Yae-Wei Wang

TITV, indigenous media, accountability system.

The problem of privatization of public interests in the Taiwanese Indigenous Television Station (TITV) has become an increasingly serious issue and a challenge that the current indigenous/non-indigenous civil society has to face. Being a public media of minority, it has been suffered from the intervention steered by wrestles between political parties and government agency since its inauguration in 2005 and enrollment in 2007 as a member of the local public broadcasting system (TBS).

In recent years, both the ruling party and the opposition party tended to put their interests ahead of the public media and exerted intense political intervention towards TBS and TITV. In order to maintain their influence, the legislators from different party members increasingly pressed upon the performance of public media, infringing upon public interests and undermining the professionalism and independency that civil society has appealed for years. TITV was pushed to be separated from TBS mainly due to the force from the indigenous congressmen from ruling party. It has re-established as an independent broadcaster from January 1st 2014 without any concrete media related law to protect and regulate its performance, which makes TITV totally exposed to every possible harm ever since.

It is extremely important to draw up a new indigenous media law and develop the sustainable operation modle for TITV at the same time. This research examines media accountability theory and its application among major indigenous broadcasters around the world, thus provide the infrastructure basis for the imagination and design of the indigenous media accountability mechanism in Taiwan.