Responding to President Chen Shu-bian's (
The Government Information Office (GIO), the supervisory agency for the media industry, is scheduled to produce a detailed plan by June.
The government owns 25.64 percent of Taiwan Television (
According to Hung Chiang-chuan (
"Although it would cost less to turn TTV into a public corporation, the CTS has a better structure and may cause less financial burden for the government [in the long run] if it becomes a public corporation," she said.
Eventually, the government would like to see public television offer a wide variety of shows such as Hakka and Aboriginal programs, she said.
The Cabinet's Council for Hakka Affairs plans to launch the Hakka Radio Station in March. The legislature has approved a NT$320 million budget for the station.
Hung estimated that it may take five to six years to reach the goal.
"However, it may take longer if the legislature fails to support the proposed decree designed to turn terrestrial television stations into public corporations," she said.
First, however, the legislature is set to conduct the final round of cross-party negotiations on amendments to the Broadcasting and Television Law (
However, the GIO is scheduled to present its own version of the amendments within a month. It has been holding public hearings to solicit opinions from the media industry, academics and experts.
While similar, the two sets of amendment proposals differ in scope.
The GIO's proposal would ban certain civil servants, political party members, military personnel and their family members from owning more than a 50 percent stake in radio stations and a 10 percent stake in terrestrial television stations.
Foreigners, including Chinese, would also be prohibited from investing in terrestrial television stations.
Foreign investment in cable television stations, directly and indirectly, would be limited to a 60 percent stake, while direct ownership of satellite television stations could not exceed 50 percent.
The DPP's draft, on the other hand, would bar six categories of government officials, civil servants, party members and their families from assuming certain positions or holding stakes, directly or indirectly, in private electronic media organizations.
The draft would also ban political parties from making donations to set up such establishments.
They would be banned from owning more than a 50 percent stake in radio stations or 10 percent in terrestrial television stations.
Foreigners would be allowed to own a maximum of 60 percent, directly and indirectly, in cable television stations.
Government officials listed in the draft include the head of state, the vice president, the premier and vice premier as well as the presidents and vice presidents of the Legislative Yuan, Judicial Yuan, Examination Yuan and Control Yuan.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching