The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment to the Children and Juveniles’ Welfare Act (兒童及少年福利法) to prohibit contents deemed harmful to the physical and mental health of youngsters from being published in newspapers or on Web sites.
Should the amendment pass the legislature, newspapers will be put under content examination by the government for the first time since the Publication Act (出版法) — which together with other laws constituted the censorship regime under the Martial Law era — was abolished in 1999.
Under the proposed amendment, newspapers would be banned from publishing stories, graphics, or photos of crime, violence, pornography, sexual misdemeanors, suicide or rape in a way that gives blow-by-blow details.
The governments in the area where an offending newspaper was registered could fine the publication between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 for violations.
The proposal would require the National Communication Commission to establish rules by which Internet platform provider (IPP) services such as Yahoo, Google, and YouTube would have to abide, including steps to protect Internet users under the age of 18 from contents considered illegal under the proposed act.
IPP services that fail to follow the requirements could be fined between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000, the proposal states.
The current law merely demands producers of Internet contents meet general rating guidelines to specify contents not suitable for viewers under the age of 18.
Last month, the Taipei City Government used the Act to fine Next Media for the Apple Daily’s “News-in-Motion” feature following a public outcry against the content of the online service.
The incident led to debates on media regulations and the impact on press freedom.
Minister Without Portfolio James Hsueh (薛承泰) yesterday denied that the Cabinet’s bid to revise the law was targeted at the Apple Daily, saying the Act, which hasn’t been significantly reviewed for 20 years, had failed to keep pace with changes in society.
Chien Hui-jiuan (簡慧娟), director of the Ministry of the Interior’s Child Welfare Bureau, downplayed concern over threats to freedom of the press.
He said the government’s intention was to encourage the media to cover news events from angles that could benefit children and juveniles.
“There must be a point of balance between freedom of the press and the best benefit for children and juveniles,” Chien said, adding that finding the right balance could only be determined on a case-by-case basis.
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
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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