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).
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
WARNING: From Jan. 1 last year to the end of last month, 89 Taiwanese have gone missing or been detained in China, the MAC said, urging people to carefully consider travel to China Lax enforcement had made virtually moot regulations banning civil servants from making unauthorized visits to China, the Control Yuan said yesterday. Several agencies allowed personnel to travel to China after they submitted explanations for the trip written using artificial intelligence or provided no reason at all, the Control Yuan said in a statement, following an investigation headed by Control Yuan member Lin Wen-cheng (林文程). The probe identified 318 civil servants who traveled to China without permission in the past 10 years, but the true number could be close to 1,000, the Control Yuan said. The public employees investigated were not engaged in national
CAUSE AND EFFECT: China’s policies prompted the US to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific, and Beijing should consider if this outcome is in its best interests, Lai said China has been escalating its military and political pressure on Taiwan for many years, but should reflect on this strategy and think about what is really in its best interest, President William Lai (賴清德) said. Lai made the remark in a YouTube interview with Mindi World News that was broadcast on Saturday, ahead of the first anniversary of his presidential inauguration tomorrow. The US has clearly stated that China is its biggest challenge and threat, with US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly saying that the US should increase its forces in the Indo-Pacific region
ALL TOGETHER: Only by including Taiwan can the WHA fully exemplify its commitment to ‘One World for Health,’ the representative offices of eight nations in Taiwan said The representative offices in Taiwan of eight nations yesterday issued a joint statement reiterating their support for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with the WHO and for Taipei’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA). The joint statement came as Taiwan has not received an invitation to this year’s WHA, which started yesterday and runs until Tuesday next week. This year’s meeting of the decisionmaking body of the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, would be the ninth consecutive year Taiwan has been excluded. The eight offices, which reaffirmed their support for Taiwan, are the British Office Taipei, the Australian Office Taipei, the
RSS