Several women’s advocacy groups are urging the public to boycott the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) in protest against several articles that they said espoused discriminatory views against women.
Controversy raged following a recent spat between the Liberty Times and former TVBS news anchor Lee Yen-chiou (李艷秋), with Lee accusing the newspaper of using sexually offensive content to launch personal attacks against her.
The Liberty Times issued an official apology to Lee on Friday last week, but the women’s rights advocates said the apology lacked sincerity.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Led by the Taiwan Coalition Against Violence, several women’s groups yesterday filed a report against the Liberty Times with the Executive Yuan’s Gender Equality Committee, following a wave of criticism against the newspaper over the past week.
The heated debate was triggered by a May 12 report published on the Liberty Times Web site about a severe shortage of news anchors at China Television, with the article describing a recently employed anchor poached from another television station as “flat-chested.”
The report, titled “China Television poaches flat-chested anchor to save crisis amid shortage,” sparked a flurry of criticism from media professionals and women’s groups.
It provoked an angry response from Lee, who wrote an opinion piece in the Chinese-language China Times, accusing the Liberty Times of objectifying women.
The Liberty Times published a second report on Thursday last week that expressed curiosity about Lee’s physique and quoted fictional content about Lee from a pornographic novel written by Chinese netizens.
Lee filed a lawsuit against the Liberty Times, but withdrew all charges after the newspaper issued an official apology.
The debate also took on a political undertone, with writer Huang Chih-hsien (黃智賢) on Monday accusing many women’s rights groups of shying away from the incident because of Lee’s pan-blue leanings.
“It is unbelievable that to this day, we are still judging an anchor’s credentials by the size of her bust. This inflicts utmost harm to women’s right to work,” Sinoseca Social Welfare Association’s Jennifer Wang (王如玄) told reporters at a news conference yesterday.
She said the report could warrant fines from the Taipei City Government for violating the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法).
Taiwan Alliance for the Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare secretary-general Yeh Da-hua (葉大華) urged the Liberty Times to establish disciplinary guidelines to put a stop to discriminatory reporting.
She pointed out a lack of collective disciplinary guidelines in the media industry, with the quality of journalism backsliding with the advent of fast-paced, Internet-based journalism, leaving little time for journalists to find reliable sources.
Liberty Times spokesperson Jackson Su (蘇宇暉) yesterday said that the newspaper would reflect on its mistakes and improve the quality of the paper’s online content.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS