Taiwan ranked 24th in this year’s World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) yesterday, climbing three places from last year, while press freedom declined in most other countries.
Taiwan was second in the Asia-Pacific region and first in East Asia.
Aleksandra Bielakowska, advocacy manager at RSF’s Asia-Pacific Bureau, said that Taiwan’s improvement was largely due to declines elsewhere, as the country’s global score, which was 77.04 this year, was nearly unchanged from a year earlier.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It was “quite significant” how public trust in the media had grown in Taiwan over the past five years, she said, citing the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, which showed the metric at 33 percent last year, up from 24 percent in 2020.
However, “government pressure” led English-language public broadcaster TaiwanPlus to remove a report referring to then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump as a “convicted felon” in November last year, Bielakowska said, adding that it was a “rare,” but “deplorable and very worrying” incident.
Public media have a mandate to serve the public and must be able to operate independently from the government, she said.
Public Television Service (PTS), to which TaiwanPlus is affiliated, at the time cited concerns over the TaiwanPlus report’s “objectivity” as the main reason for its removal.
Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠) later said that the controversy caused by the report was “very serious” and that his ministry had “informed” PTS of that.
Bielakowska also expressed concern over press freedom in Hong Kong, which dropped to 140th from 135th in the rankings, recording its lowest-ever global score of 39.86 this year.
“Basically, we see that it’s starting to be almost impossible [for Hong Kong journalists] to continue working” in an environment where they face ongoing government pressure and, in some cases, sedition charges for their reporting, she said.
The latest rankings showed that press freedom worldwide deteriorated over the past year to the “difficult” category — the second-lowest in the index’s five-tier system — for the first time since it was launched in 2002.
“More than six out of 10 countries, or 112 in total, saw their overall scores decline in the index,” the group said, attributing the deterioration to economic pressure media firms faced.
The situation largely stemmed from ownership concentration, pressure from advertisers and financial backers, and limited or nontransparent public funding, RSF said.
Norway topped the rankings again this year, followed by Estonia and the Netherlands, according to the index, which is based on surveys of journalists, researchers and human rights advocates worldwide.
At the other end of the list were China (178th), North Korea (179th) and Eritrea (180th and last).
Taiwanese Olympic badminton men’s doubles gold medalist Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) and his new partner, Chiu Hsiang-chieh (邱相榤), clinched the men’s doubles title at the Yonex Taipei Open yesterday, becoming the second Taiwanese team to win a title in the tournament. Ranked 19th in the world, the Taiwanese duo defeated Kang Min-hyuk and Ki Dong-ju of South Korea 21-18, 21-15 in a pulsating 43-minute final to clinch their first doubles title after teaming up last year. Wang, the men’s doubles gold medalist at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, partnered with Chiu in August last year after the retirement of his teammate Lee Yang
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more