United Daily News

This article is about the newspaper in Taiwan. For the newspaper in the Philippines, see United Daily News (Philippines).
聯合報
United Daily News
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Wang Shaw-lan
Founded16 September 1951 (73 years ago) (1951-09-16)
Political alignmentPan-Blue
LanguageTraditional Chinese
HeadquartersNo. 369 Datong Rd., Xizhi District, New Taipei City, Republic of China (Taiwan)
Websiteudn.com Edit this at Wikidata

United Daily News (UDN; Chinese: 聯合報; pinyin: Liánhé Bào; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Liân-ha̍p-pò) is a newspaper published in Taiwan. It is considered to support the pan-Blue Coalition in its editorials.

History

UDN was founded in 1951 by Wang Tiwu as a merger of three newspapers, Popular Daily (全民日報), National (民族報), and the Economic Times (經濟時報). The three newspapers formally merged in 1953.[1][2] The newspaper is owned by Wang Tiwu's daughter, Wang Shaw-lan.[3] UDN is the flagship newspaper of the United Daily News Group which is chaired by Duncan Wang.[4][5][6]

The evening edition of the paper, the United Evening News, was first published on February 22, 1968.[7] By August 2014, the circulation of United Daily News had passed 1 million copies.[8] The evening paper shut down after publishing its final issue on June 1, 2020.[9][10]

Editorial stance

The United Daily News has traditionally been close to the conservative wing of the Kuomintang.[2] Before Taiwan democratized, it was an opponent of political reform; in the years since Taiwan has democratized, it has advocated policies encouraging cooperation with the mainland.[1][2] The newspaper has consistently supported a Chinese identity in Taiwan and has taken an editorial stance that supports the pan-Blue Coalition.[11][12] During the administration of Chen Shui-bian, UDN took a stance against de-Sinicization policies.[11][13] It criticized former Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu for inviting the Dalai Lama and Rebiya Kadeer, who were seen as "separatists". The newspaper's editorials have been critical of the Chinese Communist Party regularly, on issues such as those related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.[11]

Content and reception

United Daily News Office Building in Xinyi District, Taipei

United Daily News is part of the UDN Group and is one of the two largest traditional news groups in Taiwan, along with China Times.[1][2] The newspaper has also been a major platform for writers to publish and host award competitions in fukan literature.[14]

A 2022 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism survey found that compared to the major pan-Green outlets Apple Daily and Liberty Times, United Daily News had roughly the same online reach while it had less reach than Sanlih E-Television. United Daily received a trust rating of 46% from Taiwanese respondents which was higher than the percentage the other three outlets received.[15]

In July 2023, UDN published alleged meeting minutes of top officials in Taiwan purportedly discussing requests from the United States to develop bioweapons.[16][17] The Taiwanese government and United States Department of State denied the report.[18][19] The minutes' format differed from what the Executive Yuan uses.[20][21][22] Taiwanese officials and a U.S. think tank[22] believed that it could be or was likely part of a Chinese government disinformation campaign, generating concerns from commentators.[23][24][16] Democratic Progressive Party members filed a legal case against the author on the grounds of forgery and making false claims. After checking with government agencies, the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office concluded that the minutes were forged but found no evidence of it being committed by the reporter himself. In addition, it criticized the reporter's unthorough verification with the Ministry of National Defense but noted that related reports covered responses from the government. The office decided not to press charges.[25][26] On September 6, UDN said it apologizes to the readers with respect to the incident.[27]

In August and September 2023, a group of individuals were suspected to have received money from China to influence elections in Taiwan. They paid for ads in at least seven news networks, including UDN, to promote results of fake opinion polls.[28][29]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Myung-Jin Park; James Curran (2000). De-Westernizing Media Studies. Routledge. pp. 127–. ISBN 978-0-415-19395-5.
  2. ^ a b c d Jinquan Li (2000). Power, Money, and Media: Communication Patterns and Bureaucratic Control in Cultural China. Northwestern University Press. pp. 351–. ISBN 978-0-8101-1787-7. Archived from the original on 2023-07-12. Retrieved 2016-10-20.
  3. ^ Pilling, David (February 17, 2012). "Lunch with the FT: Shaw-Lan Wang". Financial Times. Archived from the original on April 18, 2015. Retrieved November 17, 2023.
  4. ^ "Duncan Wang | Chairman, United Daily News Group, Taiwan". WAN-IFRA. Archived from the original on 2023-12-02. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
  5. ^ "Duncan Wang & family". Forbes. 2017-06-28. Archived from the original on 2023-12-02. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
  6. ^ "United Daily News: Increasing 'Gold Content'". Commonwealth Magazine. 2009-03-05. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
  7. ^ Shan, Shelley (2 June 2020). "Taiwan's last evening paper closes". Taipei Times. Archived from the original on 9 June 2020. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  8. ^ Chang, Sung-sheng Yvonne; Yeh, Michelle; Fan, Ming-ju (2014-08-26). The Columbia Sourcebook of Literary Taiwan. Columbia University Press. p. 324. ISBN 978-0-231-16576-1. Archived from the original on 2023-10-29. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
  9. ^ Yen, Kuan-yin; Chiang, Yi-ching (June 1, 2020). "United Evening News shutting down after 32 years". Central News Agency. Archived from the original on June 9, 2020. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
  10. ^ Chang, Eric (1 June 2020). "Taiwan's United Evening News to close shop after 32 years". Taiwan News. Archived from the original on 9 June 2020. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  11. ^ a b c Damm, Jens (2016-05-20). "Politics and the media". In Schubert, Gunter (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan. Routledge. pp. 190. ISBN 978-1-317-66970-8.
  12. ^ Chang, Hui-Ching; Holt, Richard (2009-08-05). ""New Taiwanese": Evolution of an identity project in the narratives of United Daily News". Journal of Asian Pacific Communication. 19 (2): 259–288. doi:10.1075/japc.19.2.04cha. ISSN 0957-6851.
  13. ^ Kuo, Sai-hua (2007-08-16). "Language as Ideology: Analyzing Quotations in Taiwanese News Discourse". Journal of Asian Pacific Communication. 17 (2): 281–301. doi:10.1075/japc.17.2.08kuo. ISSN 0957-6851.
  14. ^ Lin, Tai Man (2018-06-01). "Competition, Infiltration, and Paradigm Formation: A Survey of the Literary Awards of Taiwan Newspaper Supplement". Journal of Chinese Literature And Culture 馬大華人文學與文化學刊. 6 (2). Tamkang University: 1–15. ISSN 2821-3580. Archived from the original on 2023-10-29. Retrieved 2023-10-29 – via Universiti Malaya E-Journal.
  15. ^ "Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022" (PDF). Reuters Institute. p. 149. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-10-26. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
  16. ^ a b "China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation". The Economist. September 26, 2023. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on 2023-09-26. Retrieved 2023-09-26. The allegedly leaked minutes, it transpired, were not written in the usual style of Taiwanese government records. They were filled with official-sounding phrases used in mainland China, but not Taiwan.
  17. ^ "事實查核｜媒體披露的 「會議紀錄」證明了美國要求台灣發展生化武器嗎？" [Does the "meeting minutes" disclosed by the media prove that the United States requires Taiwan to develop biological and chemical weapons?]. Radio Free Asia (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2023-11-17. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
  18. ^ "Officials link biological weapons story to China". Taipei Times. 2023-07-13. Archived from the original on 2023-07-12. Retrieved 2023-07-12.
  19. ^ "U.S. denies report of requesting Taiwan to produce bio-weapons". Focus Taiwan. 2023-07-12. Archived from the original on 2023-09-20. Retrieved 2023-11-21.
  20. ^ "Did the US ask Taiwan to develop a bioweapon targeting Chinese DNA?". Radio Free Asia. August 1, 2023. Archived from the original on 2023-08-02. Retrieved 2023-11-23. The document contains non-Taiwanese phrases, obvious violations of government-mandated formatting conventions, and near-verbatim duplication from an older UDN article. Information available to the public is sufficient to cast doubt on the document's authenticity.
  21. ^ "传播观察｜真伪未知的"南海工作会议纪录"是如何经中文媒体传播开的？" [How did the "South China Sea Work Conference Minutes" whose authenticity is unknown spread through Chinese media?]. Radio Free Asia (in Chinese (China)). Archived from the original on 2023-11-08. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  22. ^ a b Dotson, John (2023-11-01). "Beijing Dusts Off an Old Playbook with Disinformation about Taiwan Biological Warfare Labs". Global Taiwan Institute. Archived from the original on 2023-11-16. Retrieved 2023-11-16. The supporting document for the newspaper articles bears highly suspect signs of being a forgery, and is likely part of a CCP-directed disinformation campaign.
  23. ^ Hioe, Brian (July 14, 2023). "US Bioweapons Story Reignites Concerns About Disinformation in Taiwan". The Diplomat. Archived from the original on 2023-09-20. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
  24. ^ "System needed for checking facts". Taipei Times. 2023-09-09. Archived from the original on 2023-11-23. Retrieved 2023-11-23. The false UDN report also shows how socially disruptive disinformation can be, and how vulnerable Taiwan's media are. The Chinese Communist Party regularly targets Taiwan with disinformation as part of its "united front" efforts.
  25. ^ "聯合報生物戰劑新聞記者獲不起訴 北檢：誤信假文件". Yahoo! News (in Chinese). 2023-09-05. Archived from the original on 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2023-11-17. 查證過程難謂充分 ... 相關報導中也有平衡刊登政府相關部門的回應 ... 無實據可認定會議紀錄為高男偽造 [The verification process was not thorough ... related reports were balanced by responses from government agencies ... no concrete evidence that the minutes were forged by Kao]
  26. ^ Shan, Shelley (September 6, 2023). "No charges against 'UDN' over 'bioweapons' report based on falsified file". Taipei Times. Archived from the original on September 11, 2023. Retrieved November 23, 2023.
  27. ^ "聯合報記者無偽造南海會議紀錄 不起訴". 聯合新聞網 (in Chinese). 2023-09-06. 對於本案造成社會紛擾、查證未周之處，基於新聞專業與責任，謹此向讀者致歉。
  28. ^ "Minor party's honorary chair detained in 2nd case of fake polls linked to China". Focus Taiwan. December 23, 2023. Archived from the original on December 24, 2023. Retrieved December 25, 2023.
  29. ^ "中國收買團體登假民調 再破一案 企圖影響大選 4嫌到案1收押". Liberty Times. 2023-12-24.
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