Independent media organizations could serve as an important source of information for the public, especially when some events are purposely covered up by the government or considered unimportant by conventional news outlets.
Aiming to “publicize stories that have disappeared, restore the stories that have been edited and attract public attention to issues that do not have public attention,” Hong Kong-based 1510 online magazine editor and co-organizer of the Co-China forum Beryl Liu (劉垚) and a few friends have founded the electronic magazine to penetrate censorship of the Chinese government.
“The idea to found an electronic magazine came up when a few friends and I decided to organize a forum to discuss the arrest of Chinese rights activist Xu Zhiyong [許志永] in 2009,” Liu told a conference organized by the Association of Taiwan Journalists in Taipei yesterday.
“Xu’s arrest triggered much concern and heated discussions by netizens on Twitter. However, the incident was not reported by any media in China,” she said. “We broadcast the discussion live on Twitter and it was surprisingly popular among netizens.”
“The broadcast gave us the idea that it’s actually not that hard to create a media outlet and report things that the government doesn’t want you to report, or in which conventional media outlets are not interested,” she added.
The idea later gave birth to the online magazine “1510” — which is a Chinese homonym meaning “complete and honest.”
However, online magazines face obstacles because of Chinese government Internet censorship.
Liu said that often the magazine receives telephone calls from government agencies asking it to take down some reports, saying that otherwise, its Web site or Twitter account may be blocked.
“When this happens, we have to cooperate at first and think of another way to spread the message — such as changing the title or taking out sensitive words, but of course we will make sure our readers still know what we are trying to get across,” Liu said.
One of the biggest challenges for independent media outlet is the funding, and this is why the online news source News&Market made itself not only a news platform, but also a platform for selling reliable agricultural products.
“We have a news department and a marketing department. The marketing department sells products to support operation of the news department,” News&Market co-founder Feng Hsiao-fei (馮小非) said. “But do not get us wrong — we do not sell news.”
Feng said that the objective of the marketing department is to help small farmers and allow consumers to buy reliable, organic and non-genetically modified produce.
News&Market also invites the public to make small donations.
“So far, we have 700 individual sponsors, who donate NT$300 a year,” Feng said. “We are fortunate that, so far, we are still self-sustainable, and are able to make reports uninfluenced by the government or by news corporations.”
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS