Singaporean entrepreneur Joseph Phua (潘杰賢) yesterday said he is to launch a new publication with 96 percent of Apple Daily (Taiwan)’s original staff, as critics continued to call for government scrutiny.
Phua, founder of the streaming platform 17Live, held a news conference yesterday to announce the establishment of Next Apple News.
Phua vowed to refrain from using Apple Daily (Taiwan)’s brand, Web site and assets, and would not have access to personal information.
Photo: CNA
He also promised that Next Apple News would maintain neutrality and abide by the law.
The Web site of Apple Daily (Taiwan) — Apple Online — issued a statement yesterday, saying that it would stop updating content from 11:59pm today.
Apple Daily (Taiwan) said it was sorry that it had to bid farewell to its readers due to a lack of working capital, but added that Next Apple News would continue to shoulder the same responsibility to expose societal injustices.
It also invited people from different ideologies to share their advice with the new company.
“Every piece of your criticism will motivate Next Apple News to do better as it has been for Apple Daily (Taiwan) for the past 19 years,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, the Economic Democracy Union yesterday asked Apple Daily (Taiwan) to destroy its news material and draw up regulations regarding how personal information would be handled after the business closes.
It also called on the Ministry of Culture to supervise the process.
Apple Daily (Taiwan) in a statement on Wednesday last week said that personnel data would be archived for five to seven years before being destroyed, its fiscal and tax information would be archived for five to 10 years before being destroyed, and the data of its subscribers and members, as well as its news material, would be archived forever.
The union said that archiving is different from destroying, so the handling of Apple Daily (Taiwan) might potentially contravene Paragraph 3, Article 11 of the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法).
It would continue to monitor whether Phua and Next Apple News engage in illegal practices or hurt Taiwan’s democracy, it added.
Additional reporting by Chen Yu-fu
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