Liberty Times: President Ma's plunging popularity President Ma Ying-jeou broke the law Wednesday by mentioning opinion poll results about the ruling Kuomintang's (KMT's) candidate for Yilan magistate and his opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rival within 10 days of polling day.

Actually Ma's own popularity is plunging. A recent poll by National Taiwan University shows that about 60 percent of the people surveyed, including many who voted for him last year, dispprove of Ma's performance.

It really takes a lot of chutzpah for Ma to stump for other candidates in light of his own poor approval rating.

Doesn't he know that he is considered a bane by many KMT candidates? The Research, Development and Evaluation Commission under the Executive Yuan has listed the people's top 15 grievances, most of which have been triggered by Ma's policy of strengthening ties with China.

But we don't think Ma will yield to public opinion and reverse his policy.

Should we let this political quack continue his trickery? If your answer is no, please deliver him a lesson by voting against his party in the forthcoming elections.

Apple Daily: Mayor Hau, give the press its due Apple Daily apologized and mended its ways after its Internet motion graphic news was protested by civil groups.

However, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin, who pre-empted the National Communication Commission to fine the daily NT$500,000 Wednesday, fined it a further NT$500,000 a day later on the grounds that the daily's news stories a couple of days earlier contained obscene motion graphics.

He also banned city schools from subscribing to the daily. The mayor is obviously trying to boost his own plunging popularity by bashing Apple Daily after perceiving the public discontent with it.

Meanwhile the National Communications Commission has sent out the message that they will nix Next Media's application for TV licences.

We can see how much the officialdom hates freedom of the press.

Graphic motion news is an innovative method of news coverage and is the wave of the future in terms of news reports.

We accepted the mayor's first fine but the second fine was not based on law and constitutes an example of infringement on press freedom.

With a mayor like Hau, the city's residents need no enemy.

China Times: Please give journalism due respect Apple Daily has caused alarm among the public by airing graphic animated depictions of sensationalist news available via mobile phone and the Internet.

The government was caught on the back foot by this new form of news reporting, with the National Communications Commission saying it was helpless under the law while the Taipei city government fined the media group that owns Apple Daily for offering unrestricted access to obscene content.

The last thing we would like to see is the government controlling the press, but we urge our colleagues to keep some fundamental ethics in mind while carrying out their jobs.

Press freedom has been one of the sources of Taiwan's pride during its development from totalitarianism to democracy, but when freedom is available, discipline should be maintained. Press workers should know that they are not only disseminating information, they are spreading a value system, which means reporting evil as something to be rejected and reporting the good as something to be embraced.

Apple Daily has emerged as the daily with the largest circulation on the island by feeding the public a diet of celebrity scandal and sensationalist news, but as a newspaper, all its news should be suitable for readers of all ages and it should not have to be rated.

We must caution the daily that making profit won't necessarily earn it respect.

United Daily News: People's grievances cannot be prioritized, government's performance cannot be gauged in short time. Premier Wu asked Taiwan's citizens to select their top 10 grievances, and he vowed to address them with an NT$500 billion budget.

We understand the premier is eager to do something that will impress the public favorably, but the government's performance cannot be gauged in a short time.

Furthermore, the public has many ways to express grievances. How could the government have ignored them and therefore be forced to ask the public to rank them? According to the grievances already published, many of them can be easily addressed without any funding, and the premier's idea of eradicating these grievances with a big budget may have missed the point.

Can the government, in fact, overlook some of the grievances that have not made the top-10 list, such as rampant telephone fraud and farmland pollution? The fundamental way to eliminate public grievances is for civil servants to serve the people sincerely rather than setting up a big budget.

(By Maubo Chang)