The Hualien Quarantine Story Fiasco Revealed How the BBC Fails Taiwan

Readers of the BBC’s Taiwan coverage will be familiar with its varied quality, which often presents Taiwan within the frame of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Recently two COVID-19 related stories—with very different levels of quality—have brought the issue of the BBC’s editorial approach to Taiwan to the attention of the Taiwanese public once again.

The BBC’s publication and later deletion of “Coronavirus: Fears for daughter in quarantine in Taiwan” on March 26 led to considerable controversy. The story’s initial claim that a British couple were being kept in “prison-like conditions” in Taiwan lacked numerous pieces of information which would have provided a clearer picture of the situation.

The original edition from the regional BBC Midlands desk offered no photographic evidence, no quote from the couple themselves and no input from anyone on the ground in Taiwan. The story gathered significant attention in Taiwan as a result, and the Hualien Public Health Bureau called a press conference to clear up the matter, providing photographs of the accommodation and comments from Hualien Public Health Bureau chief Chu Jia-yang 朱家祥. Focus Taiwan, Taiwan’s English-language state media, also independently sought comment on the situation with the British Office in Taiwan and local government officials.

The BBC story was updated to include these corrections, including clarifications on the points of how the couple arrived at the quarantine accommodation, its cost and condition, as well as comment from Taiwanese officials the following afternoon. However the article was deleted the next morning at the request of the couple.

A bilingual statement from the British traveler published on the British Office in Taipei’s Facebook page on March 27 provided a more complete picture of the situation. In the post, the woman apologized for the situation and expressed her regret over the article’s publication, describing much of its content as “inaccurate” and “blown out of proportion.” The woman went on to emphasize she “fully respect[s] Taiwan’s approach to quarantine and…never questioned the importance of it,” and that the couple “never asked or wanted her [mother] to speak to the press.”

It thus became clear that BBC Midlands mismanaged coverage far outside its usual remit by rushing publication of an understandably concerned mother’s worry for her daughter and partner in quarantine “far away, in unfamiliar surroundings and at a time of a global health pandemic,” despite it being unsubstantiated.

The couple bore the consequences of BBC Midlands’ failures to adhere to BBC’s own standards of editorial care and corroboration, as Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center concluded they could not receive quarantine subsidies due to the BBC report’s inaccuracies and resultant harm toward the international image of Taiwan’s efforts to combat COVID-19. The BBC has made no comment on the story since its withdrawal.

The BBC’s next Taiwan-related article, “Why Taiwan has become a problem for the WHO,” published on March 30 in the regular Asia news section, examined the controversy surrounding Taiwan’s exclusion from the World Health Organization (WHO). Until this point, BBC coverage of Taiwan’s COVID-19 measures had been limited to an article on the technology used in Taiwan’s quarantine program (by Ketagalan Media contributor Milo Hsieh) and a cursory reference when noting the success of measures taken by Asian countries.

The comparative provision of information is striking, leading with comment on the viral video of WHO assistant director-general Bruce Aylward feigning technical difficulties to evade questions on Taiwan’s status within the WHO from RTHK journalist Yvonne Tong, citing specialist global affairs outlets like Foreign Policy and highlighting the restrictive policies from the WHO website.

Bruce Aylward @WHO did an interview with HK’s @rthk_news When asked about #Taiwan he pretended not to hear the question. The journalist asked again & he even hung up! Woo can’t believe how corrupted @WHO is. pic.twitter.com/uyBytfO3LP

— Studio Incendo (@studioincendo) March 28, 2020

Despite the apparent improvement and inclusion of reaction from Taiwanese officials, sections of the article confuse the reasoning behind Taiwan’s calls for inclusion in the WHO, seen in BBC Taiwan correspondent Cindy Sui presenting Taiwan’s desire to join the WHO as a matter of pride in “having one of the best healthcare systems in the world” rather than a means of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and other global health concerns.

Where other major English-language outlets like Bloomberg and the Financial Times have provided a steady stream of coverage on Taiwan’s efforts against COVID-19 since February and March, respectively, the reliance on other news outlets to support the BBC article again exposes the lack of quality coverage available in the BBC’s archives. In addition, the article maintains the problematic approach of essentializing Taiwan news into a question of PRC-Taiwan political tension, carrying the BBC’s same tired line of the PRC considering Taiwan a “breakaway province” and presenting Taiwan’s loss of observer status at the World Health Assembly as a result of increased “tensions” between Taipei and Beijing.

This distracts the reader from understanding the very issue that the article is setting out to explain—the serious implications of Taiwan’s exclusion and the reasoning for the WHO’s refusal amidst a global health emergency.

The BBC’s failure to cover Taiwan’s COVID-19 response more thoroughly seems odd since Sui, their Taiwan correspondent, wrote a reasonable overview of the measures taken by Taiwan to address the pandemic, run on March 10 by NBC News, entitled “What Taiwan’s experience combating COVID-19 can teach other countries.” It raises the question of what editorial policy and decisions compel the BBC to ignore Taiwan when coverage from their correspondent on a newsworthy topic exists elsewhere.

For well over a decade, the BBC’s Taiwan content has been largely reliant on reporting by Sui, who is noted by critics for often mischaracterizing stories on Taiwan, especially political articles. Recent instances include Sui’s portrayal of Tsai as unnecessarily confrontational toward the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and overlooking issues surrounding pressure on civil rights questions in analysis of Taiwan’s 2018 multi-issue referendum results, both framing Taiwan through a PRC-centered lens and as the ‘problem.’ Yet this issue is not unique to Sui’s work and seems to recur throughout much of the BBC’s Taiwan coverage.

While generally lacking, there are some highlights of excellent reporting on Taiwan, particularly in terms of tech related topics, such as BBC Click’s report on Taiwan’s efforts to improve political transparency and provide democratic models of discussion online to address deepening political divisions. Click also produced a special “Made in Taiwan” program focusing on technological innovation in Taiwan, while BBC Beijing correspondent John Sudworth led an in-depth discussion with Tsai on the threats posed by Beijing, bringing Taiwan to the forefront of the BBC’s Asia coverage after her re-election in January.

The above examples show the BBC is capable of producing great work on Taiwan which consider Taiwan stories on their own terms, but that the Asia news section instead tends to stick to a cycle of either mischaracterizing Taiwan or treating it merely as a footnote to PRC coverage. A glance at the BBC’s Taiwan country profile, which notes the PRC considering Taiwan “as a rebel region that must be reunited with the mainland—by force if necessary” and the U.S. as “Taiwan’s most important friend and protector” rather than discussing Taiwan’s own merits, suggests this problem is rooted at the most basic level.

As such, it is important not to mistake or excuse the inconsistency of the BBC’s Taiwan coverage as an editorial quirk. There will hopefully come a time when the BBC reflects on its editorial decisions on Taiwan coverage, considering whether it is providing “impartial, high-quality and distinctive output,” as laid out in its mission statement.

If not, readers will need to settle for more peaks and troughs of Taiwan coverage that further compromises wider understanding of Taiwan for English-language audiences, particularly when awareness of Taiwan can be so rare to begin with.

(Cover photo by Elliott Brown on Flickr, CC BY 2.0)