An online petition launched on Sunday by students to boycott false news reports and call for stricter measures against Chinese-
sponsored media campaigns has collected more than 8,000 signatures within 24 hours of its launch.
The petition was organized by a coalition of 100 student groups from high schools and universities nationwide, led by the student associations of National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Chengchi University (NCCU), as well as the NCCU Wild Fire student group.
Photo: Screen grab from Facebook
“Student associations and youth groups have formed the coalition to boycott ‘fake news’ on Freedom of Expression Day, because we are seeing biased and untrue news being reported by media outlets that claim to celebrate freedom of speech and of the press,” the coalition said in a statement on Sunday.
By publishing false news reports and promoting certain politicians as “god-like,” the media outlets are failing in their role as the fourth estate and “destroying Taiwan’s democracy,” it said.
It gave as an example a report broadcast by CtiTV News on Feb. 18 in which a popular commentator on religious issues said that an “auspicious cloud” appeared in the sky when Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) joined Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) at a campaign rally in Tainan.
The coalition urged the public to join the students in boycotting news outlets that report biased and unverified information, and called for more government measures against Chinese media campaigns.
Research has found that the Chinese government is consistently trying to impose censorship on Taiwanese media outlets by offering as incentives access to the Chinese market or investments, it said.
The finding, coupled with reports of China-based entities buying Taiwanese-owned Facebook pages to influence public opinion, are alarming, it added.
The statement was supported by dozens of academics and politicians, including Academia Sinica associate research fellow Wu Rwei-ren (吳叡人), NTU history professor Chou Wan-yao (周婉窈) and New Power Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌).
The coalition would soon plan a series of talks on media manipulation, and work with more student groups to boycott certain news outlets at restaurants and cafes on and near campuses, the coalition said on Facebook.
The petition followed a series of calls by students at NTU and NCCU since last month to boycott CtiTV News over what they called “biased news coverage.”
An NTU student on March 22 launched an initiative to ban broadcasts of CtiTV News at all student cafeterias on campus. It garnered the support of more than 4,000 people in four days.
In the following week, a number of NCCU students began urging others to “take back the TV remote control” at school cafeterias to prevent non-students from switching the channel to CtiTV News.
CtiTV News was on March 27 fined a total of NT$1 million (US$32,420) by the National Communications Commission for failing to adhere to the fact-verification mechanism stipulated in the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法), while its report on the “auspicious cloud” was listed as one of the instances where it breached the act.
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,