As Taiwan's 2020 elections are approaching, foreign journalists are parachuting themselves into Taiwan and reporting with inaccuracies and biases.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/12/18
By: Ross Darrell Feingold

With Taiwan’s 2020 elections to be held in less than a month, many international media organizations will parachute journalists into Taiwan to cover the story. Sometimes these journalists are Beijing-based or more recently have spent considerable time in Hong Kong to report on the ongoing protests. Regardless, we often see distortions and inaccuracies in Taiwan reporting when it’s covered by someone based outside of the country.

As a long-time observer and commentator on Taiwanese politics, I find the many errors that appear in the international reporting about Taiwan’s elections both a source of humor and frustration. Humor, because some of the errors are so easily avoidable we can only laugh at the hilarity of the mistakes. Frustration, because those of us who care about Taiwan’s security should not accept inaccurate reporting about Taiwan, as it can be detrimental to Taiwan’s interest in the long run.

An example of these issues is a recent Washington Post article titled, “Taiwan’s tea party aims to burst Beijing’s one-China bubble,” authored by Anna Fifield. The article uses the popularity of bubble tea as the basis to explain consumer decisions to boycott certain beverage stores perceived as pro-China. Fifield called these pro-democracy supporters “the Taipei tea party.”

The “tea party” most famously refers to an event that occurred in Boston in 1773, when American colonists, after years of growing anger at British policies towards the colonies and their lack of representation in the Parliament, dumped shipments of British-exported tea into the harbor. Participants hid their identities by dressing as Native Americans, similar to the use of masks worn by protesters in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, these historical facts are omitted from Fifield’s article.
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