Friday, March 31, 2006

Apple Daily

I can't resist a short comment on ESWN. ESWN has been publishing a series of apologetics on why he uses a 100% Hong Kong-Chinese owned tabloid paper, Apple Daily, a foreign publication, to "represent" Taiwan, instead of a local paper. The latest screed in this purblind affair is a translation of a self-serving column from Apple Daily explaining why it is so popular...


So this was how Apple Daily (Taiwan) rose up. Actually, this is no big deal because it is simply following the ABC's of independent western media. But in a politically polarized society of Chinese people, this small bit of independent spirit is enough to win.
It is truly droll to read this farrago of nonsense against the reality of Apple Daily. What is Apple Daily's idea of the "independent western media?" Today's paper featured a gigantic front page photo of a nude couple, with the woman's erect nipple pointing proudly at the man. Erect nipples, blood-soaked corpses, and affairs that end badly: that's how Apple Daily in Taiwan "genuinely get into the lives of the people."

Pardon me, but I'm going to go out now and laugh my head off.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two things that strike me as funny about this paper: its extensive use of computer generated comic strip style graphic accompanying many reports, and embedding of advertisement in the middle of news grouping giving the advertisement a false appearance of a news.

It’s hard to take a paper seriously when it spends half a page of blow-by-blow descriptive graphics on some man goes insane and ignites a gas bottle in an attempt to kill the neighborhood milkman who slept with his wife. Then the news follows by an ad for the gas bottle company.

ESWN should know that Apple Daily just lost a civil suit filed by a former parliament member Lee Zi-Long (www.libertytimes.com.tw/2006/new/mar/28/today-so8.htm). In 2003, AD erroneously reported that Mr. Lee raped his assistant, and yes, with comic strip graphics describing the event. AD is in the business of making news, not reporting them.

My conclusion: Apple Daily targets people who are boarder-line illiterate.

Anonymous said...

"Today's paper featured a gigantic front page photo of a nude couple, with the woman's erect nipple pointing proudly at the man."

Damn. I gotta subscribe to this paper!