CtiTV’s news channel has operated inappropriately, to the extent that it impaired the interests and rights of subscribers, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday, adding that it has given the network three months to address the issue.
The commission announced its decision after reviewing video footage recorded in September last year by Taipei City Councilor Chiu Wei-chieh (邱威傑), who is also an online talk show host known as Guaji (呱吉).
The footage showed Chiu receiving a telephone call from a CtiTV salesperson, who asked if Chiu wanted to attend a talk show on CtiTV News, and have a feature story done about him and his online talk show.
He was then told that it would cost him about NT$170,000.
Chiu turned down the offer.
The channel is required to take the incident to its own ethics committee, which must discuss ways to improve its operations, the commission said.
The channel was also asked to stipulate ethical guidelines to be followed by its sales and advertising department, it said, adding that it should make public the records of the ethics committee’s decisionmaking process and send a copy of it to the NCC.
The management and personnel in the advertising department must undergo training on journalism ethics and standards, and the channel must send a report on how it followed the NCC’s ruling and whether doing so helped it improve its operations, the commission said.
The channel would be subject to administrative punishment if it fails to improve its operations within three months, the commission said, adding that it could continue to penalize the channel if it keeps failing to improve.
Asked why it took the NCC more than a year to reach a decision, the commission said it had to verify the information with Chiu and twice had to ask the management of CtiTV News to come to the commission to answer questions.
The channel was also asked to present diverse opinions when handling news about itself, after it was found in April to be using its talk shows to accuse the NCC of unfairly punishing the channel.
Meanwhile, Sanlih TV News was asked to improve its fact-checking mechanisms after it reported in March that a Kaohsiung city councilor’s voice was muted in a live stream of a question-and-answer session with Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) at the Kaohsiung City Council.
The NCC said that the incident was due to technical difficulties that occurred during streaming.
The channel also failed to verify the authenticity of an online report claiming that Beijing planned to take over the nation by sending 5 million immigrants to Taiwan, the commission said.
AGGRESSION: China’s latest intrusions set a new benchmark for its ‘gray zone’ tactics and possibly a new pattern that it would attempt to normalize, a researcher said China’s latest military exercises represent a new challenge to Taiwan’s legal authority to demarcate its borders in the Taiwan Strait, a defense expert said, adding that the fleets in the latest exercises were likely the most powerful the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ever assembled. The PLA conducted military exercises from Sunday last week to 6am on Friday, which encompassed large swathes of the western Pacific, including the Taiwan Strait and waters off the Philippines and Guam, National Policy Foundation associate research fellow Chieh Chung (揭仲) said on Friday. The Ministry of National Defense said that it detected 70 warship and 162 aircraft
DOMESTIC MARKET: To protect the livelihoods of local egg farmers, the government adopted a new method for releasing imported eggs, the agriculture minister said More than 54 million imported eggs will be disposed, as their expiration date has passed, Minister of Agriculture Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday. Chen made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei, explaining the flow of imported eggs following recent controversies regarding the products. The ministry introduced a special egg import program to address a nationwide egg shortage earlier this year. However, controversies have risen in recent weeks. These included an accusation that the government helped some egg importing companies over others, eggs imported from Brazil that had an incorrect expiration date, and egg shipments from Brazil that were found
PACIFIC OCEAN: Defense experts have warned that the ‘Shandong,’ China’s second largest aircraft carrier, poses a serious threat to eastern Taiwan’s defenses The drills conducted by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong in the Western Pacific last week were more aimed at showcasing China’s military capabilities to the US rather than toward Taiwan, a Taiwanese defense expert said yesterday. Lin Yin-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the drills which involved dozens of warplanes sought to test China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities should the US and its allies attempt to interfere in a cross-strait conflict. Lin said that the latest Chinese drills coincided with a joint maritime exercise conducted by the US, South Korea
Thousands of bottles of Sriracha have been returned or destroyed after the discovery of excessive sulfur dioxide, a bleaching agent, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday. About 12,600 bottles totaling 9,991.8kg of the hot sauce imported from the US by Emporium Corp (河洛企業) were flagged at the border for containing illegal levels of sulfur dioxide, the FDA said in its regular border inspection announcement. Inspectors discovered 0.5g per kilogram of the common bleaching agent and preservative, higher than the 0.03g permitted, it said. As it is the first time within six months the product has been flagged, Sriracha products from
RSS