Taiwanese powerlifter Lin Tzu-hui (林資惠) won the bronze in the women’s 79kg category at the Rio de Janeiro Paralympic Games on Sunday, but most Taiwanese could not watch because no television channel broadcast the Games.
Lin, 35, contracted polio when she was only nine months old. She won gold medals in the 75kg category at the 2004 Athens Paralympics and 2008 Beijing Paralympics. She also won the bronze in the same category at the 2012 London Paralympics.
Lin won the bronze this year despite an injury she sustained during training.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan’s only other medal was a silver in the men’s team table tennis tournament after the team lost to South Korea in the final on Friday last week.
However, Taiwanese could not watch the achievements on cable TV or the multimedia-on-demand (MOD) system offered by Chunghwa Telecom.
The lack of TV coverage spurred online discussion.
A netizen wrote on Professional Technology Temple — the nation’s largest academic online bulletin board — that he was hoping to watch some of the Games on MOD, but instead it reran events from the Summer Olympics.
“[Japan’s] NHK broadcasts the Paralympic Games live. Taiwan is a nation that discriminates against people with disabilities after all and lacks barrier-free facilities for them,” he said.
The comment drew mixed reaction.
One person said viewership is the determining factor when deciding whether to cover an event, adding that broadcasting companies are not charities.
Others said that not broadcasting the Paralympics cannot be equated with discriminating against people with disabilities.
They said TV networks chose not to broadcast the Paralympics because nobody watches them.
Taiwan is not the only nation grappling with a dearth of coverage of the Paralympics.
NBC in the US promised to allocate 66 hours of airtime for the Paralympics. However, that pales in comparison with the airtime dedicated to the Summer Olympics, which reached 6,755 hours, US blogger Sage Boggs said.
The lack of coverage of the Paralympics became ironic when four visually impaired runners in the 1,500m final ran faster than any Olympian in the same category, he wrote.
Pointing to the British network Channel 4’s coverage of the 2012 London Paralympics’ opening ceremony, which drew 11.2 million viewers, Boggs said it is not that there is not much appetite for the Paralympics in the US.
“It is just we’re too busy eating up football to realize there are athletes in Rio breaking world records,” he wrote.
“China is preparing to invade Taiwan,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an exclusive interview with British media channel Sky News for a special report titled, “Is Taiwan ready for a Chinese invasion?” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today in a statement. The 25-minute-long special report by Helen Ann-Smith released yesterday saw Sky News travel to Penghu, Taoyuan and Taipei to discuss the possibility of a Chinese invasion and how Taiwan is preparing for an attack. The film observed emergency response drills, interviewed baseball fans at the Taipei Dome on their views of US President
ECONOMIC BENEFITS: The imports from Belize would replace those from Honduras, whose shrimp exports have dropped 67 percent since cutting ties in 2023 Maintaining ties with Taiwan has economic benefits, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials said yesterday, citing the approval of frozen whiteleg shrimp imports from Belize by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an example. The FDA on Wednesday approved the tariff-free imports from Belize after the whiteleg shrimp passed the Systematic Inspection of Imported Food, which would continue to boost mutual trade, the ministry said. Taiwan’s annual consumption of whiteleg shrimps stands at 30,000 tonnes, far exceeding domestic production, the ministry said. Taiwan used to fill the gap by importing shrimps from Honduras, but purchases slumped after Tegucigalpa severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan
The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a southwestern extension of the Sanying MRT Line from New Taipei to Bade District (八德) in Taoyuan, with a goal of starting construction by late 2026. The 4.03-kilometer extension, featuring three new stations, will run from the current terminus at Yingtao Fude Station (LB12) in New Taipei City to Dannan Station (LB14), where it will connect with Taoyuan’s Green Line, New Taipei City Metro Corp said in a statement. This extension will follow the completion of core Sanying Line, a 14.29-kilometer medium-capacity system linking Tucheng (土城), Sansia (三峽)
CARGO LOSS: About 50 containers at the stern of the ‘Ever Lunar’ cargo ship went overboard, prompting the temporary closure of the port and disrupting operations Evergreen Marine Corp, Taiwan’s largest container shipper, yesterday said that all crew members aboard the Ever Lunar (長月) were safe after dozens of containers fell overboard off the coast of Peru the previous day. The incident occurred at 9:40am on Friday as the Ever Lunar was anchored and waiting to enter the Port of Callao when it suddenly experienced severe rolling, Evergreen said in a statement. The rolling, which caused the containers to fall, might have been caused by factors including a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in Russia, poor winter sea conditions in South America or a sudden influx of waves,
RSS