On March 28th, TVBS, the TV station which has been long mocked as “TV Bull Shit”, broadcast some footage that caught the public's eyeballs. The footage, which showed gangster Chou Cheng-pao threatening his former gangster boss with guns, was later broadcast by other cable TV news channels. However, not until the investigation did the police find that the footage was actually a pseudo news shot by TVBS reporter Shi Chen-kang with the help of the gangster. The fabricated news caused public outrage. Muser, who wrote three articles to criticize TVBS, pointed out that it was not the first time TVBS invented news. He indicated that the bias reports in daily life were more difficult to cope with than the dramatic pseudo news: 今天 TVBS 繼瀝青鴨捏造新聞事件之後，又爆發 TVBS 自導自演捏造「歹徒持槍嗆聲」新聞事件的醜聞，如果不是這個新聞牽涉到刑法，引起警方調查，這個新聞絕不會被閱聽人知道是經過自導自演、刻意捏造的新聞，而其他不涉及刑法、不曾被你仔細檢閱且注意過的新聞、甚至無法追究這些新聞人員相關新聞責任的報導，你又該怎麼辦呢？ Seeing the mistake of TVBS, other media blurred the footage immediately and criticized TVBS for inventing the news without any self reflection. Long-term media observer Benla condemned such attitude: 其它新聞台有什麼資格爽！昨天播周政保播的很開心，今天大家都在打馬賽克，沒什麼比這個更無恥的了！ Bad Mouth, the reporter in PTS, was soothed by the modest decision of PTS. Instead of following the trend to show the footage, PTS reprimanded news stations for broadcasting it. She advised other news stations not to hit TVBS when it was down, because “is it not all of you who got the footage and helped the gangster to threaten others by broadcasting it?” Facing the critiques all around, TVBS decided to take them up without defending themselves. The call-in TV show Speaking on Your Mind at 2100 hosted by the general manager Lee-Tao(李濤) prolonged its runtime from one hour to three hours, receiving all the criticisms without interruption until the audiences hung up the phone themselves. They even arranged news director Pan Tzu-yin(潘祖蔭) appearing in the show to take the blame. Sarcastically, the “self-criticism” of TVBS resulted in a dramatic rise in audience rating. Tenz said deridingly, “What a genius to condemn its own employee on one hand while earning both audience rating and advertising fee on the other!” The cartoonist Mr. Zeng drew a series of comics for on What the hell? Everything’s gone after the apology? NCC (National Communications Commission), which is in charge of the management of cable television, decided to fine TVBS and TVBS-N each for one million dollars (total sum of two million dollars) and asked TVBS to replace its general manager Lee-Tao (李濤). The general manager finally resigned and made an announcement that he hoped his resignation could “stop vicious attacks on TVBS.” The statement provoked more criticism. Regarding NCC's decision on the fine, some thought it overdone while others consider it not enough. Both media-reform NGOs, Media Watch and Campaign for Media Reform, criticized that the punishment was “insufficient but over-exaggerated at the same time.” They indicated that the supervising office should not interfere with internal affairs of the media; the request on the alteration of management staff was merely a stopgap measure which could not solve the structural problem of dog-eat-dog competition in this business. Besides, the scandal revealed the loophole and deficiency of the relevant law. Responding to these problems, NCC should make amendments to the law as soon as possible and take the blunder of TVBS into consideration when renewing the broadcasting license in the future. Compared with the harsh attacks on TVBS management staffs, the two reporters fired in this event received many support from their colleagues. Having been a journalist for seven to eight years, An Ping Ke (安平客)wrote an article “We Can Do Nothing” to lament the severe working environment of media, where reporters have to betray their souls in order to earn a living. To attract the public attention, distortion of the news becomes the SOP (standard operating procedure) for news processing. What should reporters do when all the media become another “TV Bull Shit”. For An Ping Ke the answer is “We can do nothing.” In his blog, Benla quoted a remark from a former TVBS reporter, who thought that these two reporters did make an unbearable mistake, but they had contributed lots of exclusives to the company. “The company gets benefits by broadcasting those exclusives, but when they get into trouble, where is the company? Does it pay the bail and hire a lawyer for them? I don’t think so.