NCC needs payola rules and code of conduct

　　Concealed advertisements deserve disciplinary measures because they can damage program quality and editorial impartiality.

　　In a case cited by the electronic media watchdog, characters in a soap opera delivered ad slogans only thinly disguised as legitimate lines. “Buying these red cans (of a famous brand of soft drink) for a worship ritual will bring you luck,” has definitely more to do with making loads of money for the producers then with developing the plot of the drama.

　　TV programs or news segments that focus on particular businesses sometimes do occupy too much precious airtime that are then denied to airing more useful information or newsworthy stories.

　　However, sometimes it is difficult to draw the line between useful information and product placement. In another case, a cable news station was fined for the freeze-frame on a certain crocodile leather handbag during a story on how the company has cut its costs by breeding its own reptiles.

　　A luxury handbag brand keeping their own crocodiles is news for sure. Yet it is also imaginable that the cable station was in some sort of commercial arrangement to air those frozen frames.

　　Some critics of the NCC's decision maintained that the audience has the right to know. In some case it is productive to provide information showing where the good food and good buys are.

　　Some pointed out that an indirect commercial of Kaohsiung City was virtually everywhere in the Golden Bell award-winning drama “Black & White” due to it being the setting of the show. Such placement helps promote the beauty of Taiwan, so should they also be banned?

　　The NCC is right to require more impartial content from TV stations. The problem is that censorship and fines alone cannot help rein in the providers. In many cases, these measures may even smother editorial freedom.

　　Taiwan currently bans all kinds of market placement. Paradoxically, such practices help fan such promotion tactics because an indiscriminate ban actually blurs the line between placement and information.

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