Taiwan ranked 43rd in this year’s World Press Freedom Index published yesterday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), down one notch from the previous year.
Despite the regression, Taiwan is one of just four countries in the Asia-Pacific region to fall in the “good” and “fairly good” categories of the index, following New Zealand (9th), Australia (26th) and South Korea (42nd).
In its analysis on press freedom in Taiwan, the RSF said that political interference “is rare and less tolerated, but Taiwan’s journalists are suffering from a very polarized media environment dominated by sensationalism and the pursuit of profit.”
“Although President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said she wants to continue developing press freedom in Taiwan, few concrete measures have been taken to improve journalistic editorial independence and encourage the media to raise the quality of public debate,” RSF said.
It said that Beijing is exploiting this weakness by putting pressure on Taiwanese media owners, who often have business interests in China.
“Beijing is also suspected of orchestrating online disinformation campaigns — a threat that could lead to questionable retaliatory measures by Taiwan, such as refusing visas to Chinese journalists regarded as hostile,” the RSF said.
China ranked 177th, as it “never stops enhancing its system of information hyper-control and persecution of dissident journalists and bloggers,” RSF East Asia Bureau director Cedric Alviani said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
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