A revised version of the draft media monopolization prevention and diversity bill is to be unveiled by the end of the month, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday, adding that the commission also plans to amend the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法), the Cable Radio and Television Act (有線廣播電視法) and the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法).
The draft act on media monopolization in 2013 secured preliminary approval from the legislature’s Transportation Committee, following a series of protests against media monopolization.
Before the bill received final approval, the Cabinet last year retracted it from the legislature.
The commission decided to revise it because the media industry has undergone significant changes since 2013, including the rise in popularity of over-the-top content providers, NCC Chairwoman Nicole Chan (詹婷怡) said.
“The public remains concerned that the concentration of media ownership could compromise the diversity of public opinion. Therefore, we decided to propose a revised version of the draft,” she said.
While drawing up the bill, the commission consulted the draft passed in 2013, as well as other bills proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party and the New Power Party, Chan said.
“We plan to spend one or two more months listening to feedback from the public after the bill is made public with the goal of submitting it to the Cabinet by the end of the year,” she said.
The bill is expected to be deliberated in the legislative session scheduled to begin in February next year, she said.
The media monopolization bill and the amendments to the three broadcasting acts should not be handled separately, because they all affect the development of the broadcasting industry, Chan said.
The monopolization prevention bill lists structural guidelines governing the review of media mergers, Chan said, adding that such deals would be banned if they cross “red lines.”
“We will also assess whether the transactions affect national security, the public interest or the development of the media industry, which we call ‘yellow lines,’” she said, adding that the commission has yet to finalize the definitions of “red lines” or “yellow lines.”
Regarding the amendment of the three broadcasting acts, Chan said that the commission would address issues stemming from regulations banning political parties, the government and the military from investing in media outlets.
So far, media outlets have not yet found effective ways to prevent political parties, the government and the military from buying their stock.
Rather than holding political parties, the government and the military accountable for buying shares in media outlets, current regulations punish media outlets that have sold stock to such entities, whether knowingly or not.
It is the commission’s job to truthfully represent the “status quo” to the legislators, Chan said.
“The commission is legally bound to adhere to a principle that prevents the intervention of the government, political parties and the military in media outlets and we should consider the most effective ways to enforce the principle, including if shares owned by the government or political parties in the media outlets should be limited to certain percentages,” she said.
“We should also consider whether to keep punishing media companies, rather than the political parties or the government, for buying shares in media outlets,” she said.
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