Press Release

The progressive news outlets New Bloom (Taiwan) and Shingetsu News Agency (Japan) have agreed to partner with one another to mutually strengthen their services. The agreement includes provisions to mutually syndicate one another’s work.

Brian Hioe, founding editor of New Bloom, comments, “With rightwing forces on the rise across globally and during times in which the future of the region seems to be at a turning point, it proves paramount for progressive, left news outlets to work together. We hope that this can be the beginning of fruitful exchanges between Taiwan, Japan, and beyond, among like-minded media organizations.”

Michael Penn, president of the Shingetsu News Agency, comments, “In this age of deepening crisis in East Asia and the world, it has become crucial that progressive forces begin to better cooperate with one another to build better futures at home and abroad. We hope this agreement strengthens both of our organizations, and it helps our readers to understand the challenges that people of goodwill face together.”

About New Bloom

In the wake of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, many online publications that aim to spread social issues in Taiwan to the international audience have sprung up. Yet while the attempt is with these publication made to spread news of Taiwan to the outside world, that is, putting the local in touch with the international, very rarely is the attempt made to do the opposite. What is not attempted is to put the international in touch with the local. However, as we see it, the local problems of Taiwan, much less any other country in the Asia-Pacific region, cannot be resolved except internationally. What often appear to be purely local issues often are actually rooted in international causes. Accordingly, what would be needed is to situate local issues in their broader, international context, and to deliberate transnational means of addressing them. It would be through bringing the international into contact with the local, then, that we can find resolution to the regional issues of the Asia-Pacific.

About Shingetsu News Agency

Shingetsu News Agency (SNA) is Japan’s Progressive News Agency. Our motto is Independence, Dedication, Fearlessness. We tell the stories about Japan and the world that certain powerful interests would rather that no one tell. Unlike the rest of the well-mannered, house-trained English-language news media in Japan, we are only interested in finding out the truth as best we can and then reporting it straight. We are not another public relations outlet for the Japanese government posing as news media, but are rather gladiators in the ring, struggling on behalf of democracy, open society, and the fundamental interests of ordinary people.

Get the feeling that your news services aren’t telling you the whole truth? That’s what happens when they get their operating money from governments and business corporations. SNA relies exclusively upon its subscribers in order to remain fully independent. Please support fearless and progressive media in Japan through Patreon.

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