Civic groups yesterday released a study on the coverage of child and adolescent-related news and said that the media must be better regulated to ensure the quality of such news reports.
The Alliance of Children and Youth Welfare Groups, along with the media-monitoring group Media Watch, gathered and evaluated news reports on children and adolescents from local cable TV stations' evening news from August to November last year.
The groups chose six major stories on child abuse and other negative issues for evaluation in accordance with the Child and Juvenile Welfare Law (
The suicide of a Chien Kuo High School student, the suffocation of a child in a school bus and a boy who was repeatedly tattooed by his father and died were some of the news stories that were evaluated.
Yeh Ta-hua (
The disclosure of the young victims' names and private information in the news reports and poor electronic disguising of the victims' faces were recurring problems, Yeh said.
"Child-related news coverage is mainly negative like abuse, abandonment or death," she said. "You hardly ever see anything positive."
Yeh also said that the groups hoped for consistency in such news coverage, as the media sometimes abides by the regulations but often forgets when there are no periodic crackdowns.
The media should be self-disciplined when it comes to reporting child abuse, the groups said. It should not be a fight for the highest viewing rate or readership, they added.
Chen Kun-huang (
While the media has stopped disclosing the young victims' names, it has continued to report revealing details about the victims' families and neighborhood, Chen said.
According to the children's welfare law, violators will be fined NT$30,000 (US$926) to NT$300,000, he added.
Jason Ho (
Ho echoed the call for the media to exercise more self-discipline, adding that the GIO has provided books on how the foreign media practices self-discipline and has distributed them to local media and civic groups.
Last year, the GIO issued a total of NT$14,535,000 (US$448,749) in fines for 67 media violations which included violation of the children's welfare law, Ho said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (
However, the government is in need of better policies when it comes to regulating news content, Cheng said.
There should be a television channel dedicated to reporting news for children and adolescents, he added.
STAY AWAY: An official said people should avoid disturbing snakes, as most do not actively attack humans, but would react defensively if threatened Taitung County authorities yesterday urged the public to stay vigilant and avoid disturbing snakes in the wild, following five reported snakebite cases in the county so far this year. Taitung County Fire Department secretary Lin Chien-cheng (林建誠) said two of the cases were in Donghe Township (東河) and involved the Taiwan habus, one person was bit by a Chinese pit viper near the South Link Railway and the remaining two were caused by unidentified snakes. He advised residents near fields to be cautious of snakes hiding in shady indoor areas, especially when entering or leaving their homes at night. In case of a
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
RSS