Although the National Congress on Judicial Reform is determined to tackle the challenges facing the nation in terms of guarding the secrecy of investigations and the privacy of crime victims and suspects, its proposals to address these issues would create bigger loopholes rather than resolve the problems, critics have said.
The congress last year proposed that the National Communications Commission (NCC) study the possibility of stipulating penalties in the Radio and Television Act (廣播電視法) and other media regulations to penalize media outlets that have crossed the line in their coverage of cases that are under investigation or trials, such as broadcasting explicit images of suspects, victims and crime scenes.
It suggested that broadcast or online media be fined if they violate the rights of people involved in a legal proceedings, and have their license revoked if it were a severe violation.
At a public hearing held by the NCC last week to discuss the proposal, Claire Wang (王琬諭), whose four-year-old daughter was decapitated in 2016 by a man in Taipei, talked of the pain and distress caused by media coverage of crimes.
Not only did her family have to deal with the death of a beloved child, but they also had to experience the emotional turmoil caused by details of the murder being repeatedly broadcast, as well as the media’s lack of restraint when divulging personal information about her family, Wang said.
Media experts at the hearing said that some media workers’ unrestricted access to police precincts or prosecutors’ offices has contributed to a large number of leaks from the judicial branch.
For example, the Chinese-language weekly magazine Mirror Media last year published a report on an alleged conversation between former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and former China Times Group chairman Albert Yu (余建新) regarding the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) sale 13 years ago of China Television Station, the Broadcasting Corp of China and Central Motion Pictures Corp.
“Reporters cannot possibly write the dialogue almost verbatim without help from agency insiders,” former political commentator Fan Li-da (范立達) said.
Failure to abide by rules protecting the secrecy of investigations is a problem, especially once a jury system is implemented, National Chengchi University law professor Her Lai-jier (何賴傑) said.
This problem must be addressed because members of the public will soon be summoned to attend trials as jury members, he said.
“If this problem is not resolved, there will be no such thing as a fair trial in this nation anymore, because jury members will very likely have preconceived notions on the ruling because of what they read in the news,” he said.
However, will penalties stop the media from disclosing information on cases under investigation or on trial, and protect individual privacy? It is doubtful.
First, the NCC only has jurisdiction over broadcast media, but not print or online media. The abolition of the Publication Act (出版法) in 1999 removed government regulation over print media, while online media has very little government surveillance.
Images depicting violence, blood, horror and sexual abuse have to be edited, pixelated or removed if they are to air on broadcast media, but no such regulation is imposed on print or online media.
Penalties might be effective in getting the broadcast media to stop airing disturbing images of a crime, but they have practically zero effect on print or online media.
What members of the judicial reform conference also failed to consider was that producing newsworthy content is no longer the prerogative of news media. Smartphone users can take a picture or a video of a crime scene and upload it to the Internet. They can do it faster than the media, as they are not subject to the same kind of vetting process as a mainstream news organization.
In that case, should not the individuals who share this type of content online be held accountable as well? Should not Internet service providers be included in discussions about these issues, as they also have an obligation to remove illegal content when notified?
Another question is whether personal information disclosed on Facebook or Twitter can be considered public information, and whether reporting personal information revealed on Facebook would still be considered an invasion of personal privacy.
The Satellite Television Broadcasting Association said it has established statutes that ask all of its members to exercise self-restraint when covering certain types of stories.
For example, news channels are asked to refrain from covering kidnapping stories unless the hostages are proven to be safe, the association said, adding that any interview in an emergency situation must be conducted on the condition that it would neither interfere with a rescue operation nor put a hostage’s life in danger.
In the case of three college students kidnapped for 21 hours in 2015, the association’s members chose not to cover the abduction as doing so was against the group’s ethical statutes, but one of the Chinese-language daily newspapers offered an online simulcast of the entire kidnapping process, in which the fugitive also provided a live feed of the trio’s whereabouts through the messaging app Line.
“Under this proposal, only broadcast media would be punished for airing inappropriate content,” Satellite Television Broadcasting Association secretary-general May Chen (陳依玫) said.
Media coverage of Wang’s case did indeed have room for improvement, Chen said, but added that each case is different.
“We cannot stipulate laws simply based on this specific case and expect all other media outlets to follow them,” she said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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