On 2 June, People First Party Taipei City councilor Mike Wang, a former member of the media himself, brought to light a videotape suggesting that scam artists were selling food offerings slated for destruction from Taipei's First and Second Municipal Funeral Parlors. Some of the food was allegedly remanufactured into fermented tofu. According to Wang's calculations based on 6,000-plus funerals over a six-month period, the take was worth over NT$10 million.

Repeated airing of the videotape on TV news stations whipped up a public scare. Restaurants throughout the area in which the food offerings were allegedly sold suffered heavy losses both in terms of business and reputation.

Taipei Health Department workers went several times to the places indicated on a list provided by Wang to determine whether illicit foodstuffs had come in, but their investigations showed that many of the eateries did not exist or had gone out of business long ago. The restaurants that could be found posed no cause for suspicion as their food sources could all be traced.

The incident underwent a dramatic twist on the evening of the 7th. Using Wang's tape, the police discovered Hsu Che-ming, the individual who played the role of a "cockroach" (as the media dubbed persons selling food offerings). He divulged that Wang's assistant had supplied him with food and a scooter and asked him to play the part of the black T-shirted fellow in this "simulation." The food shown in the video was meat purchased in advance by Wang's assistants and had not been used as offerings. Following the theatrical production, he brought the "offerings" home and ate them.

Based on this and other testimonies, the police found the other "cockroaches" in the video, all of whom turned out to be Wang's assistants. Although Wang apologized tearfully for the tape's forged contents, he maintained that the whole incident was staged by his assistants without his knowledge. He further insisted that "cockroaches" did indeed exist, but his assistants hadn't able to catch them on film, so they had opted to shoot a "simulation"-a technique commonly employed by Taiwan's news stations.

After Wang admitted the sham he quickly became the object of intense public criticism. His actions could bring charges of forgery and contempt of public office-both indictable crimes. Furthermore, the PFP suspended his party membership indefinitely, ETTV took his in-depth investigative program off the air, and the injured restaurateurs have joined together to demand that Wang compensate them for damage done to their businesses and reputations or be sued for defamation.

In light of the role the media played in this affair, the civic group Campaign for Media Reform blasted politicians for using ungrounded sensationalistic issues to get media exposure. The electronic media was a contributing factor to the politicizing of news, because it focused on ratings and hyped news items without first authenticating them.

Wang was elected to public office after making his mark in journalism by revealing corruption on his TV program, illustrating just how close the relationship between politics and journalism is in Taiwan, while revealing the depth of hypocrisy and dishonesty among public figures.

There is no hiding the fact that the endless flood of "black-heart products" (products sold illegally or without public safety in mind) in recent years has become a focus of public concern. This episode over the alleged sale of food offerings for the dead exposes perhaps that the crisis of credibility that exists in Taiwan today needs to be faced squarely. Everybody is on edge these days. Everyone, including the media and their audiences, politicians and the common man, needs to calm down and rebuild mutual trust in society.