The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) defended its latest proposal for a new law regulating media ownership and investment in local media outlets, and urged the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to examine the amendments to the anti-media-monopolization acts it has proposed.
“The DPP’s proposed amendment is problematic and lacks thorough consideration. The KMT supports regulations against media monopolization, and we have therefore proposed establishing a law that specifically addresses the issue. How is this obstruction of anti-media monopolization?” KMT spokesman Yin Wei (殷瑋) said.
The DPP has proposed amendments to the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法), the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法) and the Cable Television Act (有線電視法) to establish a regulatory framework for media acquisitions and to restrict cross-sector media monopolization, with the aim of ensuring editorial independence, media professionalism and social responsibility.
The KMT backtracked from its previously declared support for the amendments and voted them down in a plenary session on Friday.
Yin declined to discuss the KMT’s flip-flop on the issue and instead asked the DPP to review its proposed amendments, saying it has various flaws, including omitting regulations that banned political parties, the government and the armed forces from owning media companies.
He dismissed the DPP’s criticism that the KMT’s last-minute U-turn reflected the government’s desperation to downplay the “Fury Rally” launched by the DPP today, and accused the DPP of making groundless accusation against the government without offering solutions to the issues it raised.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is scheduled to visit former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) mausoleum in Taoyuan County this morning, and will not make any remarks in response to the rally against his administration.
Presidential Office spokesman Fan Chiang Tai-chi (范姜泰基) said the president did not arrange any meetings with Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) or other top government officials today to respond to the rally.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift