Trial by Media
“We as a people decide if Shady’s as bad as they say he is, or is he a ladder, a gateway to escape? Media scapegoat, who they can be mad at today.” — Eminem
Taiwan is a small country, it’s about the size of the Netherlands, it doesn’t need one 24 hour news channel, let alone three. The same hour of news is repeated à la Sportscenter at night time and everything makes the news in Taiwan. I mean everything — cat youtube clips, cute baby youtube clips, basically anything that’s gone viral will be shown on the news here. Especially foreigners, the media loves to use the bad foreigner trope, a headline is basically some version of “Look at these foreigners causing trouble.” After they run the news segment, they’ll upload the segment to youtube so netizens can comment on the story and then they’ll read out the comments in subsequent segments. This isn’t journalism, it’s xenophobia, propaganda and fear-mongering.
I went and found everything about me that was broadcasted on TV on youtube; here, here, here , here, here, here. That was the first round, that footage was directly from the police. I remember the policeman trying to shove a camera in my face and me trying to pull my hoodie up. I got arrested on a Thursday, the first stories started appearing on Tuesday. My personal favorites are here and here, they hit the airwaves around Thursday. They needed the extra few days to put on a dog and pony show. The first 12 second clip was just a practice clip to make sure that she picked the right one. I bet it took them a few times to get it right. See that cute dog? It wasn’t the one that searched my luggage, mine was grey and ugly, and there were 2 dogs, not 1. They passed through my luggage twice and didn’t smell anything. My edibles are K-9 proof, 5 other people’s luggage were marked for search, 5 other people had dope on them, and they didn’t make the news.
The newspaper articles are here, here, here, here , here, here, Here. damn, It was a big deal when I was caught. In everyone of the stories they all said I was selling drugs and that they found me through “great police work.” Spare me. It’s not like I was caught by Batman or Sherlock Holmes, I was gift wrapped and served up to them on a silver platter by a snitch bitch. I wouldn’t see my first court date for 2 months, and they’re already trying to sway the court of public opinion, how am I supposed to get a fair trial? How does anybody?
After my trial was wrapped up, they printed my sentence here. I’m not sure if they’re suppose to, but it was over and it’s public record now I guess. There are some inconsistencies to say the least, they said my edibles had very little weed in it and that I was cooperative, that’s why I got such a light sentence. They can’t say that the court didn’t find a client to testify against me, or that without a witness there was no sales case. That I confessed to smuggling for personal use and that it wasn’t enough, so they embellished (read, lied about) the rest of the details. I basically bet 5 years of my life that they couldn’t produce a witness and I won. If they produced a witness I wouldn’t of got 2 years, it would of been 7 to life. I feel like Justin Timberlake from that movie In Time at that casino in New Greenwich.
I can’t believe Taiwan tried to wage a media war against me. I don’t see any #ThrowWizzyinPrison shirts. Don’t they know I’m the people’s champion? I’m like a Azn Robin Hood, catch me in Sherwood forest riding with my band of merry men. Because I got so much media coverage, I expected there to be cameras during my trial, there were none. If you actually take the time to look at those links, there are no comments and basically no reaction from the netizens. Taiwanese man getting caught in Taiwan for drugs isn’t a big deal, nobody probably cared. If I was white or black, this thing could have exploded. I truly believe that the justice system didn’t know what to do with me, and I had to do some jail time because of all the publicity.
As with many democratic nations, Taiwan has laws that are designed to protect those within its borders to ensure fair and just treatment. Taiwan has a variety of customs (backed up by various laws and traditions) that protect The People. It’s one of the foundations of their modern society and government, stemming most notably from “三民主義,” or “The Three Principles of The People.”
Modern Taiwanese are often paranoid about their identities being revealed after being the subject of public accusation. This means that, in media, people’s’ full names are not released and pictures of them will obscure faces through a mosaic. That is, unless you’re a foreigner. And it’s not just the images that stack the deck! The language used is extremely inflammatory regarding Westerners in Taiwan and does nothing but encourage Taiwanese xenophobia.
The Taiwanese media will not hesitate to burn a foreigner at the stake for a variety of reasons, ranging from “selling newspapers” to “encouraging nationalism.” This story of a Taiwanese national accused of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering his mother in Los Angeles last February was conspicuously absent from all Taiwanese media, even as he now awaits possible execution.
For many Taiwanese, there is one set of standards of behavior for “those like us” and a different set for “everyone else.” That is systemic racism. If Taiwan does not offer equal protection to all, whether from a news outfit or from a government, Taiwan has no business pretending it is a free democratic nation that cares about civil rights. You can not claim to be a nation of modern law and also be racially-selective about who is protected under 三民主義. There is no way to say your nation is one that embraces human rights — you can not profess that you are not like China — when you adhere to the idea that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Another of the frustrating aspects of my nightmare legal battle in Taiwan was the shamefully biased treatment, I faced when dealing with the island’s media. From the print to electronic media, my side of the case was NEVER given fair coverage. Some even dared to use my Chinese name, which was known to many and could also be used as a search term on the web to find my English name. All in violation of judicial yuan laws & regulations that prohibit the reporting of details of cases.
Increasingly, egregious violations of defendants’ legal and human rights are reported in Taiwan’s media without any repercussions for those involved and without any tangible action by the government to rectify the situation. This blog is my way of daring to speak out publicly about the legal and human rights violations I have suffered at the hands of the island’s nefarious judiciary. The extensive and long-running abuses that have plagued prosecutor’s offices, the courts, and the police are regularly reported in Taiwan’s news media and on some Taiwan and international websites.
However, little to nothing of any significance has been done by the government to remedy the myriad problems of corruption, cronyism, impartiality, ineptitude and ….. Equally shocking is that the public in Taiwan has largely remained passive for decades in demanding the necessary changes that would would protect them.
I foolishly put my faith in the government’s propaganda that Taiwan is a nation adhering to international standards of law, that Taiwan’s laws protect the innocent and victims of wrongdoing, and that Taiwan respects the human rights of all. I trusted that the system would allow the truth and justice to prevail. All too often in Taiwan’s judiciary, the truth is twisted, manipulated or suppressed, and justice is stolen by the very people entrusted and empowered to uphold and use the law for the good of all deserving of its protections.
Yellow journalism, or the yellow press, is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. Taiwanese media is notorious for yellow journalism: sensationalism, scandalmongering, muckraking, and the like — anything at all to sell papers and drive traffic online — so it should come as no surprise that the story is yet another permutation of the “bad foreigner” trope in use by local media.
Broadly speaking, westerners typically make more than the average Taiwanese while working fewer hours, but the situation is entirely reversed for the vast majority of other foreign residents — most of them from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. We hear little from the other side of this privilege gap in English language media for what should be obvious reasons — but we would do well to remember that systemic racism against foreigners in Taiwan is far more severe for non-westerners. In short, there are different rules for those with Taiwanese or Chinese ancestry and those without.
Investigations by prosecutors in Taiwan are a bit like moving water in a bucket riddled with holes — you can count on leaks. Once a criminal investigation is under way, the details soon find their way into the papers and onto TV. Some media outlets and TV pundits then “improve” on the reports. Even if a suspect is later exonerated, it is hard to shake off the “sentence” passed in a trial by media. This essentially undermines the right to a fair trial and should be a concern.
Prosecutors leaking confidential details of an investigation is nothing new. In some scandals, secrets are leaked to the media on a daily basis. But such leaks should not be ignored. They should be reported to the Control Yuan or to the Ministry of Justice. This is the only way to stem the flow of leaks to the media that can result in a guilty verdict from society before a case has even reached court.
The judiciary must do a better job at assuring fair trials — not trials by media — and catching the masterminds behind the crimes. There are concerns over a rise in sensationalism and a potential loss of quality, including a trend toward premature “trial by media” in cases that have yet to work their way through the judicial system.
Song of the moment — Mos Def, Eminem, Black Thought — Cypher
