The National Communications Commission (NCC) does not plan to push passage of the draft digital intermediary service act next year, as there is no public consensus on the necessity for the legislation, NCC Chairman Chen Yaw-shyang (陳耀祥) said yesterday.
Some people have speculated that the broadcast media and telecom regulator might have hurt the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the local elections on Saturday by pushing for a bill that would restrict online speech freedoms.
“We will not push [the draft act] if the public does not reach a consensus, nor do we have time to present a new version of the draft act next year,” Chen said.
Photo: Chen Hsin-yu, Taipei Times
Chen was responding to a question from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) during a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee.
The NCC presented the draft digital intermediary service act to generate public discussion on how the Internet should be governed and regulated, Chen said, adding that the commission is continuing efforts to have public dialogue on the matter despite halting the legislation.
Separately, SET News, Formosa News and Era News have been asked by the NCC to conduct internal investigations after the commission on Saturday received five complaints about their election day news coverage, Chen said.
The criticism was related to problems with the coverage of vote counts in the Taipei mayoral election, including two instances on SET News, two on Formosa News and one on Era News, the NCC said on Wednesday.
The news networks were accused of deliberately inflating the vote tallies of DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), showing him leading the race in the early counting.
Some people following SET News on the Internet reported that votes for the DPP Taipei mayoral candidate surged to 376,702 about 100 minutes after polls closed at 4pm, leaving that number static while incrementally adding votes for other candidates.
Separate from the complaints, the NCC and Central Election Commission (CEC) found that SET News mixed up the on-screen vote tally for DPP Pingtung County Commissioner candidate Chou Chun-mi (周春米) with her opponent, KMT candidate Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉), making it appear that Chou was trailing Su.
“The CEC will determine if the networks contravened the Civil Servants Election And Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), while the NCC will investigate if the networks contravened the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法),” Chen said.
The ethics committees of all three networks have been asked to convene within three weeks to review the complaints and errors, publish their investigations online and submit their reports to the NCC, he said.
An independent committee is to review the investigation reports before determining if they have contravened broadcast regulations, Chen said.
The networks could face fines of up to NT$2 million (US$65,289) for failing to verify information before publishing it as per the Satellite Broadcasting Act, Chen said.
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