Political Witch Hunt: Sanlih's Massive Smear Campaign and Media Trial Against Kao Hsin-an

During the 2022 local elections in Taiwan, TPP Hsinchu mayoral candidate Kao Hsin-an became the primary target of ruling-party-aligned media. Beginning in mid-September, Sanlih TV and its various political talk shows launched a months-long, 24/7 campaign of highly biased negative reporting. They focused heavily on allegations that Kao's University of Cincinnati PhD thesis plagiarized an Institute for Information Industry (III) report and that she held illegal concurrent posts. Even after Kao produced official letters from the university's research integrity office confirming her thesis had no misconduct, Sanlih continued its selective reporting and deliberate distortions. This relentless use of public airwaves to conduct a coordinated political witch hunt was widely condemned as a egregious abuse of media power and a highly toxic form of 'media trial' designed to manipulate democratic elections.