The National Communications Commission’s (NCC) conditional approval of a massive media merger on Wednesday marked the darkest day in the history of media freedom in the country and continued political interference in the media, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
The party “strongly opposed” the commission’s approval of Want Want China Times Group’s (旺旺中時集團) NT$76 billion (US$2.52 billion) acquisition of cable television service provider China Network Systems (CNS, 中嘉網路), which would create an intermedia monopoly, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Lin said the party condemned the commission’s opaque, closed-door review of the merger application and demanded full disclosure of all records and video recordings of the meeting.
While the deal was neither legitimate nor urgent, it was hastily approved with one week left before the terms of the four remaining NCC commissioners ended, he said.
“We suspect that it was President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) paying back those corporates that supported his re-election bid,” Lin said, describing the deal as “political interference.”
A corporate head like Want Want Group chairman Tsai Eng-ming (蔡衍明), who has claimed that very few people actually died in the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989 and that he did not understand why news reports cannot be sold for profit, is not qualified to run a media group, the DPP said, adding that was why academics and media watch groups here and abroad opposed the deal.
The party said that freedom of speech was deteriorating, with Taiwan’s global press freedom ranking by the US-based Freedom House dropping from 32nd in 2008 to 48th this year.
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) questioned whether the three suspension clauses listed by the commission as mandatory requirements would be effectively implemented.
The three clauses require that Tsai sell CTiTV (中天電視), transform China Television Co’s (中視) CTV news channel into a non-news channel and that CTV establish an independent news review and editing policy.
While the term of the four commissioners — including NCC Chairperson Su Herng (蘇蘅) — run through the end of this month, the controversial deal, which had been stalled for 18 months, was hastily approved after two NCC meetings, DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said.
“The three suspension clauses and the 25 additional clauses are meaningless if you cannot monitor whether they are actually implemented,” she said.
“Let me tell you what media monopoly is. It’s a media company with 19 TV channels, three newspapers and a magazine now adding 11 cable TV channels and which [has the power to] influence about a quarter of households with a TV nationwide,” DPP Legislator Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said.
Such a media monster would not exist in other democracies, she said, adding that the group would be able to remove the channels it dislikes.
It could even operate for political gain with its technology, which is able to record the viewing behavior of all home users and get to know their political affiliation and use this information as a campaign tool, Cheng said.
“In other words, it can manipulate the democratic system we now enjoy,” she said.
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 —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat