More than half of the news department employees at Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd (TTV,
Chen was appointed as the news department chief last November. TTV news department staff say that Chen had an overbearing personality and was difficult to work with.
They claimed that Chen had officially ordered reporters to write paid-for articles displaying the DPP's legislative candidates in a positive light. The candidates would be charged NT$50,000 for each promotional news item aired about them.
More than 40 employees from the department therefore decided to petition the station to dismiss Chen.
Chen, however, later canceled the plan after reporters expressed their firm opposition to the idea.
"We will never agree to the department's decision of making money by `selling news,'" some of the reporters said.
According to a representative of TTV's labor union, he repeatedly conveyed the employees' complaints to Chen but the department chief never accepted their suggestions. Chen even brought in his own team and tried to push out a large number of senior reporters, the representative added.
In response to the petition, Chen claimed angrily that the action was simply a product of a power struggle within the company.
"Let's wait and see," Chen said yesterday.
TTV chairman Lai Kuo-chou (賴國洲) said yesterday that he had told the station's president Hu Yuan-hui (胡元輝) to handle the crisis, but that he had no comments on the petition at present.
Established in 1962, TTV was Taiwan's first television station. The station underwent a management reshuffle Aug. 19 last year which resulted in Lai -- former president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) son-in-law -- being appointed to the company's chairmanship.
Local media as well as the public have long seen Lai's appointment as a political favor to Lee from President Chen Shui-bian (
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