The Cabinet yesterday expressed support for the Government Information Office's (GIO) decision not to renew the operating license of China Television (CTV). CTV has threatened to demand compensation for the decline seen in the company's share price since the GIO announced its decision.
"We support the GIO's handling of the matter 100 percent, as TV and radio frequencies are supposed to be public assets," Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (
Chen also called on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to put aside "its old and irrational belief" that radio and TV stations owned by the party should continue to obtain their licenses as they did in the period of KMT rule.
"What was deemed legal or natural in the authoritarian era isn't necessarily legal or rational today," Chen said. "Besides, the GIO is handling the matter in accordance with the law."
The KMT owns a 65 percent stake in CTV and has a 10 percent stake in Taiwan Television (TTV). It also owns a majority of shares in the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC).
The government owns 47.39 percent of TTV and 75.04 percent of China Television System (CTS). The government's stakes in both companies long predate the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
The GIO has requested that the KMT present a plan for the divestiture of the party's stakes in CTV, TTV and BCC before the end of this month and dispose of them before the end of next year.
The Broadcasting and Television Law (廣電法) -- which was passed last December and which integrates the Terrestrial Radio and Television Law of 1976, the Cable, Radio and Television Law of 1993 and the Satellite Radio and Television Law of 1999 -- stipulates that political parties are no longer allowed to manage media outlets.
The legislation also requires that the divestiture of government stakes in government or party-controlled terrestrial TV stations and radio stations must be completed by Dec. 26 next year.
The GIO has announced that terrestrial TTV, CTS and CTV will begin operating under a three-month interim license by the start of next month in order to facilitate the process by which media outlets are to be depoliticized -- and possibly to prepare for a transfer of the channels to public ownership.
During a CTV shareholders' meeting Tuesday morning, investors berated the GIO for issuing the company a temporary license and many shareholders accused the GIO of treating certain companies unfairly for political purposes.
Some said they would file a collective lawsuit against the GIO and GIO Director-General Lin Chia-lung (
CTV General Manager Chiang Feng-chi (
The GIO has also made it clear that it is unlikely that there will be a third review of the BCC's request for a license renewal. The GIO plans to conduct the review next month.
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