Media outlets are often subject to control by authoritarian governments or political parties because they able to reach out to every corner of a society, regardless of geographical boundaries.
Whoever controls the media has the power to control the public discourse and to bend the public’s perception of certain issues to the controller’s advantage.
For decades, prior to the launch of the Public Television Service (PTS) on July 1, 1998, the nation’s wireless broadcasters had been subject to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) grip, serving nothing but political purposes instead of fulfilling their duty to provide a politics-blind public forum for information.
Given this history, it is vital to ensure that the PTS can operate independently, without any political or commercial maneuvering, as is stipulated by the Public Television Act (公共電視法), because the public needs an objective voice no matter how impossible this dream may sound.
However, it’s easy to be pessimistic about the future of the PTS after another controversial reshuffle of its management, which could be the prelude to the demise of the 12-year-old, publically owned institution.
Although the Government Information Office (GIO) said that it has never interfered in the PTS’ operations or personnel matters, the trail of political maneuvering is evident — and not very subtle either.
In December 2008, the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee passed a resolution proposed by KMT caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世) to freeze the PTS’ budget for last year unless the broadcaster gained approval from the GIO for every item on its budget request.
In June last year, the legislature passed an amendment to the act to enlarge the PTS’ board of directors, after which the GIO, which funds the PTS, immediately appointed eight new directors.
Three months later, the GIO filed a lawsuit against six of the 11 remaining directors, accusing them of illegally holding meetings without the necessary two-thirds attendance.
The Control Yuan, at the end of last year, censured the GIO for increasing the number of board members, a move that had been criticized as an attempt to expand the government’s control of the broadcaster.
Control Yuan member Frank Wu (吳豐山), who proposed a probe of the appointments, recently said the GIO had replied to the censure on three occasions, but never fully explained how the new appointees were chosen.
Adding to the controversy was last month’s dismissal of PTS Foundation president and chief executive Sylvia Feng (馮賢賢), who had worked for the station for 12 years, on grounds of incompetence by acting PTS chairman and KMT supporter Chen Sheng-fu (陳勝福). This was while, under Feng’s leadership, funds raised by the PTS skyrocketed to close to NT$10 million (US$321,000) in the second half of last year and the PTS’ viewership rate had grown from 0.03 percent in 1998 to 0.18 percent last year.
The KMT government made every effort to deny that it had played a role in the controversies, but it never responded to speculation that the PTS’ independence had been compromised nor proposed measures to protect the institution’s independence.
This blatant interference deserves a full-scale Control Yuan investigation. One can’t help but wonder what the government watchdog will find if it looks into every breadcrumb closely and follows the trail home.
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS