The Taiwan Association of University Professors yesterday urged government agencies and state-owned enterprises to cancel their subscriptions to the Chinese-language China Times following allegations that the newspaper takes instructions from Beijing on how to prepare its news.
News presented from a China-centric perspective could pose a threat to Taiwanese society, yet the government has done little to address the issue, association president Lai Cheng-chang (賴振昌) told a news conference in Taipei.
“We do not want fake news from pro-China media outlets,” he said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Following a report by London-based Financial Times earlier this month that the China Times takes orders on a daily basis from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, the association looked into which government agencies and state-owned enterprises — from motor vehicle offices and post offices to the Bank of Taiwan and Chunghwa Telecom — subscribed to the newspaper, he said.
“A copy of the China Times was found in almost every one of them,” he said.
Food safety laws have been amended multiple times to protect people’s health and the government should take a similar approach to manage the media, National Taiwan University biochemical science and technology professor Huang Ching-jang (黃青真) said.
“Media outlets produce food for the mind and the government should have standards and management procedures for preventing that food from being poisoned,” she said.
National Taiwan Normal University Chinese associate professor Edwin Yang (楊聰榮) urged the government to adopt the idea of a “defensive democracy” and take action to address Beijing’s infiltration of Taiwanese media.
In Australia, Chinese infiltration is already being studied, he said, giving as an example the book Silent Invasion: How China is Turning Australia Into a Puppet State, which was published last year, adding that the Australian government has taken countermeasures.
That government agents and state-owned enterprises are widely subscribed to the China Times presents a serious issue, Taiwan Brain Trust member Chang Jen-chieh (張人傑) said.
It is unclear why they think that members of the public should read the newspaper, he added.
After the Financial Times’ report, Want Want China Times Media Group — which owns the China Times — said that it would file defamation lawsuits against the newspaper and other media companies that cited the report, said attorney Chen Yu-fan (陳雨凡), who is to compete for a legislative seat in the Xinyi-Southern Songshan district representing the New Power Party in next year’s elections.
The lawsuit could cause other media outlets to refrain from criticizing the group for fear of retaliation, she said.
Hopefully, the Legislative Yuan would pass a bill requiring individuals and organizations controlled by foreign governments or organizations to disclose such connections in the next legislative session, she added.
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,