The CTi News has received a boost to its online presence, a senior executive of the channel said yesterday, as it prepares to shift its focus to the Internet after the expiration of its broadcasting licence.
The National Communications Commission (NCC) last month said that it would not renew CTi’s license, citing evidence of interference from a tycoon with major business interests in China, amid fears of Beijing’s efforts to win support among Taiwanese.
CTi’s major shareholder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), also runs one of China’s largest food firms, Want Want China Holdings.
Photo: Ann Wang, REUTERS
The company and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have denounced the regulator’s decision not to renew the license as censorship aimed at silencing voices critical of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Tsai and her government have rejected that, saying that the decision was made by an independent body and was not subject to interference.
Cti News department chief director Liang Tien-hsia (梁天俠) said that the channel would keep broadcasting, but online, and that its YouTube channel had gained about 440,000 new subscribers in the past few weeks, taking its tally to 1.7 million.
Photo: Lin Liang-sheng, Taipei Times
“We’ve been forced to become new media. Doubtless this is a big challenge, but everyone has prepared themselves psychologically,” Liang said, adding that the channel is looking at Instagram and Facebook as other areas for development.
The channel is due to go off air at midnight today, although it has lodged an appeal to stop this.
CTi began operations in 1994 and is by many seen as being pro-China or “red media,” a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.
Liang said that this was a “malicious” accusation, and that the channel took neither instructions nor money from Beijing.
“I’ve been at CTi for a long time, and as a senior executive in the news department. I’ve never come under any pressure from China or [its] Taiwan Affairs Office on what news to report or not report,” he said.
In related news, representatives of the National Policy Foundation and KMT legislators yesterday wore black ribbons to “mourn press freedom.”
KMT Legislator Lee Guei-min (李貴敏) told a news conference that the NCC not only broke its obligation to remain independent, but also its founding mission in severe contravention of the law.
Additional reporting by CNA
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