The Washington-based Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) is calling on Taiwan’s government and media regulators to stop the sale of four Taiwanese outlets of the Next Media Group to a consortium in which Want Want China Times Group chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) has a controlling interest.
FAPA president Mark Kao (高龍榮) said Taipei should disallow the sale and find a solution that respects media diversity “in keeping with the values of freedom and democracy.”
In a statement issued on Friday, FAPA expressed “deep concern about the erosion of press freedom in Taiwan.”
Its concern has been triggered by worries that the Next Media Group’s four Taiwanese outlets — Apple Daily, Sharp Daily, Next Magazine and Next TV — would be muzzled by its new owners.
Tsai has a reputation for being pro-China and FAPA fears that he will suppress criticism of the Chinese government.
FAPA said that following his takeover of the China Times in 2008, many editors and reporters at the Taiwanese daily who had written stories critical of the Chinese government were reportedly asked to leave.
According to a complaint by the Association of Taiwan Journalists the sale of Next Media (Taiwan), to Want Want China Times would violate the anti-monopoly and fair competition stipulations of the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法).
The deal now awaits official approval by Next Media’s shareholders and Taiwanese regulators — the Fair Trade Commission and the National Communications Commission.
“Regrettably, this development is part of a wider pattern of eroding press freedoms that we have observed, beginning in 2008 when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), came to power,” Kao said.
He said Tsai’s Want Want China Times Group had become the “main vehicle for the creeping influence of pro-China interests and opinions” in Taiwan.
Kao called on the Taiwanese government and media regulators to stop the sale and said that Taiwanese-Americans would bring the issue to the attention of the US government.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: