The Taiwan Solidarity Union's (TSU) legislative caucus yesterday dismissed talk that former president Lee Teng-hui (
TSU caucus whip Mark Ho (
"Whether Wu intends to buy TTV is a question that we do not have an answer for," Ho said. "The former president is not aware of the deal nor are we. We definitely did not play any part in it."
Ho made the remark in response to a media report claiming that with the approval of Lee, TTV chairman Lai Kuo-chou (賴國洲), who is also Lee's son-in-law, invited Wu to purchase TTV.
Meanwhile, media watch groups yesterday called on the government to make good on its promise to free the media from political, partisan and military influence by the end of the year and privatize two government-owned terrestrial TV stations while turning the other into a public corporation.
Taiwan has one public television station, Public Television Service (PTS, 公視), and four terrestrial TV stations. They are the TTV, Chinese Television System (CTS, 華視), China Television Company (CTV, 中視) and Formosa Television Company (FTV, 民視).
While FTV is a privately run firm, the other three terrestrial stations have very strong partisan ties.
While the government owns 25.64 percent of TTV, it possesses 36.25 percent of CTS. The stakes in both companies long predate the DPP administration.
The Broadcasting and Television Law (
Speculation is mounting that the Government Information Office (GIO) has not ruled out the possibility of putting TTV and CTS to a trust.
Kuang Chung-hsiang (
"Slogans are not enough, we want to see some concrete action," Kuang said. "As four GIO heads have promised to push for media reform, we'd like to see at least CTS become a public corporation if the government cannot turn TTV into one -- taking into account the government's financial strain."
Wei Ti (魏玓), convener of the Campaign for Media Reform, said his association would accept the government's plan to turn CTS into a public corporation and to privatize TTV, but it would like to see TTV's programs digitalized and catalogued in the national archives.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS