More than 70 percent of Taiwanese think that national security is more important than freedom of the press, a survey released yesterday by the Professor Huang Kun-huei Education Foundation showed.
As the nation discusses the issue of “fake news,” the survey about educational issues included a question asking respondents the importance they attach to national security and freedom of the press.
A total of 74.1 percent of respondents think national security is more important than freedom of the press and 16.6 percent hold the opposite view, while 9.3 percent did not give a clear response, the survey found.
Foundation poll committee member Feng Ching-huang (馮清皇) said that the result was the same across all demographics, including gender, location, age and educational background.
Most people think that national security is more important, showing that people should be educated on how to identify fabricated news, Feng said.
An international study has suggested that Taiwan has in the past few years been seriously affected by foreign governments’ dissemination of false information, poll committee convener Kuo Sheng-yu (郭生玉) said.
Russia annexed Crimea after it launched a false news campaign, so Taiwan should think whether it wants to follow in Ukraine’s footsteps, Kuo said.
Foundation president Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said that while the Constitution protects freedom of speech, widespread misinformation and fabricated news are affecting social stability.
From an educational viewpoint, the survey result calls for more thought on the issue, Huang said.
The survey also found that 71 percent of respondents support the Executive Yuan’s proposed draft amendments to the Teachers’ Act (教師法) to require schools’ evaluation committees, which review incompetent teachers, to have more outside members, and to lower the percentage of teachers who do not hold administrative or board member positions to less than 50 percent.
The survey showed that 75.3 percent of respondents are in favor of including early childhood education for five-year-olds in the compulsory education system and 77 percent think the government should announce a timetable for implementing the policy.
The survey also found that 51.6 percent of respondents support the policy to ban schools from publicizing individual students’ exam scores and ranking.
The survey collected 1,072 valid samples from Monday to Wednesday last week. It has a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3 percent.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS