As the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seeks to dispose of its stakes in media outlets, the Gover-nment Information Office (GIO) warned yesterday that the party would be breaking the law if it let foreign investors buy shares.
"Ownership of the airwaves is supposed to belong to the people," said GIO Director-General Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍).
"As a friendly reminder, I'd like to call on the KMT not to trample on the Broadcasting and Television Law (廣電法), which stipulates that foreign investors are banned from ownership in the nation's media industry," Lin said.
The GIO will also ask the relevant government agencies to investigate whether the KMT is violating the law in the matter, Lin said.
Lin made the remarks yesterday morning during a forum on digital publication in response to the KMT's plan to sell its stakes in China Television (CTV), the Broadcasting Corp of China (BCC), the Central Motion Picture Corp and the Central Daily News.
Party authorities are hoping to get NT$8 billion (US$US$235 million) by selling the shares in the four companies in a block together.
Sycamore Ventures, which once was part of the US-based Citibank Venture Capital is the highest bidder so far. Citicorp Venture Capital is a subsidiary of Citicorp.
The Broadcasting and Television Law -- which was passed last December -- says political parties are no longer allowed to manage media outlets.
The law set a deadline of Dec. 26 next year for the government's stakes in government or party-controlled terrestrial TV stations and radio stations to be divested.
Through the party-run Hua-Hsia Investment Holding Co, the KMT owns a 65 percent stake in CTV and a 96.95-percent stake in BCC, a radio station that occupies 25 percent of the AM frequency stations and 13.96 percent of the FM frequency stations in the country.
It also has a 10 percent stake in Taiwan Television (TTV).
Calling Lin "clueless about the law," KMT spokesman Alex Tsai (蔡正元) said the GIO chief should stay out of the matter.
"He is barking up the wrong tree as the prospective foreign investor wants to buy a stake in Hua-Hsia rather than in the media outlets," Tsai said.
"Besides, he's obviously worrying too much because I believe our potential buyers will have a team of legal counsel providing them with professional legal advice," he said.
Tsai said there are three to four potential buyers for the deal and the KMT will give each contender equal opportunity.
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