Thousands of Taiwan Broadcasting System (TBS) employees and viewers — as well as members of civic groups — took to the streets and formed “human dominoes” outside the Legislative Yuan yesterday to protest against political intervention in media affairs.
“The invisible hand of politics should leave Public Television Service [PTS] alone because it belongs to the public,” Media Watch chairman Kuang Chung-shiang (管中祥) told a crowd gathered on Liberty Square before the start of the parade. “Government institutions such as the Council for Hakka Affairs and the Council of Indigenous Peoples also need to keep their hands off the Hakka and Aboriginal TV stations.”
PTS, Hakka Television Service and Taiwan Indigenous Television Service (TITV) are all affiliates of TBS, which is funded mainly by the government. The law states that the three government-funded channels “belong to the public” and should operate independently.
PHOTO: PATRICK LIN, AFP
However, a resolution proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世) and passed last month by a legislative committee states that all TBS program budgets should be reviewed on a case by case basis, raising concern among media reform activists.
The KMT caucus, the Government Information Office (GIO) and the Presidential Office have said that the review will only focus on the budget and not program content. This has failed to convince TBS employees and activists.
“Some lawmakers accused TITV of being anti-[President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), claiming that TITV's news reports only attacked Ma and the Council of Indigenous Peoples,” TITV director Masao Aki said, adding that “part of our budgets were frozen by the legislature in 2007 and last year.”
A Hakka Television Service employee, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, told the Taipei Times that government intervention was evident.
“They [the Council for Hakka Affairs] want to get their hands on everything. They always have something to say about the content of our news programs, they ‘suggest’ what they want to see in our shows. They have even asked us to change the names of some shows that they didn't like,” the TV employee said.
“The former [Democratic Progressive Party] government did sometimes make comments about our programs, but not as much as the present government,” the employee added. “I'm afraid that the problem will only get worse now that they have a legal basis for controlling our budget.”
The demonstrators held signs and shouted slogans calling for the government to keep its hands off the media as they marched to lay “siege” to the legislature.
After surrounding the legislature, the marchers sat on the ground and formed “human dominoes,” with the participants — each holding a sign that read “Save PTS” — lying back on the people behind them.
Citizens Congress Watch executive director and demonstration organizer Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) said the move symbolized people power pushing against all negative things emanating from the legislature.
GIO Minister Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said yesterday that he had stepped in to mediate disagreements between the two sides, hoping to find a mutually satisfying resolution.
Su, however, refused to comment on whether the KMT-backed resolution constituted political intervention, saying there was “still room for discussion.”
Su also defended the KMT's draft resolution, saying what the party wanted was to ensure that management at PTS would be more transparent.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS