The Control Yuan has censured the Ministry of Culture for failing to supervise the partly publicly owned Chinese Television System (CTS, 華視) after several high-profile mistakes on the channel’s news ticker.
Control Yuan members Lai Ting-ming (賴鼎銘), Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) and Lin Yu-jung (林郁容), who headed the regulator’s CTS probe, said on Thursday that the censure was delivered after the Control Yuan’s Culture and Education Committee approved their findings.
The news channel made seven mistakes on the news ticker from April 20 to May 13, including false announcements that Chinese missiles and an earthquake had struck New Taipei City, and identifying Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) as the country’s president, they said.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
The ticker also showed an incorrect logo for a US major league baseball team, misnamed President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as Tsai EE (蔡EE), added “the US” to the title of a former Taiwanese vice president and posted an incorrect confirmed COVID-19 case number count in Shanghai, they said.
An investigation launched by the Ministry of the Interior’s Investigation Bureau did not find evidence of foreign meddling at the station, and the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office concluded that the mistakes were not crimes, Lai and Lin said.
The erroneous messages about the missiles and earthquake originated from a joint emergency response exercise in the city that did not follow standard operating procedures, they said, citing the municipality’s report.
These mistakes resulted in punishments for 22 CTS employees, they added.
The ministry was urged to improve its supervision of the Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation, which is responsible for the management of CTS, they said.
In a call for the ministry to resolve issues at CTS, the Control Yuan in 2014 issued a report detailing the channel’s ambiguous legal status and operational deficiencies, but the appeal was ignored, they said.
The ministry in a report published on May 25 acknowledged a variety of problems at the CTS, including an rigid organization system, red tape in hiring practices, understaffing, lack of professionalism, unclear delineation of responsibilities and a dependency on analog technology.
Citing the report, the Control Yuan members said little had changed in the channel following the regulator’s warnings.
The National Communications Commission, which fined CTS, should ensure that the channel implements reforms by linking compliance with licensing evaluations, Lai and Lin said.
Television companies are urged to consider CTS an example of the result of not modernizing, and conduct a review of internal mechanisms for oversight and standard operating procedures for airing news, the legislators said.
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