The Control Yuan yesterday censured the Executive Yuan and the Government Information Office (GIO) for oversights in their management of state-owned media and urged both to improve their performance to achieve “good governance.”
Control Yuan members Chou Yang-shan (周陽山) and Ma Hsiu-ru (馬秀如), who investigated events that took place over the past few years, accused the GIO of disregarding problems with the Central News Agency (CNA) during the three years Chen Shen-ching (陳申青) was chairman of the agency, beginning in July 2008.
Describing Chen’s leadership style as “arbitrary,” the Control Yuan said CNA staffers worked “in a state of anxiety” and “suffered from low morale” under his leadership.
Although the agency only has 340 employees, the number of personnel reshuffles during Chen’s three-year term totaled 600, the Control Yuan members said.
Senior staffers were coerced into resigning during the recession and Chen also tried to force then-CNA president Joe Hung (洪健昭) to resign by making derogatory comments against him, but Hung refused to leave.
The Control Yuan said that then-Government Information Office minister Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) overlooked the internal disturbances at the agency and schemed with Chen to evict Hung.
The Control Yuan also accused CNA of not devoting more attention to international news.
“As an important state-owned news agency and a source that provides the public with international news, CNA is seriously understaffed in terms of its overseas correspondents, with only 20 reporters in 21 cities around the world,” it said.
Chiang denied the allegations, saying he had not inteferred with either the agency’s administration or personal arrangements.
State-owned Radio Taiwan International has also gone “in the wrong direction” as it continues to lay off its employees with expertise in foreign languages and Chinese dialects because of budget and personnel constraints, resulting in a loss of talent, the Control Yuan said.
The GIO was also found negligent in overseeing the Taiwan Broadcasting System, which is made up of the Public Television Service (PTS), Chinese Television System (CTS), Hakka TV, Taiwan Macroview TV and Taiwan Indigenous TV.
“It’s been eight months since the former PTS board members’ terms expired in December, but PTS hasn’t been able to bring legally elected new members to the board,” the Control Yuan members said.
The PTS has been embroiled in a management scandal since 2008, amid allegations of interference in the selection of its board members and operation by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
The two Control Yuan members also said the GIO failed to detect irregularities in the year-end performance bonuses given to then-CTS general manager Chen Jen-ran (陳正然) during his 2007 to 2009 term, when the company was in the red.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
RSS