Momo Kids TV was fined NT$600,000 (US$20,026) yesterday for airing cartoons containing content deemed inappropriate for children.
Last year, the National Communications Commission (NCC) received dozens of complaints from parents when the children’s channel broadcast an episode of the Japanese cartoon School Rumble (校園迷糊大王) depicting high-school students watching a pornographic movie together. They also complained that the episode contained a scene of jiggling breasts and showed actors moaning in pornographic movies.
The commission had decided to forward the recorded material from the controversial episode to an independent content review committee, formed by experts not -affiliated with the commission.
NCC communication content department director Jason Ho (何吉森) said 18 experts attending the review meeting earlier this month unanimously agreed that the channel had committed a very serious violation. They ruled it had infringed Item 2, Article 17 of the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法), in which domestic and foreign satellite broadcasting businesses are banned from airing content that would “impair the physical or mental health of children or juveniles.”
NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said the committee members disapproved of the channel’s content, adding that the channel’s license could be revoked if it failed to improve.
“Committee members said that the channel’s programs target -preschoolers and school children, but the cartoon violated the general rating requirement,” the NCC said in a statement.
Apart from Momo, eight other channels and two other telecoms carriers were fined by the NCC ahead of the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday. The fines, including that for Momo, totaled NT$5.4 million.
SET TV News, CTi TV News and ETTV News were fined NT$300,000, NT$800,000 and NT$600,000 respectively for failing to distinguish between a television program and an advertisement, violating Article 19 of the Satellite Broadcasting Act. The three news channels were found to have interviewed salespeople as well as the chairman of a specific construction firm or feature projects launched by the firm.
SET and ETTV also aired -commercials for the construction firm immediately after they ran the news story.
“Each channel was fined differently based on the severity of the violations in the cases discussed and past records of violation,” Ho said.
SET TV News was also penalized NT$200,000 for its coverage of a story on how a nine-year-old girl posted an article on a Web site seeking cash for sex.
While the anchorperson reported the news, the production team ran an animated image of a woman performing oral sex in the background.
Star Movies, Channel V and three other channels on Chunghwa Telecom’s multimedia-on-demand (MOD) system were fined for airing content containing excessive violence or sexual abuse.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS