The National Communications Commission (NCC) suffered a setback to its proposed media anti-monopolization act yesterday, with lawmakers from the legislature’s Transportation Committee insisting that the specific thresholds it proposed to regulate media mergers had to be removed.
However, the committee gave the draft act preliminary approval at 8:15pm yesterday, with some articles reserved for further bipartisan negotiations.
“We have to thank the legislators for giving the commission greater authority,” NCC Chairman Howard Shyr (石世豪) said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
“The commission originally set higher standards by requiring very clear authorization from the law, but legislators decided to give the NCC greater support and trust,” he added.
The thresholds were removed because the committee on Wednesday ruled that it would adopt the definition of market share proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) to gauge the influence of a media outlet, rather than the concept of viewership rate as proposed by the NCC.
The committee also ruled on the types of media mergers that would be banned as well as those that need to be approved by the NCC, which were different from those proposed by the commission.
The committee ruled to remove Articles 17 to 23 from the NCC’s proposal, which contained the “red lines” that media operators would be barred from crossing as well as the issues that need to be addressed by media operators if they want mergers to be approved.
During the review, Shyr tried to convince lawmakers to keep some of the articles, saying that some of them could be applied immediately and would leave no gray areas in execution.
However, lawmakers ruled it was unnecessary to keep any of them.
Even though the committee decided to adopt the concept of market share to gauge media influence, Shyr said that its definition resembles that of “audience share,” which was in line with the NCC’s original proposal.
Association of Taiwan Journalists chairwoman Chen Hsiao-yi (陳曉宜) disagreed that the version of the act passed yesterday would increase the powers of the NCC.
“The commission is only given the right to investigate a newspaper’s circulation or the audience share of other media outlets,” she said
Chen said that recent major media merger bids, including the Dafu-Kbro proposals and the Want Want-China Network Systems deals, would not be approved under the new version of the act.
The version approved by the committee also states that those in management positions in financial institutions would be banned from holding shares or managing media outlets, adding that the NCC has the right to ask those in violation of this rule to dispose of any shares.
The Democratic Progressive Party said that any media outlet holding or obtaining more than 10 percent of the shares in another media outlet or more than 10 percent of an outlet’s total capital would be required to report the case to the NCC.
The KMT suggested that the threshold be raised to 30 percent.
The condition was reserved for negotiations as both parties failed to agree on the exact percentage.
Other articles reserved for further caucus negotiations include those on the regulation of multiple service operators and television channel agents, lawsuits for public interest, and a transitional clause that would require parties involved in previous media merger bids to adhere to the new act.
Meanwhile, mergers involving medium or large radio stations, terrestrial television stations, national newspapers, news or financial news channels, cable television services or multimedia-on-demand services that have more than 2 percent of the total subscribers nationwide would have to secure NCC approval.
Cable television service operators having more than 20 percent of the total service subscribers nationwide would be banned from merging with terrestrial television operators, news or finance channels, national broadcast services or national daily newspapers.
Any media merger that would result in an operator controling more than one-third of the market would also be banned.
The act would also allow the NCC to set conditional clauses on approving any media merger bid.
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