Netizens are casting doubt on recent reports that students were paid to take part in a protest against the takeover by Want Want China Times Group of the cable TV channels owned by service provider China Network Systems (CNS), saying the group most likely instigated the reports to attack the protesters.
On Friday, the Chinese-language China Times, China Times Weekly and local news channel CtiTV — all members of Want Want Group — ran stories with pictures showing student protesters taking money after a rally outside the National Communications Commission (NCC) building.
Although the media outlets provided no evidence to back up their claims, the three outlets reported that Academia Sinica research fellow Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) may have been involved in paying the students.
Huang had organized a separate demonstration at the same time as the student rally in front of the NCC building because the commission was reviewing the merger at that time. However, reports from the China Times, China Times Weekly and CtiTV did not differentiate between the two demonstrations.
Although Huang organized a press conference denying that he had any connection with the student protest, the media group continued to accuse him of “not wanting to clarify the incident,” while saying he was “not willing to disclose the truth.”
Yesterday, several media outlets, including the Chinese-language Apple Daily, claimed to have discovered the identity of a woman who handed out money to students on Wednesday.
The woman, identified as Liang Li-hui (梁麗惠), is an accountant at Chinsen Communications Co.
While reporters were unable to contact her, Liang’s colleagues said that although they did not know who had hired the company to recruit students, they were certain it was not Huang.
Netizens are increasingly voicing suspicions that Want Want Group may be behind the incident and using it as a way to stigmatize opponents of the takeover.
National Tsinghua University student Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) posted a picture of the protest that was aired in a CtiTV report, with the China Times Weekly deputy editor-in-chief Lin Chao-hsin (林朝鑫) among the crowd, adding that he suspected Want Want was behind the protest.
Lin denied the accusations, saying he was at the protest because it was his job to report on it, while CTiTV threatened to file a slander lawsuit against Chen.
Want Want China Times Media Group employees accused the media giant of manipulating news reports to attack Huang.
“I feel like dying everyday,” a reporter told the Taipei Times on condition of anonymity. “My name is on news reports attacking Huang, and I’ve seen readers criticizing me for the reports on the Internet, but the fact is that I didn’t produce most of these reports.”
The employee said that his name and the names of several of his colleagues were on the byline of a news report published on Friday implying that Huang was behind the incident.
“In fact, 90 percent of the report came directly from the China Times Weekly and what I wrote was all deleted,” the reporter said. “I complained about this several times, but the management simply ignored me.”
The reporter said many employees within the group feel uncomfortable with what the company asks them to do, with one resigning because of it.
Huang released a statement yesterday, asking Want Want China Times to “stop destroying the dignity of journalists in the group.”
“What Want Want China Times has been doing proves how important it is to resist this media monster, which has no ethics in news reporting,” the statement said.
He also called on the media group to leave his family alone, as reporters from the group have not only been following him around for days, but have also stationed themselves around his house.
Huang said he would be leaving for the US for 10 months on a pre-scheduled research project next week, but added that the project was scheduled last year, and asked the media group to refrain from fabricating so-called news out of it.
He was referring to a report by CtiTV that Huang’s decision to leave Taiwan for so long right after the alleged scandal broke was “suspicious.”
COMMITMENT: The world’s biggest contract chipmaker said that its new 2nm chips, as well as next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4nm chips, will be produced in Taiwan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that the majority of its most advanced chips would continue to be manufactured in Taiwan and that it is boosting advanced chip packaging capacity to catch up with fast-growing demand driven by generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ChatGPT. Deeply rooted in Taiwan, TSMC is expanding production capacity for its most advanced 3-nanometer (nm) chips at its Tainan fab and is building new plants to produce new 2-nanometer chips in Hsinchu and Taichung in 2025. The chipmaker also plans to produce next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4-nanometer chips, which are currently under development, at home, it
Former US president Donald Trump has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, a remarkable development that makes him the first former US president to face criminal charges by the federal government that he once oversaw. The US Department of Justice was expected to make public a seven-count indictment ahead of a historic court appearance next week amid a presidential campaign punctuated by criminal prosecutions in multiple states. The indictment carries unmistakably grave legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if Trump is convicted. It also has enormous political implications, potentially upending a Republican presidential primary that Trump
PASSAGE DISPUTE: A US and Canadian transit was a provocation and an attempt to ‘exercise hegemony of navigation,’ China’s defense ministry told a forum in Singapore The Ministry of National Defense yesterday urged the Chinese Communist Party to avoid provocative behavior after a Chinese navy ship crossed the paths of a US destroyer and Canadian frigate transiting the Taiwan Strait. A Chinese ship on Saturday “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner in the vicinity of [the USS] Chung-Hoon,” an American destroyer, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. The vessel “overtook Chung-Hoon on their port side and crossed their bow at 150 yards [137m]. Chung-Hoon maintained course and slowed to 10 [knots, 18.5kph] to avoid a collision,” the statement said. It then “crossed Chung-Hoon’s bow a second time
HARD-WON FREEDOM: Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on protesters has not been and should not be forgotten, as China tightens its grip on Hong Kong, Lai said Taiwanese enjoy democracy and freedom and have multiple ways to express their creativity, and hopefully young people in China would also one day have the freedom to sing and express themselves, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yesterday was the 34th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s bloody crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing in 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident. Tsai posted a photograph taken in March in a subway station in Guizhou, China, where hundreds of young people gathered to sing People With No Ideals Don’t Get Hurt (沒有理想的人不傷心), saying that they