TAIWAN – “While legislators urge the government to reduce the number of Public Welfare Lottery draws from two a week to one, scholars are also condemning the media's coverage of the lottery.
”Vice President Annette Lu yesterday reiterated her remark last month that the lottery is Taiwan's `social landslide’ and should be eliminated.
”The finance committee of the Legislative Yuan last week asked the Ministry of Finance to take steps to ease public hysteria about the lottery, by publishing warnings on lottery tickets about the low probability of success and the dangers of excessive expenditure on lottery tickets, and reducing the draws to one a week.
”Some critics, however, say that the lottery fever is whipped up by the media.
”…The public lottery was first drawn on Jan. 22 and has since received saturation coverage by the media. All cable news channels broadcast the draws live every Tuesday and Friday evening and report 24-hours a day on related stories, including items about stations that have sold lucky tickets and people who have predicted winning numbers.
”The print media are also providing saturation coverage. Of these, the China Times Express, one of the three main evening newspapers, is alone in offering predictions of winning numbers, which it has done in its four-page special reports on the lottery every Tuesday and Friday since Jan 18
”…As well as purporting to predict lucky numbers, the four-page special reports also advise on `magical phenomena’ that they say can forecast lucky numbers.
”One of the newspaper's news reports in its Jan. 24 edition effectively promoted its special pages by reporting their accurate prediction of five of the six lucky numbers in one of the previous draws…”
