Seven Chinese Television System (CTS) employees were disciplined for erroneously running news tickers announcing a Chinese invasion off the coast of northern Taiwan during its morning news program on Wednesday, the network said yesterday.
The news alerts were created by the New Taipei City Fire Department for disaster drill purposes. CTS apologized for the error in a statement on Wednesday, saying that the mistake occurred due to the oversight of a program director who was tasked to shoot a disaster drill video for the New Taipei City Fire Department.
The employee failed to restore the text file path of the screen layout after completing the recording on Tuesday, resulting in the error on the news program, it said.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
The CTS ethics committee also convened on Wednesday afternoon for an emergency meeting, in which two program directors, along with five editors and producers, were held accountable for the incident.
The most serious penalty administered by the committee was a major demerit.
CTS acting general manager Chen Ya-ling (陳雅琳), who is currently in quarantine after a visit to the US, yesterday offered her resignation through videoconference in a board meeting of the Taiwan Broadcasting System.
Her resignation offer was rejected by TBS chairwoman Tchen Yu-chiou (陳郁秀), whose decision was seconded by other directors on the board.
Chen delivered a public apology on the network’s Wednesday evening news program.
“Managers and employees in the news department who were involved in the incident are to be disciplined. As CTS acting general manager, I will accept any reprimand the board administers,” she said.
Chen is to face questions from lawmakers at the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee on Monday morning.
The Investigation Bureau’s Taipei City Field Office and Cybersecurity Investigation Office yesterday interviewed a program director surnamed Chiang (蔣) and a subtitle editor surnamed Liu (劉) to determine if the network’s system had been hacked.
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