy, despite their recent achievements in the fields of sports and music" (Taipei Times, 2011, ¶ 2). This statement revealed Han Chinese attitudes toward Taiwan's original inhabitants. In their eyes, Aborigines are like "children who must be guided and applauded for minor achievements" (Taipei Times, 2011, ¶ 3),
155 but are unsuited for self-government because of alleged racial and cultural inadequacies.
Positioning Aborigines as the responsibility of Han Chinese, thus, is a rhetorical maneuver similar to "the White Man's Burden"—a discourse embraced by white supremacists in the colonial era to justify their domination over non-whites (Clymer,
1976, p. 498). This discourse gave the government, and especially Tzu Chi, an excuse to intervene, educate, uplift, and convert the aboriginal community along the cultural and religious lines of the Han Chinese, all framed in terms of responsibly shouldering of the
"Han Chinese Burden" (Taipei Times, 2011).
Colonizing Race Through the Regulation of Daily Conduct
Even if the aboriginal victims could somehow ignore the controversial messages engraved in the stone sculptures, it was impossible for inhabitants of Great Love Village to escape Tzu Chi's attempts to regulate their daily lives. 88news reported on May 10,
2010 that, to maintain its role as a leader in international disaster housing, Tzu Chi asked residents of the village to sign an agreement binding them to live their lives according to the foundation's rules. Tzu Chi requires its volunteers to abide by ten precepts. (1) Do not kill; (2) Do not steal; (3) Do not fornicate; (4) Do not lie; (5) Do not drink; (6) Do not smoke, use drugs, or chew betel nuts; (7) Do not gamble or speculate; (8) Respect your parents and be moderate in speech and attitude; (9) Follow traffic rules; (10) Do not participate in politics or demonstrations. Of these ten precepts, three were given particular emphasis in Great Love Village: no drinking, no smoking, or betel nut chewing and no consumption of meat (this last was an extreme interpretation of the first precept from the above list). Media coverage further highlighted that Tzu Chi volunteers continuously patrolled the village to ensure the rules were observed (Cheng, 2010, ¶ 2).
156 Positioning itself as a community leader, Tzu Chi rationalized the restrictions on smoking, betel nut, meat eating, and drinking based on moral, health, and environmental reasons embraced by middle class Han Chinese. Like many other religions, Tzu Chi emphasizes maintaining the sanctity of one’s own body as a means of safeguarding both the immediate family and the broader society. Safeguarding the body starts with self- discipline as outlined in the ten precepts noted above. Tzu Chi believes that these guidelines result in a moral life and will ultimately reduce the chaos that has overrun human societies.
Tzu Chi’s moral argument for the restrictions also serves to reinforce its own health and environmental discourse and that of the Taiwanese government. For example, betel nut has long been regarded as the leading cause of oral cancer in Taiwan. Betel nut, much like tobacco, produces a stimulating effect accompanied by a warming sensation when chewed. The traditional presentation involves the consumer chewing the nut after it has been prepared with lime paste and wrapped in a betel leaf. The betel nut is classified as a Group 1 Carcinogen by the International Agency for Cancer Research.
Approximately 600 million people worldwide and two million (or 10% of the population) in Taiwan chew betel nuts (Lin, Wang, Chen, Chang, Yang & Ko, 2006). The primary consumers are working class and lower class Han Chinese (e.g., male taxi drivers and construction workers) as well as Aborigines. While health concerns exist in relation to betel nut, the primary concern of government is the significant risk of landslides caused by excessive betel nut farming. The shallow roots of the betel nut tree loosen the soil and increase landslide frequency and severity, according to the Council of Agriculture. The
157 government supports replacing betel nut with more environmentally friendly alternatives, such as oil-seed camellia (Executive Yuan, 2014).
Tzu Chi’s arguments regarding meat consumption include a similar element of environmental concern, in this case for the community’s carbon footprint. As indicated in its mission statement, Tzu Chi promotes a healthy diet based on fruits and vegetables with little meat. "For every meatless meal we eat, we reduce the demand for livestock, contributing to a cleaner and more equitable planet" (Chia & Alwall, 2013, ¶ 10). The concern of Tzu Chi thus is not only the health of the residents of Great Love Village, but also the environmental impact of the community. It is well known that a vegetarian diet can reduce one's carbon footprint and slow global warming.
However, both meat consumption, especially of pork, and betel nut chewing, have a long history in aboriginal communities, and serve cultural and even ritual purposes.
Aboriginal communities invest significant resources to raise a single pig. This invests the pig with special value, arising not only from its nutritional value but also from the resources spent on its cultivation. As such, the slaughter of pigs is symbol used to mark significant life events, including weddings, births, and the building of homes. The process of killing pigs is also a way to enhance social ties, because it requires the family to come together to slaughter the pig and process its meat. This act entails important negotiations of power relationships within the extended family in terms of who receives which cuts, and ends with communal bonding forged through the shared consumption of the slaughtered pig (Rudolph, 2008). Betel nuts are also used in aboriginal communities to delineate insider and outsider. Thus when a bride enters a family, the groom’s family presents her family with betel nuts to symbolize union and fertility. Similarly, when a
158 friend visits, betel nuts are presented to show acceptance of the friendship. Judging and restricting these practices from the Han Chinese perspective involves denial of
Aborigines’ cultural roots (Wang, 2008, ¶8). A comment left on the 88news website stated, "You ask us not to kill, but we Aborigines have to kill a pig at our daughter's wedding to celebrate the marriage. This is our culture. We should stand up and fight!!!
Nitu Pising [“Don't be afraid” in the Bunun aboriginal language]" (Ali, 2010).
Employing Refugee Discourse as a Means of Claiming Race and Citizenship
The Aborigines initiated demonstrations to challenge the disaster management efforts of both the government and Tzu Chi, and to fight for the right to plan and rebuild their damaged tribal communities. Stripped of everything by the typhoon, language became the Aborigines "sole means of self-reaffirmation—the only device that remained to regain control over the definition of frail selfhoods" (Masquelier, 2006, p. 737). The discursive move they employed to convey their cause—"If we stay in the mountains, we are victims; if we stay in the disaster housing, we are refugees" (Liu, 2009)—deserves special attention in exploring the politics of race and the semantics of citizenship in
Taiwan. By claiming the label of refugee, the Aborigines directed public attention to the injustice of their being kept from their former homes.
The refugee as a discursive subject is being examined by a growing body of literature devoted to media coverage during and after Hurricane Katrina, in which many displaced residents in New Orleans were described as refugees (Edgerly, 2007, 2011;
Masquelier, 2006). While refugees are real people with specific life experiences, the concept of the refugee is discursive and only made real in language practices in international treaties, national law, academia, media, and popular culture (Edgerly, 2007).
159 The term refugee has two primary connotations. First, it invokes a sense of vulnerability as it highlights persons who no longer have agency and need to be taken care of. The term also negates their status as citizens and thus their right to resources. Second, the term refugee is indicative of long-term displacement (i.e., long-term powerlessness), and in this sense contrasts with other terms, such as evacuee. Thus the term refugee connotes a sense of placelessness that is strongly tied to otherness, especially foreignness (Malkki,
1996). Consequently, the refugee concept reveals an unequal relationship between the
"helper" and "helped" (Masquelier, 2006, p. 738) as well as the boundary between ourselves and others. Categorizing a fellow citizen as a refugee thus is disturbing. Not only does this categorization expose the inequality within a seemingly egalitarian imagined community, but it also demonstrates the elusiveness of semantic citizenship and its associated civil rights (Edgerly, 2011).
Unlike for Hurricane Katrina, which saw the media assign the refugee label to those affected, in the case of Typhoon Morakot, it was the Aborigines themselves, not the media, that claimed the label and its associated weight. They did so to better convey the injustice of their post-Morakot situation and to pierce comfortable illusion that the nation does not abandon its own in times of crises. As reported by 88news on November 21,
2009, an aboriginal victim shouted out in a town hall meeting,
We have been kicked around by government agencies since the disaster. One minute, we were asked to stay in a Buddhist temple; next minute, we had to move to a military base. Where are they going to move us next? We are victims for God's sake, not second-class citizens! (Liu, 2009, ¶ 12)
Many Aborigines shared similar resentment toward the inadequacies of the national relief efforts. They labeled themselves "second-class citizens", "orphans", and "abandoned" to exemplify the ruptured social contract between the government and citizens in the hopes
160 of taking back their political legitimacy and becoming part of the national support system.
"In a time when we have been plunged into an abyss, we are in desperate need of government help," said one victim. "Please don't let us wander in this dark abyss covered with cuts and bruises as we are" (Lu, 2013, ¶ 7). Unlike full citizens, the aboriginal people felt they lacked the agency to decide where and how to live their lives. The government's reaction to their situation thus became a metaphorical typhoon leaving them disorientated and powerless.
The concept of refugee was also used by displaced Aborigines to address their sense of placelessness and their strong desire to return to and rebuild their damaged communities. On November 25, 2009, more than 300 aboriginal victims demonstrated to present three demands: 1) full autonomy in disaster housing planning; 2) full rights to return to their mountain communities, and 3) full government assistance to help them resume their original way of life (Chung, 2009). The event slogan, "If we stay in the disaster housing, we are refugees", was an expression of genuine fear that their current displacement would become permanent and they would become uprooted. A group of protesters even used a smoke signal (Figure 2), an aboriginal tradition intended to guide lost members of the tribe home, to express their desire for a final return to their devastated homes.
Despite these efforts, the victims were still forced to move into Great Love
Village and expected to follow Tzu Chi’s regulations. Closely observing the living situation of the aboriginal people in the village, Fred Chiu, Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, lamented, "I would never have imagined this kind of undisguised colonization still exists in the 21st century" (Pnn, 2010, ¶ 12). However, this
161 "undisguised colonization" remained largely ignored by the mainstream media, despite being the focus of 88news for four years. Only the China Times published a lengthy investigative story delving into the controversy surrounding the Great Love Village project (Chiu, 2010). Carried for only one day (April 11, 2010), it was soon replaced by other news.
Conclusion
In contrast to the mainstream media, which spent only one month on Typhoon
Morakot and constructed it as a purely physical event by documenting flood levels, estimating causalities and emphasizing economic losses, 88news staff dedicated four years to investigating the disaster relief efforts of both the government and the NGOs, and their impact on the lives of aboriginal victims. As shown in the reports of 88news,
Typhoon Morakot began as a natural disaster, but soon transformed into a social disaster because of government choices. In this process, the aboriginal victims were first stripped of their material capital by the typhoon, then stripped of their cultural identity and dignity by the government and Tzu Chi. For example, while Great Love Village, by providing permanent housing, was supposed to give victims a sense of security and help them adapt to post-disaster life, it became a moral facade for Han Chinese to impose their cultural and religious values on Aborigines through physical architecture and social norms.
Although the aboriginal victims protested to accentuate their "refugee-like" situation and fight for their autonomy in the planning of disaster housing, lack of mainstream media attention and public support doomed their efforts to failure.
Ironically, despite 88news ceasing operations because of financial issues in 2013 and the fifth anniversary of Typhoon Morakot passing unnoticed in 2014, the chief editor
162 of 88news received the Excellence in Journalism Award (i.e. the Taiwanese equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) for her long-term contribution to alternative news reporting for social change. Can alternative media truly change the mainstream media agenda? Does this
Aborigine-centered coverage invoke a sense of urgency and immediate reaction or merely re-alienate the suffering of distant others? 88news created more questions than it answered.
163 CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION
As one of the worst natural disasters in Taiwan's history, Typhoon Morakot was defined not only by casualties and economic losses, but also by the resultant media spectacle, the political controversy that ensued due to the government's relief efforts, and the racial tension between the Aboriginal victims and the authorities. The majority of
Taiwanese experienced this tragic natural event indirectly via various media outlets, and hence remembered Typhoon Morakot as a news war, political storm, and symbolic crisis.
Employing Typhoon Morakot as a case study, this dissertation aims to explore the cultural and political role of journalism in times of disaster.
The Temporal Unfolding of Typhoon Morakot and the Healing Role of Disaster Reporting
The data collected in this dissertation intended to reflect the general news consumption behavior in the wake of a natural disaster. With the exception of social media, which had not yet reached the necessary threshold of adoption in Taiwan in 2009, television remained a primary source of information, particularly in times of disaster when the need for instantaneous information is most pressing. Thus, one could argue audiences turned first to broadcast news networks for the latest developments of the event.
Published the next day and over the span of a month, newspapers became a good supplement to the breaking news provided by broadcast news, offering both a recap and a new level of depth to the issues. Two months following the disaster, 88news, as an alternative news platform dedicated to a single issue, launched with the aim of providing extended coverage to combat the amnesia of both the mainstream media and the public at large. For four years, they shed light on those most affected by Typhoon Morakot, the
164 Taiwanese Aborigines, who had largely remained a faceless generalized victim in mainstream media coverage.
In the telling of Typhoon Morakot, the focus varied from one medium to the next because of the distinctive features associated with television, newspapers, and the internet.
Each medium provided a different way to engage with the disaster news narrative. As discussed in the media ecology perspective, every medium emphasizes different senses and thus creates an unique environment that has the capacity to shape our understanding of the social world in distinctive ways (McLuhan, 1964; Ong, 1982). Accordingly, multiple research methods were employed to study the distinct emphasis provided by each medium. The incorporation of visuals and sounds of television news worked as a suitable vehicle to express the initial shock and raw emotions deeply felt by victims and the society at large. Interpretive visual analysis thus was used to understand the visual construction of both private and public emotions in the first week of Typhoon Morakot.
Print media primarily engaged readers through the written word thereby providing a discursive space and allowing a deeper understanding of the disaster after the initial shock. Framing analysis was employed in an effort to examine the ways in which the discourse and by extension the public attention were directed by news media. While the internet at large has been associated with multiple senses, 88news was limited to written texts and still images, in a way very similar to newspapers, the primary difference being reach, retrievability, and interactivity. In this way, 88news was a mosaic of news articles, reflective essays, users' comments, and official documents. Narrative analysis was chosen to understand the master storyline woven thorough this hodgepodge on Typhoon Morakot.
165 Despite the apparent differences among the media analyzed, a common thread of emotion is woven throughout the tale of Typhoon Morakot. Broadcast news coverage exhibited deeply emotional narratives of generalized victims; newspapers shifted to stories of political accountability, seeking for the responsible parties within Taiwan's government; and the citizen-led 88news brought readers to the frontlines of the aboriginal communities and their everyday struggles in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot. While the medium does have a role to play in the telling of this typhoon, time was an equally important factor which shaped the changing manifestations of emotion.
Analyzing the first week of broadcast news coverage of Typhoon Morakot
(Chapter 4), raw emotions were conveyed through a variety of televisual techniques. The interruption of regularly scheduled commercials signaled the threat of an impending disaster and invited audiences to tune in and witness the devastation through live broadcast coverage. Quickly after, the tears of victims mirrored the ensuing floods and came to signify the public emotions of grief, anger, and pride. On day six of delving into the emotional wake left by the disaster, the news networks broke convention by creating a cinematic vignette representing their emotional state in the aftermath of Typhoon
Morakot. This cinematic vignette not only served as an emotional outlet for the journalists covering the disaster but also as a comforting and unifying mechanism for a deeply rattled society.
The following month of newspaper coverage of Typhoon Morakot depicted the progression of grief as it gave way to anger (Chapter 5). Driven by public anger, newspaper journalists sought to hold those responsible for the handling of Typhoon
Morakot accountable for their actions, or lack thereof. This journalistic investigation
166 produced narratives and visuals that may have worked as fuel for the public's outrage.
The front pages were marked by shocking scenes of devastation and the gross violation it served to the human body (i.e., Figure 5.2), as well as visual quotes of public narratives of anger (i.e., Figures 5.3 and 5.5). While fueling the fire, the coverage also implied that the wrong had been suffered would be set right. Thus the newspaper coverage provided some sense of closure—a faux closure marked by the political spectacle of the Ma administration's cabinet reshuffle.
Surveying the news coverage of tragic events in the US context, Kitch and Hume
(2008) observed that journalism provided narratives for the community to mourn and thus to heal. In the case of Morakot, whether through the expression of raw emotion as seen in the first week of broadest news or the assignment of political accountability in the first month of newspaper coverage, these seemingly different journalistic narratives too worked toward the process of healing and closure. As Kitch and Hume (2008) explained,
"This narrative urge for closure and consolation demands that some nuances (and in some cases, many significant details) of lives and deaths must be minimized, and eventually forgotten, in order for the story to provide a lasting lesson that is a positive one" (p. 188).
In the case of Typhoon Morakot, the lasting lesson provided by mainstream media coverage was a story of resilience (i.e., the society united together to combat the unexpected threat) and justice (i.e., the villain, President Ma, confessed his political crime and began to make amends). In merely a month, the news narratives quickly transformed the powerless victim who was stripped of property, community, and dignity, to the powerful citizen who was able to demand the Premiere resign. However, for this
"narrative bridge" to hold true (Kitch, 2009, p. 36), "problematic narrative elements"
167 (Kitch & Hume, 2008, p. 192) had to be eschewed as seen in the erasure of the aboriginal victims and their ethnic distinctiveness. As an ethnic minority, the pain and suffering of the Aborigines had to be generalized in order to work toward the symbolic strengthening of the national imagined community. Nevertheless, what aboriginal victims needed were not symbolic solutions, but real ones.
For four years, 88news specifically sought concrete solutions for recovery on behalf of aboriginal victims (Chapter 6). Adopting nonconventional sources and practices,
88news fought against what it viewed as a premature closure offered by the Taiwanese government and the mainstream media. Through multivocal vernacular narratives,
88news provided affected aboriginal communities a sense of connectedness and the opportunity to recover through remembrance─an idea of reestablishing the continuity of cultural heritage and lifestyle within the community (Su & Gibson, forthcoming). The narratives largely emphasized the mundane aspects of aboriginal lives in the aftermath and thereby spoke to "individual losses and the real as opposed to ideal progression of life after disaster" (Su & Gibson, forthcoming). 88news also identified a new culprit of faux solutions in the form of Tzu-Chi, a Buddhist humanitarian organization. Thus anger again played the predominant role in the coverage. However, unlike the newspaper coverage that was solely aimed at the government, 88news directed its anger at mainstream media and Tzu-Chi as well. While the newspaper coverage conveyed anger through sourcing, 88news did not shy away from editorializing and took full ownership of their own position.
Thus, while the first impression of these three empirical chapters leads one to believe television, newspapers, and alternative media told three different stories, their
168 journalistic enterprise lie in the common core of emotion—deeply felt by society as well as the journalistic community. The expression of emotion either through sources (i.e., broadcast news, newspapers) or through more explicit journalistic testimony (i.e., 88news) ran throughout the telling of Typhoon Morakot, and it is through the emotion-laden narrative that journalists sought to fulfill the wounded society's social need for healing and closure.
Two Epistemological Questions to Journalism
Furthermore, by comparing the findings in each empirical chapter, this dissertation observed how disasters posed challenges to journalism itself. Drawing on the in-depth interviews with veteran journalists who covered the event, this project found that despite seemingly more operational autonomy, journalistic practices during Typhoon
Morakot were still constrained by external forces (i.e., on-site technology options, extension of news room control, informal networks) and guided by cultivated norms (i.e., standardized interpretive frameworks, dependence on official sources). Together, these factors contributed to highly consistent news coverage of Typhoon Morakot across mainstream media outlets. However, a gender divided testimony regarding emotionality in disaster reporting as well as the new form of journalistic practice adopted by the citizen journalists of 88news prompted the researcher to ask two epistemological questions: What is the role of emotionality in journalism, and what is the potential of a
"multi-epistemic order" (Dahlgren, 2009, p. 158)?
Upon reviewing the journalistic testimony (Chapter 3) in relation to the emotion- laden coverage (Chapters 4, 5, 6), a clear disconnect can be found between the way journalists discuss their emotions (i.e., "how journalism likes to see itself") and the
169 coverage they have been found to produce (i.e., "how it looks in the eyes of others")
(Zelizer, 2004, p. 178). It is a great shame of this dissertation that the researcher did not specifically inquire about the journalists' perspectives regarding their own coverage─focusing instead on the production process. However, this does not mean that the disconnect can be overlooked, nor that the journalists would have necessarily been able to explain why their coverage is so emotional while they claim to be emotion-less.
A gender division was clear when journalists discussed the role of their personal emotion in disaster news. Their testimonies concluded that rationality, which was conflated with masculinity, ruled the domain of disaster reporting. Female informants were even embarrassed by their emotional vulnerability, because it violated journalistic norms. While several journalists suggested that emotional expression was a danger to journalistic factuality and neutrality, the televised Morakot stories were particularly filled with raw emotions of victims (i.e., horror, grief, anger, pride, compassion), constructed and conveyed using a variety of televisual techniques, such as live broadcasting and visual dramatization. That is, journalists engaged in a variety of journalistic practices meant to amplify emotions, while also trying to secure their status as emotionless narrators via an emotion proxy. Although rare, journalists broke their ideal of objectivity to express their emotional states during Typhoon Morakot through the use of cinematic vignettes.
This disconnect reflects the epistemological debate regarding the notion of emotion in journalism (Franklin, 1997; Pantti, 2010). News is deemed as a practice and a product guided by objectivity (Tuchman, 1972). As Schudson (2001) claimed, "Objective reporting is supposed to be cool, rather than emotional, in tone" (p. 150). His statement
170 illuminates the conventional dichotomy between quality-journalism/reason and tabloid- journalism/emotionality. In recent years, although emotion has become a familiar element in news coverage, many lamented this shift as "a decay in journalistic quality" and criticized it as "a response to market forces, which require more attention to audience desires and 'human interest' perspectives" (Pantti, 2010, p. 170). In this regard, when male informants talked about being emotionally intact at disaster sites, their testimonies should be seen as a reiteration of journalistic ideals—journalists "be only the messenger[s] of reality" who present the social world in an objective manner (Pantti, 2010, p. 180). In other words, what has been discussed is their professional pride and professional self- image, rather than their personal emotions in the situation. In addition, the emotional vulnerability felt by female informants should not be patronized as merely female inferiority just because it violated journalistic ideals.
Nevertheless, denying the physical and psychological vulnerability of both male and female journalists in covering disasters has real and dangerous consequences. The case of the male journalist from Apple Daily, Wei Bin, who suffered 90 degree burns on
50 percent of his body after covering the Kaohsiung gas pipeline explosions (i.e., 高雄氣
爆事件) in August 2014 (Wu, 2014) was an illustrative example. Without any knowledge of the potential risks and without any protection, Wei Bin was severely injured by the ensuing explosion when he stayed on site to obtain the latest information. Missing from this account was any discussion of the psychological toll on Wei Bin before and after the incident. While the Taiwanese media industry did address the safety and wellness of journalists after this incident, such discussions have remained short and isolated to single events. This was not the first case in the Taiwanese news industry when a journalist
171 risked his/her life for a news story. No noticeable discussion followed a 2004 incident of a male reporter from TTV, Tsung Cheng-ping, washed away and killed by the surging floodwaters while covering Typhoon Nock-ten (Wu, 2014). Perhaps to properly address the issue the fundamental mindset of journalism needs to be reevaluated. Santos (2009) would argue that journalists should be in the field to feel. The first step toward better working conditions—both physical security and psychological counseling—would be to provide Taiwanese news workers with the opportunity to process and publicly express their difficult experiences in the field without shame or accusations of violating journalistic norms.
Creating a space within journalism for emotion and the sensation it entails could possibly serve more critical aims. Richards (2007) argued that, "journalism's traditional ethics of objectivity, accuracy and responsibility would be deepened by developing sensitivity to the broader emotional impact of its work" (p. 64). This kind of sensitivity is particularly important in disaster news because its narrative script and visual construction have the power to manage the way society feels about the event and can "help generate a new moral imaginary" (Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen, & Cottle, 2012, p. 73). As seen in the broadcast news of Hurricane Katrina, many journalists let out their anger and frustration while interviewing the officials, a "defining moment" (p.85) in the story of Hurricane
Katrina, as described by Fry (2006). In the coverage they produced, the traditional patriotic symbol—the American flag—was employed not to symbolize heroism, but to refer to the disruption of the social contract "that the nation had badly failed to stand in solidarity with these [Katrina] victims" (Kitch, 2009, p. 37). During Typhoon Morakot, the only concrete moral action the broadcast news encouraged viewers to take was to
172 donate money—as evidenced in the juxtaposition of the raw emotions of victims and the donation hotline number in bold color. While a first step, this action did little to achieve a counter-balance to the social injustices that this typhoon entailed.
Perhaps the reason the mainstream coverage of Morakot could not reveal the true social issues embedded in this typhoon—including marginalization of ethnic minorities, the way the government outsourced its relief effort without deliberative discussion, and the way Tzu-Chi monopolized the relief effort—was because they were so constrained by official sources. This was particularly evident in the first month of newspaper coverage of
Typhoon Morakot. The newspaper analysis in Chapter 5 supported informants' testimonies that even in times of disaster, news media still "tend to be oriented around political institutions", even if in a dissenting way (Cook, 1998, p. 95). This structural bias confined the media's focus on government performance and quickly turned newspaper coverage of Morakot into what Liebes (1998) called a "field trial" (p. 74), in this case of the Ma administration. Specifically, this field trial was conducted using historical analogy and foreign sources to enhance its clarity and credibility. In this way, newspaper journalists "placed [themselves] in the role of hero by uncovering for the nation a series of wrongs and insisting on rights" (Fry, 2006, p. 85). Nevertheless, this structural bias also gave the Ma administration chances to repair its image through subsidizing information and through staged events, especially in the later phases of the typhoon when it learned to tailor its activities to news production values (Cook, 1998). Newspaper coverage of Morakot thus reaffirms Cook's (1998) argument that "news is a coproduction of sources (usually officials) and journalists" (p. 114). An illustrative example of this kind of coproduction was the press conference on August 19 when President Ma offered
173 an official apology to assuage public dissent. The implication of this kind of coproduction is two-fold. On the one hand, it pushes journalists to gravitate toward officialdom and gives more space to agendas granted by authorities. For this reason, in the later stages of
Morakot so much of the coverage revolved around the cabinet reshuffle. On the other hand, it impels political actors to be "obsessed with issues that can become timely, terse, easily described, dramatic, colorful, and visualizable" (Cook, 1998, p. 114). For instance, three weeks after the typhoon the government quickly decided, without public deliberation, upon a "solution," namely the Great Love Village, that could be easily communicated using media language and understandable to the public as a response to the issue.
Another possible reason the mainstream media retreated before a true solution could be formed for the aboriginal victims was because of the event-centered nature of modern journalism. According to McChesney (2000), "professional journalism tends to demand 'news hooks'—some sort of news event—to justify publication" (p. 49). Each news event undergoes an "issue-attention cycle" in which the attention the public gives it fades over time (Downs, 1972). In addition, media emphasize different aspects of an event at different points in time (Chyi & McCombs, 2004). This explains why long-term public issues, such as racism and drought, tend to fall outside of journalistic boundaries, because a clear lifecycle is impossible to define (McChesney, 2000). As riveting as a natural disaster can be, as a news event, it has a limited media lifespan. Based on news coverage of major American natural disasters over the past decade (2000-2010), Houston,
Pfefferbaum, and Rosenholtz (2012) found that mass media covered natural disasters for shorter periods of time than other issues and focused only on the "current impact" of the
174 disasters (i.e., what is happening now) (p. 619). In the case of Typhoon Morakot, most mainstream media stopped their coverage on September 3 when Bird Flu created a new crisis, and thus a new media event.
Could the Morakot story have been told using an alternative approach and therefore create a different epistemic order? The news coverage produced by 88news provided an answer to this question. The fact that 88news was launched a month after
Typhoon Morakot struck allowed its staff to "bypass the event-driven routines of mainstream news practice" (Atton, 2009, p. 269) and produce an issue-privileged story.
The alternative story told by 88news not only reprioritized news sources (i.e., victims first), but also challenged the traditional journalistic norm of objectivity—a normative practice that helped to set professional boundaries. As seen in an informant's testimony, when Tzu Chi refused to have further contact with 88news, it was impossible for its staff to cover both sides of the story to maintain neutrality. To address this, 88news workers became especially reflexive about their positions on issues, made their news production process visible, and shared raw news materials with readers. Transparency thus replaced objectivity as a new norm for 88news in its pursuit of the truth. Nevertheless, this alternative story did not grab public attention, despite four years of effort. It remained a story with limited readership and thus resulted in little impact. In this way, several social issues emphasized in 88news' Morakot storylines, such as racial tension between Han
Chinese and the Aborigines as well as Tzu Chi as a religious hegemony, remained invisible in Taiwanese society. Ironically, the latter issue regarding Tzu Chi was finally addressed by mainstream media in February 2015 when newly elected Taipei Mayor Ko
Wen-je questioned the legitimacy of Tzu Chi's plan to build a social welfare services
175 center in an environmental conservation area in Taipei City (Gerber, 2015, ¶ 1). The mayor's comment became the focus of intense debate on mainstream news and political talk shows, creating overwhelming pressure on the humanitarian foundation which has monopolized disaster relief efforts in Taiwan for decades. In a press conference a month after, Tzu Chi representatives promised to retract the construction plan and make public how it spends donated money, whereas the government announced to review the law governing religious organizations (Lin, 2015). Many believe these changes were achieved mainly because of mainstream media's scrutiny. This success also posed a question to emerging alternative media: Although they have power to shed light on new topics, without allying with the mainstream media, is it possible for alternative media to achieve the social changes that they aim for?
As Dahlgren (2009) noted, the growth of "a multi-epistemic order within journalism itself," which was realized through the usage of non-traditional practices and genres, can contribute either to the development of an inclusive citizenry or to the
"classic danger of a fragmented public sphere" (p. 159). In order to reduce the threat of fragmentation, it is vital that competing forms of journalism (i.e., mainstream media and alternative media) communicate with one another rather than remaining isolated issue streams.
Viewing Typhoon Morakot Through the Universal as well as the Particular
In their chapter "At War With Nature," Kitch and Hume (2008) documented the progression of news reporting in the wake of major US natural disasters. First, the initial response to a natural disaster is to regain control lost to the natural phenomenon by assessing the situation and providing statistical breakdown of the damage done (i.e., lives
176 lost, property damage). Second, journalists employ both visual and narrative analogies to explain the extent of the devastation. Third, journalists additionally offer hope in the form of heroic and uplifting narratives while also commemorating and memorializing the dead.
Finally, there is an asymmetrical reference to God made by interviewees (i.e., praising
God for their survival, however refusing to blame God for their misery). All but the last hold true in the case of Typhoon Morakot indicating that some, potentially most, characteristics of disaster reporting cross cultures. News coverage of natural disasters has little to do with nature and everything to do with humanity (Fry, 2006). For this reason, some of the defining features of the disaster coverage of Typhoon Morakot centered on the familiar narratives of heroism and resilience found in the US context.
Nevertheless, culture does have a role to play here. While religious belief served as a source of closure in the US context (Kitch & Hume, 2008), in Taiwan, closures is achieved in more secular ways, namely the ritualistic resignation of political figures following major tragic events, both natural and man-made. In 2000, Vice Premier Yu
Shyi-kun resigned to take responsibility for the failure to attempt rescue of four construction workers trapped on a sandbank after a sudden flood hit Chiayi County (i.e.,
八掌溪事件). Or in 2014, Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch resigned in response to the Kaohsiung gas pipeline explosions that resulted in 32 deaths. Considering these ritualistic resignations, disaster and its reportage in the Taiwanese context often open up opportunities for opposing political forces to gain the upper hand or for civic society to negotiate their identity, a particularly pressing issue given Taiwan's ambiguous nation status and the threat of a rising China; in either case, Victor Turner's (1981) idea of
"social drama" applies.
177 Reviewing the findings in each empirical chapter through the theoretical lens of ritual, Typhoon Morakot was clearly a mediated reenactment of a social drama as theorized by Turner (1981). A social drama often ensues when a norm related to social relations is publicly breached (Turner, 1981, p. 146). In the case of Morakot, when both the devastation caused by the typhoon (i.e., a disruption of normality) and the government's slow relief effort (i.e., a betrayal of normative expectation) were brought to public attention through media coverage, a breach was created and this dissertation analyzed the social drama that subsequently unfolded. The norm violations were signaled in several journalistic rituals.
First, journalists employed historical analogies to liken Typhoon Morakot to other extraordinary past events in Taiwan, including the 87 Flood and the 921 Earthquake, as well as disasters from elsewhere that remained fresh in viewers' memories, such as
Hurricane Katrina. These events further serve as benchmarks to assess the extent of norm violation (e.g. the appropriateness of the government's execution of its duties). Second, the breach was further highlighted by the disruption of regular programming and commercial breaks. However, while commercial breaks were disrupted to a point, in fact scheduled ads still played in three-quarter format next to continuing news footage; this created another breach as commercial messages violated the respect appropriate to the disaster. Third, the narrative parallel of President Ma and President Bush constructed in newspaper coverage as well as the visual image of an indifferent national leader depicted in broadcast coverage created yet another breach. President Ma violated expectations held of national leaders to respond quickly and overcome adversity and, even more importantly, to accept foreign aid that benefits the nation in times of need, an act of
178 refusal that served as a nod to the One China Policy. President Ma's refusal of foreign aid widened the breach and propelled the social drama onto the crisis phase. The core issue in the refusal of aid was one of identity. President Ma’s action raised such questions as:
Who are we and where are we going? What does it mean to be Taiwanese? Is Taiwan an independent country? Will Taiwan ever escape Chinese hegemony?
In relation to this controversy, newspapers in particular called upon a plethora of foreign sources to challenge the government, which in effect did two things: (1) it briefly challenged the fixed state-press relationship departing from the media's typical reliance on institutional sources as a means of establishing legitimacy to their stories and (2) it redrew the boundaries between Us and Others as the media drew on foreign sources to redefine Taiwan's leadership as Other. Facing pressure from civil society, as conveyed in the media, the Ma administration responded to the crisis with redressive attempts to curb the breach. These attempts manifested in the form of several media rituals, such as press conferences executed using specific cultural codes (e.g., deep bows, public apologies, and a promises of accountability). Ma's attempts to redeem his misstep over the One China
Policy became particularly evident as he gave permission for the Dalai Lama to visit
Taiwan and pray for the victims. Most importantly, however, was Ma's push for the premier's resignation and a reshuffling of his cabinet post-typhoon. Redressive mechanisms are performed via "public ritual. Such ritual involves a literal or moral
'sacrifice,' that is, a victim as scapegoat is offered for the group's 'sin' of redressive violence" (Turner, 1981, p. 147). The performance of these rituals immediately halted further widening of the breach and prompted a glimmer of reconciliation, as manifested in a newspaper editorial arguing the Ma administration deserved a second chance.
179 The majority of Taiwanese, who experienced the disaster only indirectly through the media, then quickly moved toward reintegration, being either satisfied with the media rituals of redress or simply forgetting the event on conclusion of the month of heavy coverage. However, the real victims of Typhoon Morakot were abandoned in the aftermath and symbolically excised from society. Although the alternative media site
88news followed the struggle of these victims for four years, it lacked the power to create a media spectacle and so direct public attention to the issue. Thus, 88news was unable to generate the forces necessary for social change—such as more egalitarian race relations or a recovery plan tailored to the needs of Aboriginal people and the preservation of their cultural heritage.
Five years after the typhoon, Morakot remains a controversial word in Taiwan—a symbolic word that simultaneously represents the emergence of a more complex risk society and the undefeatable Taiwanese spirit, the rupture of the social contract and selfless acts in civic society. Focused on news production and coverage of this event from different media, this dissertation seeks to illuminate the profound cultural and political role news media play in times of disaster. Overall, this dissertation has found that the main role of disaster journalism is about healing and providing closure to the wounded community through emotional narratives. However, chaotic, destructive events also transform journalism into a site of identity construction and negotiation. While these two roles appear to be universal in the two cultural contexts (Taiwan and US), Taiwan differs in its reliance and openness to have foreign sources to partake in these healing and identity construction processes. This reliance reflects the current continued ambiguity of
180 Taiwan's nation status. To strengthen its imagined community, Taiwanese media ironically pulled foreign voices while simultaneously muting the marginalized within.
181 APPENDIX A INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (MAINSTREAM MEDIA)
Q1. Please describe yourself as a journalist (i.e., age, gender, how long you have been a journalist, and current position)
Q2. Which natural disaster(s) have you covered? (i.e., the 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot, others)
Q3. Does the experience of covering natural disasters differ from that of everyday news reporting? If so, how? Please describe it in detail.
Q4. Please describe your experience in covering the natural disaster(s), including: • journalistic procedures used in covering the disaster(s) • the different roles and tasks you performed • the narrative and visual techniques you used to report the disaster(s)
Q5. Did anything in particular strike or impress you when covering the disaster? If so, please describe it in detail.
Q6. How were your relations with government authorities when covering the natural disaster? Would you describe relations as being cooperative or uncooperative? Please provide examples.
Q7. How were your relations with your supervisor when covering the natural disaster(s)? Did you have relative autonomy to craft news content as the disaster rapidly unfolded? Please provide examples.
Q8. Is gender play a role in disaster reporting? Do you agree or disagree male reporters are better candidate to cover natural disasters? Please elaborate your reasons and provide examples.
Q9. Did you read any of the anniversary coverage of the natural disaster you covered? If so, please identify which anniversary coverage you read and your thinking on/views of it.
Q10. The media environment has changed significantly in Taiwan over the past decade. Do you think the practice and representation of disaster journalism is different now from what you used to have?
Q11. What are your thoughts on the growth of social media and the public journalism that has stemmed from it? Do you think they will alter disaster journalism practices and representation in the near future? If so, please explain it in detail.
182 APPENDIX B INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (ALTERNATIVE MEDIA)
Q1. Please describe yourself as a journalist (i.e., age, gender, how long you have been a journalist, and current position)
Q2. Which natural disaster(s) have you covered? (i.e., the 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot, others)
Q3. What do you consider to be your role as an alternative/independent journalist? What is your relationship with mainstream journalists?
Q4. Please describe your experience in covering Typhoon Morakot, including: • your major news sources • journalistic procedures used in covering the disaster(s) • the different roles and tasks you performed • the narrative and visual techniques you used to report the disaster(s) • journalistic procedures used in covering the disaster(s)
Q5. Did anything in particular strike or impress you when covering the disaster? If so, please describe it in detail.
Q6. How were your relations with government authorities when covering the natural disaster? Would you describe relations as being cooperative or uncooperative? Please provide examples.
Q7. How were your relations with your supervisor when covering the natural disaster(s)? Did you have relative autonomy to craft news content as the disaster rapidly unfolded? Please provide examples.
Q8. Did you read any of the anniversary coverage of the natural disaster you covered? If so, please identify which anniversary coverage you read and your thinking on/views of it.
Q9. The media environment has changed significantly in Taiwan over the past decade. Do you think the practice and representation of disaster journalism is different now from what you used to have?
183 APPENDIX C INTERVIEWEE INFORMATION
ID # Date Media Type Gender Experience Disasters Covered 1 A1 2013.08.01 Alternative Female 4 years Typhoon Morakot Media 2 A2 2013.08.03 Alternative Female 4 years Typhoon Morakot Media 3 A3 2013. 08.09 Alternative Female 15 years 921 Earthquake, Media Typhoon Morakot
4 N1 2013.08.11 Newspaper Male 10 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
5 N2 2014.08.01 Newspaper Male 14 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
6 N3 2014. 08. 04 Newspaper Male 14 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
7 T1 2014. 08. 07 Television Female 10 years Typhoon Morakot
8 T2 2014. 08. 13 Television Male 20 years 921 Earthquake, (Afternoon) Typhoon Morakot
9 T3 2014.08.13 Television Male 11 years 921 Earthquake, (Evening) Typhoon Morakot
10 N4 2014.08.14 Newspaper Male 14 years Typhoon Morakot (Afternoon) 11 T4 2014.08.14 Television Male 20 years 921 Earthquake, (Evening) Typhoon Morakot
12 N5 2014.08.14 Newspaper Male 20 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
13 N6 2014.08.16 Newspaper Male 20 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
14 N7 2014.08.18 Newspaper Male 22 years 921 Earthquake, (Afternoon) Typhoon Morakot
15 N8 2014.08.18 Newspaper Male 20 years 921 Earthquake, (Evening) Typhoon Morakot
184 ID # Date Media Type Gender Experience Disasters Covered 16 T5 2014. 08.19 Television Female 14 years Typhoon Morakot
17 T6 2014. 08. 20 Television Male 14 years Typhoon Morakot (Afternoon) 18 T7 2014. 08. 20 Television Female 14 years 921 Earthquake, (Evening) Typhoon Morakot
19 N9 2014. 08. 21 Newspaper Male 16 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
20 T8 2014. 08. 22 Television Male 17 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
21 T9 2014. 08. 25 Television Male 18 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
22 N10 2014. 08. 26 Newspaper Female 15 years 921 Earthquake, Typhoon Morakot
23 T10 2014. 08. 27 Television Female 6 years Typhoon Morakot
185 APPENDIX D FIGURES
FIGURE 4.1 – “MORAKOT SWEEPS THROUGH” (Screen shot of TVBS news on August 8, 2009)
FIGURE 4.2 – PXMART TYPHOON AD (Screen shot of SET news on August 9, 2009)
186
FIGURE 4.3 – 7-ELEVEN “RAINBOW WITHIN THE TYPHOON” (Screen shot of TVBS news on August 10, 2009)
FIGURE 4.4 – PROVIDING CONTEXT (Screen shot of SET news on August 10, 2009)
187
FIGURE 4.5 – INTENSE PERSONAL GRIEF (Screen shot of TVBS news on August 10, 2009)
FIGURE 4.6 – BIRD’S EYE CRITIQUE (Screen shot of TVBS news on August 10, 2009)
188
FIGURE 4.7 – EYE-LEVEL FLOOD (Screen shot of SET news on August 14, 2009)
FIGURE 4.8 – CINEMATIC VIGNETTE (Screen shot of SET news on August 14, 2009)
189
FIGURE 5.1 – “VERY STRONG WINDS” (Apple Daily cover, August 8, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Central Library news archive).
FIGURE 5.2 – FLOATING BODY (Apple Daily cover, August 10, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Central Library news archive).
190
FIGURE 5.3 – “FUCK THE GOVERNMENT!” (Liberty Times cover, August 14, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Taiwan University Library news archive).
FIGURE 5.4 – CNN QUICKVOTE SOURCING (Liberty Times cover, August 18, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Central Library news archive).
191
FIGURE 5.5 – PRESIDENT MA’S DEEP BOW (Apple Daily cover, August 19, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Central Library news archive).
FIGURE 5.6 – “FIND OUT WHO’S RESPONSIBLE!” (Apple Daily cover, August 20, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Central Library news archive).
192
FIGURE 5.7 – PRESIDENT MA CONSOLING TYPHOON VICTIM (China Times cover, August 20, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Taiwan University Library news archive).
FIGURE 5.8 – EMPHASIZING THE VICTIMS (Apple Daily second page, August 20, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Central Library news archive).
193
FIGURE 5.9 – “STOP IGNORING VICTIMS” (Liberty Times cover, August 20, 2009. Photo taken by Chiaoning Su at the National Taiwan University Library news archive).
194
FIGURE 6.1 – GREAT LOVE VILLAGE STONE INSCRIPTION The inscription on the stone reads "I saw a dead body on the road in the early morning" (Source: 88news.org).
FIGURE 6.2 – PROTESTERS SMOKE SIGNAL A group of protesters used a smoke signal to underscore their desire to return to their devastated homes (Source: 88news. org).
195 APPENDIX E
SET vignette's poetic subtitles in both Chinese and English:
有一個英雄 (There's a hero)
如果你檢視自己的內心 (If you look inside your heart)
你感受到的空虛將消失無蹤 (And the emptiness you felt will disappear)
然後，英雄獨自前來 (And then a hear comes alone)
帶著努力不懈的力量 (With the strength to carry on)
你將恐懼丟在一旁 (And you cast your fears aside)
你明白你可以活下去 (And you know you can survive)
因此，當你感到希望已杳 (So when you feel like hope is gone)
上帝明白夢想難追 (Lord knows dreams are hard to follow)
但別讓任何人將它們撕碎 (But don't let anyone tear them away)
堅持下去 還有明天 (Hold on, there will be tomorrow)
你將及時找到正確的路 (In time, you'll find the way)
英雄就在你心裡 (That a hero lies in you)
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