The Executive Yuan said it is to team up with messaging app Line to combat false news reports by establishing a rumor-busting page on Line Today, the main news feed of the app.
“The Executive Yuan Myth Buster,” expected to start operating next month, is to provide accurate rebuttals to social-media based fake news,” Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said on Saturday.
Line has agreed to give the government free access to the Line Today interface to publish rebuttals, which the government considers a major breakthrough in its campaign against false reports, Kolas said.
The government recognizes that its news releases have been less than ideal and it will work on giving the content on its myth-busting page concise headlines, clear descriptions and relevant pictures, she said.
“Government agencies have produced stiff, formulaic news releases that cause difficulties in public communication and dialogue,” she said.
“The Executive Yuan believes that agencies have to vastly improve their communication skills before taking on fake news,” she added.
Online content from the government must be easy to read and comprehend, an issue that public information personnel of the Executive Yuan and its subordinate agencies have been working on, Kolas said.
There are tentative plans to have editorial staff to oversee the effort, she said.
The government secured Line Corp’s cooperation over the matter after negotiations, with government officials telling Line that false news reports had significantly harmed society, sources said.
Line Corp said it enjoys a large market share in Taiwan and therefore has a corporate responsibility to provide good information.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents
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