The National Communications Commission (NCC) refusing to renew CTi News’ license might have a chilling effect, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday.
The NCC announced its decision earlier in the day. It was reportedly the first time the commission has rejected a license renewal request from a news station since it was established in 2006.
The NCC’s decision has “confirmed” the public’s suspicion of the use of political power to interfere with freedom of the press, the KMT said in a statement.
Photo: AFP/Sam Yeh
The closure of a news station while President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is in office might have a chilling effect, restrict the freedom of speech and lead to a serious regression of press freedom in Taiwan, the statement said.
Taiwan’s media environment — which respects journalists’ freedom to report the news — did not come easily, and supervision by the media has enabled Taiwan’s democracy to move toward a more open and transparent direction, the KMT said.
During the review process, many have called into question whether those in power were intervening in the NCC’s review “to exclude dissenting voices,” it said, adding that the fairness and objectivity of the NCC have come under criticism.
The KMT said it believes that the “biased approach” taken by the NCC during the hearing process would make a majority of Taiwanese unable to approve of yesterday’s result.
The KMT said that while the result was unsurprising, it urged the Democratic Progressive Party to reflect on the damage that would be done to the protection of free speech and press freedom in Taiwan by shutting down a news channel.
The use of administrative power to interfere with the position of the news media would only create a chilling effect in Taiwan, the KMT said.
“It is completely and utterly hypocritical for governments to invoke #PressFreedom only when it fits their agenda,” KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) wrote on Twitter.
“Today was a sad day for this crucial #democratic freedom on #Taiwan!” Chiang added.
Additional reporting by CNA
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