Academics and industry professionals yesterday called for reform of the Taiwan Broadcasting System, which is made up of the Public Television Service (PTS), Chinese Television System (CTS), Hakka TV, Taiwan Macroview TV and Taiwan Indigenous TV at a national forum organized by the Ministry of Culture seeking opinions on the nation’s cultural development.
Citing examples of Japan’s NHK and the BBC in the UK, professor Liu Yu-li (劉幼琍) from the Department of Radio and Television at National Chengchi University urged that the responsibilities of PTS board of directors and managers should be clearly defined, leaving day-to-day operations and programming to professional managers, while board members are charged with overseeing the management.
Industry specialist and academic Hu Yuan-hui (胡元輝) expressed a similar view.
“The function of board members is to represent the public to supervise the overall direction the PTS takes,” Hu said. “Selected members should come from different backgrounds, fields and regions so that the makeup of the board can reflect a variety of public interests.”
The PTS sitting board members have seen their three-year tenures, which were scheduled to end on Dec. 3, 2010, extended for more than 19 months, as a result of judicial wrangling between the board and managers. A new governing body — its fifth — is currently under review.
Establishing internal supervision mechanisms within the PTS is also important, professor Kwan Shang-ren (關尚仁) from Shih Hsin University said.
“For example, public channels in many countries regularly have programs in which people are invited to review and discuss their performance,” Kwan said. “The ability of self-examination is essential if the PTS wants to fulfill its public interest promises.”
Other ways that a public television channel can become more open to the public include announcing its annual plans, submitting reports to congress and setting up committees to communicate with audiences, Hu added.
In terms of other members of the Taiwan Broadcasting System, Liu said future amendments to the Public Television Act (公共電視法) should include Hakka TV and Taiwan Indigenous TV as equals to PTS rather than simply being affiliated to it.
Kwan agreed.
“The purpose of establishing Hakka and Indigenous television channels is to let different ethnic groups have their own media. So they should have full autonomy to plan and operate the channels,” he said.
Several participants at the meeting also urged the government to deal with the dilemma of CTS. With 83 percent of its shares owned by the government and 17 percent in the hands of private shareholders, the broadcaster “is like a schizophrenic who has to serve the public interest on the one hand and to make profits on the other,” Kwan said.
As for its long-term plans, the PTS needs to make the leap from its traditional role as a public service broadcaster to that of a public service media facility which covers diverse platforms such as mobile devices, academics said. Another possibility is to incorporate state-owned Radio Taiwan International and the Central News Agency into the public service system, Hu said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods