Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators hampered the independence of the press by using untruthful allegations to attempt to force the resignation of Central News Agency (CNA) chairman Chen Kuo-hsiang (陳國祥), Chen said yesterday in an open letter to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
DPP legislators have launched an onslaught against the CNA leadership, and the public is watching to see if politicians are able to interfere with the independence of the state-sponsored agency and freedom of the press, Chen wrote on Facebook.
DPP lawmakers Wang Ding-yu (王定宇), Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) and Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) last week called a news conference and accused Chen of pressuring journalists to solicit advertisers and sponsors for paid news stories, and illegally channeling commissions owed to reporters to a personal account.
The three called another news conference on Tuesday, saying that the agency’s business development deputy director Richard Yu (虞煥榮) is doubling as the chairman and director of three advertising companies, which Yu failed to disclose, which might involve an unacceptable conflict of interest.
On the same day, DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) posted an advertisement placement order, apparently processed by the CNA, which quoted a price of NT$230,000 for four news stories and two video stories, with Tuan accusing the agency of publishing paid stories.
Chen said that those accusations are fabricated and politically motivated to force his resignation and interfere with the agency.
The CNA does not require reporters to solicit sponsors or write paid stories, but they are eligible to a fixed 10 percent commission on sales if they are voluntarily involved in marketing activities, and there is no such thing as a secret fund established with commissions owed to reporters, the agency said.
Yu is not involved in the operation of the three companies, two of which have been closed, and the CNA does not have dealings with those companies, the agency said.
Chen said that the three-year term-of-office system for CNA’s chairperson and directors is in place to ensure the independence of the press from politics.
“My personal career does not matter,” Chen said. “What matters is whether the 20-year-old term-of-office system will collapse along with a political party gaining complete control of [legislative and administrative] power.”
Chen said he would immediately resign if there is any evidence of corruption, otherwise he would remain in the position to uphold his integrity and the freedom of the press.
Meanwhile, Wang said Chen was lying and deliberately obscuring the issue, as the CNA did publish paid stories and it never directly responded to the allegation that the agency directs commission to a personal account.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office has established a case to look into the allegations, Wang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching