China Television Co’s (CTV) controversial removal of remarks against media monopolization made by Wu Ching-feng (吳青峰), the lead singer of the popular band Sodagreen (蘇打綠), during his New Year’s Eve performance in Greater Kaohsiung from its rerun of the festivities continues to brew, with scores of netizens calling the TV station “shameless and despicable.”
Prior to his performance of Days Without Cigarettes (沒有菸抽的日子), whose lyrics were written by exiled Chinese democracy activist Wang Dan (王丹), at Kaohsiung’s E-da World theme park on Monday night, Wu expressed his opposition to media monopolization on stage in front of tens of thousands of fans.
“From my perspective, the media should be an open platform through which the truth is conveyed, rather than something that attempts to monopolize [the market] or seeks to manipulate you and me,” Wu said.
However, Wu’s rhetoric was cut from the rerun aired by CTV, which was in charge of broadcasting the New Year’s Eve celebration.
CTV is one of the many media outlets owned by the pro-China Want Want China Times Group, which also owns CtiTV and the Chinese-language newspapers Want Daily, China Times and China Times Weekly.
The media conglomerate was the most contentious buyer in the NT$17.5 billion (US$600.86 million) acquisition of Next Media Group’s four Taiwanese media outlets in November due to its already sizeable share of the country’s media market.
The deal, which is still pending approval by regulatory agencies in Taiwan, has given rise to grave public concern over media concentration and perceived increasing Chinese influence over the nation’s media environment.
The TV station’s removal of the anti-trust remarks has caused a public uproar and met with severe condemnation from netizens, with some describing it as a “despicable” media outlet for deleting such a minor criticism.
Some also ridiculed the Want Want China Times Group, saying Wu’s remarks provoked the media giant into perfectly demonstrating the dangers of media monopolization.
Wang joined in the criticism of CTV on his Facebook page on Tuesday, where he posted a message that read: “What makes CTV’s deletion of [Wu] Ching-feng’s anti-media monopoly rhetoric any different from [the reprehensible doings] of the Chinese Communist Party?”
Wang said the TV station’s conduct self-evidently justified the students protesting against media monopolization, referring to a spate of demonstrations consisting mostly of students against the Next Media deal and media concentration.
“Media is a social instrument of communication. How could you [CTV] just air the things you want us to see, but leave out the things that we want to see?” Wang said, adding that there would be no justice if such a media outlet were not boycotted.
The CTV said the comments were edited out for the one-hour rerun, which was much shorter than the live broadcast.
The TV station said that it did not cut out any parts of the show for political purposes.
In addition to issues regarding media monopolization, Wu had previously voiced support on Sina’s Weibo’s microblogging site for Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a National Tsing Hua University student who was criticized last month by the Chinese-language United Daily News as being “rude” in his criticism of Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧).
“Aren’t those who criticize others as being impolite the distribution centers of impoliteness themselves?” Wu wrote.
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
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
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry