Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) yesterday urged The Associated Press (AP) to make corrections to an interview with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) that it published on Tuesday.
“The government’s attitude on the matter is that we respect the media’s freedom of speech, but we demand AP report the story correctly,” Chiang told a press conference after the weekly Cabinet meeting.
The controversy was sparked by a section in the interview where Ma’s remarks are portrayed as suggesting that sensitive political talks with Beijing, including security issues, could start if he is re-elected for a second term in 2012.
Ma denies providing a timeline or tying such talks to his re-election.
On Tuesday, the Presidential Office asked AP to make corrections to its report. Although it made some minor changes, AP said it stood by its report.
Saying the Presidential Office was still not satisfied, the GIO on Wednesday sent a letter to John Daniszewski, AP’s international editor, requesting the agency “investigate the causes of distortions in the interview piece” and make corrections as soon as possible.
SOONG COMMENTS
Chiang was also asked to comment on People First Party Chairman James Soong’s (宋楚瑜) remarks on Wednesday questioning whether the GIO would be able to get AP to make the corrections.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday quoted Soong as saying that AP made the corrections sought by the government to a report in 1981, when he was the GIO boss.
Soong had demanded AP revise its story about US forensics expert Cyril Wecht coming to Taiwan to carry out an “autopsy” on the body of Carnegie-Mellon assistant professor Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), who is believed to have been murdered during a trip back to Taiwan.
The GIO revoked the work permit of the AP reporter after she refused to turn in a written statement of repentance.
DVD
Chiang would not comment on Soong’s remarks and said there was no comparison to make given the different social climate and very different cases.
The GIO also released a DVD version of the AP’s interview with Ma.
In the Chen case, his body was found on July 3, 1981, on the grounds of National Taiwan University after he had been detained for questioning by the Taiwan Garrison Command about statements he had made about the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
Garrison headquarters first said Chen had committed suicide, but later said he had died in an accident. Wecht concluded that Chen had died from being dropped — while unconscious — from the fifth floor of the building where he was being questioned.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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