Taipei - The US-based Associated Press (AP) news agency has
apologized to Taiwan's Vice President Annette Lu for a controversial
article by offering to conduct an interview with her, the Government
Information Office (GIO) said on Thursday.
'AP has agreed to make balanced reporting by conducting an
interview with the vice president,' GIO Director-General Cheng
Wen-tsan told reporters.
AP made the decision after GIO's representative office in New York
conveyed a protest letter from Lu's office to the AP headquarters on
Wednesday.
According Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA), AP's editor-in-chief
for international news said that AP only wanted to state that Lu was
one of the candidates in the 2008 presidential election, but he
regretted that the US cable TV channel CNN used 'Taiwan's 'scum of
the nation' runs for president' as the headline on CNN.com, which
used the AP story.
Meanwhile, Lu has also protested to CNN and is waiting for a reply.
'Vice President Lu's protest letter has been sent to CNN's
headquarters in Atlanta. But the executive vice president in charge
of the news department is on business leave and won't be in office
until Tomorrow (Thursday US time). So CNN will decide how to respond
tomorrow, at the earliest,' CNA quoted Chang Chung-jen, head of GIO's
office in Atlanta, as saying.
The controversy erupted on Tuesday when Lu held a news conference
to declare she would run for president in the 2008 election.
AP filed a story on Lu's candidacy, saying in the lead that Lu was
branded by China as 'insane' and 'the scum of the nation,' and said
in the third paragraph that Lu's chances of winning were slim.
CNN carried the entire AP story on its website, but used its own
headline 'Taiwan's 'scum of the nation' runs for president,'
triggering an immediate protest from Lu's office.
Lu said the CNN story had insulted her and the Taiwan people. She
demanded an apology and correction and would not rule out seeking
damage.
CNN later changed its headline to 'Lu seeks to be first Taiwan
woman president,' but has not apologized yet.
When Lu carefully read the CNN story, she realized the root of the
issue was AP, so she sent a protest letter to AP on Wednesday,
demanding an apology and correction within 48 hours.
In an interview with the cable TV channel TVBS on Wednesday, Lu
said she could not understand why AP was using words which China used
to blast her in 2002.
Adding to this insult, Lu said, she found the AP story biased
because a public opinion poll on Wednesday showed that Lu ranked
number five among the ruling party's four presidential candidates and
80 per cent of those polled favoured having a woman president.
Lu said the AP story had been used by world media including
CNN.com, the International Herald Tribune and the Asian Wall Street
Journal.
She said she hoped AP would take prompt action to repair damage
and to safeguard Taiwan's dignity. Lu called the incident
'unacceptable' and 'unforgivable' in English.
In Chinese she said both the AP and CNN were full of 'pride and
prejudice.'
She said she would not let the incident pass easily because many
foreign reporters were sent to Taipei from Hong Kong or Beijing and
had Beijing's ideology.
When a TVBS newscaster asked if Lu would take legal action against
AP and CNN, Lu said that if she did not receive a satisfactory
response from both media outlets, she might take other actions like
seeking help from international human rights groups or other groups.
Lu, 62, a former dissident, human rights activist and lawmaker,
angered China by openly declaring that Taiwan and China are two
countries and condemning China's missile threats against Taiwan as
terrorism, prompting China's Taiwan expert Liu Jiayan to brand her
'scum of the nation' in a 2002 article.
In Taiwan and elsewhere she is known as a firm advocate of
Taiwan's sovereignty and a brave defender of human rights and women's
rights.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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