CtiTV’s variety channel was fined NT$200,000 after one of its popular programs was found to have broadcasted discriminatory remarks about women and Aborigines, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
Jason Ho (何吉森), director of the NCC’s communication content department, said one episode of the talk show University (大學生了沒) invited college students and their parents to attend the show and a competition was held among the parents to see who could tell the best joke.
One of the parents said that while Aboriginal men go hunting, Aboriginal women idle around and cheat on their husbands. He said that when women go to confession after having sex with their lovers, they would simply tell the priest that “they fell.”
Ho said the episode was reviewed by members of an independent content review panel after the commission received 50 to 60 complaints from viewers, including letters from the New Taipei City (新北市) and Greater Tainan governments.
The panel ruled that the episode violated Article 17 of the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法), which prohibits programs from impairing the physical or mental health of children or juveniles, disrupting public order or adversely affecting good social customs.
“The general-rating program contained remarks that were sexually and racially discriminatory,” Ho said.
“The post-production team should have been sensitive to these inappropriate remarks, which are certainly not jokes and convey only prejudice. This prejudice will spread through the broadcasting media,” Ho said.
Ho added that nine of 12 media experts voted to penalize the channel, and only two voted to send an official notice to the channel and ask it to address the situation.
Meanwhile, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) was fined NT$300,000 after an episode of the program Most Amazing Moments (驚奇時刻:戰慄刺激) was found to have contained images that could impair the physical or mental health of children or juveniles.
According to the NCC, the episode showed people drinking human blood and engaging in self-torture.
“The starting fine for such a violation is NT$200,000, but the panel considered it a severe violation, so they decided that the channel would be fined NT$300,000,” Ho said.
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