According to reports published by several media watchdog organizations, children and teenagers are apt to be exposed to too many pornographic sites as a result of the indifference of main Internet portals in Taiwan.
Four separate surveys for media performance published yesterday were sponsored by Taiwan Advertisers' Association (TAA) and respectively conducted by End Child Prostitution Association of Taiwan (ECPAT), on Internet pornography; the Taiwan Association of University Professors (TAUP), on inaccurate newspaper reports, and the Mothers Foundation for Media Watch (MFMW), on inappropriate TV shows.
ECPAT's survey put its focus on pornography on the local Web domain, which is full of porno messages and post, according to the group.
"We realize that most elementary and junior high school students usually explore the Internet through main portals like Yahoo! Taiwan, Yam.com and PChome," said Lee Li-feng (
"However, we have also found that there are lots of community or discussion groups affiliated with these portals full of obscene photos or messages," Lee said.
"Portal webmasters just think they are the most popular ones and make links to them on the first page, making them much accessible to young Web surfers," Lee said.
"Some people even posted messages asking for enjokosai,'" said Lee, referred to a term literally means "assisted relationships," a Japanese term meaning sexual services provided by teenage girls in exchange for money or valuables.
Webmasters and group moderators should be more responsible, she added. "They should omit or filter out indecent photos and messages actively."
"The Children and Juveniles Welfare Law (兒童及少年福利法) was enacted June 1. It regulates that publications, including those on the Web, should be classified and graded," Lee said.
"Portal webmasters should realize what they face are not only moral problems, but also law problems," she said.
Porno threats not only exist on the Web, but also in TV variety programs, said Fang Dee (
"A lot of TV shows are characterized with foul language, sexually-suggestive jokes, violence, intrusion on privacy and bias," Fang said.
"Our survey shows the three oldest TV broadcasting stations, TTV, CTV and CTS, have the most indecent variety shows not appropriate for the young audience," Fang added.
TV show producers and hosts always argue that only being melodramatic can give them better average audience ratings, said Fang, "but our study shows that it's is not the more vulgar or erotic you are, the more popular your programs will be."
Newspaper reports are less criticized for pornography, but more for inaccurate, biased reports and spun stories.
"The leading newspapers in Taiwan produce a lot of stories that are incorrect, exaggerated and contain political-bias," said Yu Ying-fu (尤英夫), attorney at law at the Century International Law Office.
"Journalists should report the truth, not just write down everything they're told," Yu said.
"But there are many `source say' stories that are unbalanced that put on the first page, which at last prove to be wrong accusations from politicians," Yu said.
On a quest for better quality in media reports in Taiwan, TAA, an association founded two years ago by 35 enterprises -- including Proctor & Gamble Taiwan -- has tried to expand its influence on this issue.
"We sponsor reports regarding the performance of local media, and our members have tried to get our advice on where they should publish their ads," said Helen Wang (王彩雲), secretary general of TAA.
"Advertisement is our best weapon if we want to improve the quality of news reports," she said.
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