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Parties trade blame over media law

The pan-blue camp and the pan-green camp yesterday bickered over the government's failure to keep its promise to withdraw its personnel and dispose of shareholdings in terrestrial TV stations by yesterday's deadline.

Pan-blue camp lawmakers, including People First Party legislators Diane Lee (李慶安) and Lee Yong-ping (李永萍), and Chinese Nationalist Party Legislators (KMT) Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛), said that it was the Government Information Office's (GIO) fault because the GIO's policy on the issue has been inconsistent.

GIO Minister Pasuya Yao (姚文智) responded by saying that the lawmakers' complaints were untrue.

"The regulation has been pending on the legislative floor for months. We never changed anything. The only change that we made was to suggest relocating Chinese Television System [CTS, 華視] to either Tainan or Kaohsiung because we do need a TV station to speak on behalf of southern Taiwanese people," Yao said.

There is one public television station in Taiwan, Public Television Service (PTS, 公視), as well as four terrestrial TV stations. They are CTS, Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd (TTV, 台視), China Television Co (CTV, 中視) and Formosa Television Co (FTV, 民視). While FTV is a privately run firm, the other three terrestrial stations have very strong partisan ties.

The government owns 25.64 percent of TTV and 36.25 percent of CTS. The stakes in both companies long predate the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.

The Broadcasting and Television Law (廣播電視法), last revised in 2003, stipulates that the government must release its shareholdings in terrestrial TV stations by Dec. 26 this year.

The legislature, however, is deadlocked over a draft bill -- the Act to Handle Government-owned Shares of Terrestrial TV Stations (無線電視事業公股處理條例) -- regulating the release of government holdings in the terrestrial TV stations.

"The act has been pending on the legislative floor since June 24, 2004. I became the minister on March 14 this year. If lawmakers were willing to help, the act should have become a law and all these problems would not exist today," Yao said.

In the meantime, the chairmen and presidents of both TTV and CTS -- all of whom were appointed by the DPP government -- offered their resignations to the Ministry of Finance, which governs the firms, on Sunday.

As of press time yesterday, Yao was still meeting with Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (林全) regarding more details on government holdings of the terrestrial TV stations as well as making new personnel arrangements now that the chief officers of TTV and CTS have stepped down.
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