The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end.
An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government.
A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens.
Photo courtesy of a participant at the concert
The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS group, they said.
The department provided a copy of a TVBS apology letter over the misstep, saying that workers forgot to unplug a backup laptop belonging to the projector’s subcontractor during the screen’s deactivation.
The unattended device — playing YouTube with the autoplay option turned on — was connected to the projector for the screen, the group said in the apology letter.
TVBS expresses the “deepest regret for the upset the incident had caused,” and would conduct a review of its operating procedures with hardware subcontractors to prevent mistakes from happening again, it said.
“The responsibility for playing CCTV at Taipei’s New Year’s Eve event cannot be shifted by casting blame on YouTube autoplay,” Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Chang Wen-chieh (張文潔) said.
Members of the public feel that the mistake was tantamount to the city government doing China’s “united front” work for it, she said, citing calls to her office in the early hours of yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Tseng Hsien-ying (曾獻瑩) said the incident should be a reminder for the city government to be careful in handling large-scale events.
“The city should impress on its contractors that they must take particular care to prevent such mistakes,” he said.
Separately, the Freeway Bureau acknowledged “inappropriate behavior” by its personnel following reports that multiple cameras on National Freeway No. 1 on New Year’s Eve had turned to look at the fireworks at Taipei 101 from the road.
Lee Jih-chin (李日錦), head of the bureau’s northern traffic control center, said the operators assigned to seven cameras on the freeway’s Yuanshan section turned away from observing traffic.
Camera operators are supposed to watch the fireworks as a factor that could impact traffic, but the number of devices utilized was clearly excessive, he said, adding that disciplinary measures would be taken.
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