Cheng Hung-yi (鄭弘儀), the former host of popular political television program the Talking Show (大話新聞), yesterday raised concerns over the drastic changes in and sinicization of Taiwan’s media environment, which he said could jeopardize the nation’s freedom of the press.
The talk show was suspended in May by SET-TV, allegedly due to its pro-localization stance and harsh criticisms of China.
“Recent changes in Taiwan’s media environment have been unsettling, particularly the stifling of pro-localization voices and apparent leaning toward Chinese government mouthpieces, such as the People’s Daily, Xinhua news agency and the China Central Television,” Cheng said.
Photo Sam Yeh, AFP
Cheng said these changes could be seen in the growing domination of pro-China rhetoric in Taiwan’s printed outlets, as well as the Taiwanese media’s staying mum on China-related issues.
“People could see this China favoritism in local [Taiwanese] newspapers each day during the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Party Congress,” Cheng added.
Cheng made the remark on the sidelines of the launch of political commentator Chung Nien-huang’s (鍾年晃) new book, My Talking Life (我的大話人生), yesterday in Taipei. Chung was a regular guest on the Talking Show.
The event was also attended by Ellen Huang (黃越綏), a former national policy adviser to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), and the director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s Democracy Academy, Ho Po-wen (何博文).
Chung said Chinese influence had permeated the operations of the talk show long before it was suspended.
In his new book, he revealed that the management of SET-TV had gradually put restrictions on the talk show, which used to trumpet its pro-localization stance.
“At first, the head of the TV station, citing his business ties with Chinese firms, asked the program to tone down its criticisms of China. Then, the show was forbidden from making any reference to issues pertaining to Tibet, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and Falun Gong,” Chung said.
“The interference culminated with the program’s permanent suspension in May,” Chung said, adding that the fall of the Talking Show was only the tip of the iceberg.
“Chinese capital is now sinking its claws into more Taiwan-based television stations, manipulating their operations and risking the freedom of the press that Taiwanese pride themselves on,” he said.
Chung, a former journalist who used to work for the Chinese--language Apple Daily, said the impact of increasing Chinese capital in Taiwanese media was starting to be felt, giving as an example a proprietor of a China-based media outlet he met three months ago who said he only read the Chinese-language Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister paper) because “other Taiwanese papers were not much different from [China’s] People’s Daily.”
“What the Taking Show faced is similar to what the country as a whole is facing, and we are doomed to be swallowed and shut down by China, regardless of how good the quality of our media is,” Chung 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