The Public Television Service Foundation yesterday announced plans to review content on its PeoPo online platform, as controversy continued over a self-styled citizen reporter filming videos insulting elderly waishengren (外省人, Mainlander) — people who fled to Taiwan from China with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 1949 after its defeat in the Chinese Civil War.
Videos showing Hung Su-chu (洪素珠), a citizen reporter who joined the platform in November 2008, accusing elderly waishengren of “gnawing on the bones” of Taiwanese and telling them to “go back” to China, has attracted a firestorm of criticism on social media.
Public Television Service Foundation chairman Shao Yu-ming (邵玉銘) said the foundation plans to invite experts to discuss management of content on the PeoPo platform, adding the platform would not screen reports beforehand, but would address its content.
The platform was established by the foundation in 2007 to encourage citizens to create digital reports on public affairs, and has close to 8,900 registered “citizen reporters” who have submitted nearly 110,000 reports.
While Hung’s controversial videos are not currently on the platform, she has 2,756 other reports uploaded under her handle “Susu” (素素), focusing mainly on politics and cross-strait relations.
National Chung Cheng University professor of communications Hu Yuan-hui (胡元輝) said that while the value and significance of citizen reporters should not be negated, her case presents an opportunity for societal reflection.
Citizen reporters deserve respect for representing certain voices absent from the mainstream media, but they should not enjoy any special privileges to distort the truth or randomly yell at people, he said.
Citizen reporters who step over moral and legal lines have to face consequences such as social criticism and legal responsibility just like professional reporters, he said.
Meanwhile, Hung, who has said on Facebook that her father was also waishengren, left her Kaohsiung home on Friday evening after calling police to report suspicious people loitering outside the building.
The exterior of her home was egged twice yesterday, with people shouting and kicking on the door. Police have increased patrols and are considering deploying a plainclothes officer outside her residence.
The Taiwan Civil Government’s office — a political group that advocates the government in Taipei is not legitimate, with which Hung is reportedly affiliated — was also egged, with burial joss paper littering its entrance in protest. The group has disavowed Hung’s comments as inappropriate.
Additional reporting by Huang Liang-chieh and Wu Jen-chieh
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,