Taiwan’s media outlet CTI News Channel has reached an outcome in its license renewal case, the National Communications Commission (NCC) decided Wednesday to deny the application for license renewal. Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC), which is the highest authority in Taiwan’s telecommunications, radio and television broadcasting industries, decided Wednesday to reject the application and not renew the license.
Centronics’ license, which is valid for six years, expires on Dec. 11.
NCC Chairman Chen Yao-xiang held a press conference that afternoon to announce that the seven members of the committee unanimously decided to reject the application and not to renew the license.
Chen Yaoxiang said, the reason for rejecting the application for license renewal is that the station’s illegal facts are very clear. He said that NCC received more than 920 complaints against Centronics last year, accounting for about one-third of the total number of complaints against all news channels in Taiwan.
Two NCC commissioners, Lin Liyun and Wang Weijing, are professors of journalism and mass communication. The two commissioners stressed that CTI News has a “very serious self-regulation problem” and that the station has failed to make the required corrections after repeated violations, Taiwan Lianhe Zaobao reported. They argued that the National Communications Commission should exercise its authority independently, free from political influence.
In response to the NCC’s November 18 rejection of the license renewal case, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an organization that has long been concerned about press freedom, expressed its deep regret for the affected employees of the station, but said it did not believe that the NCC’s decision was an infringement of press freedom.
First of all, RSF stated that freedom of the press is not unregulated, but requires regulation and democratic control in order to be effective, not abused.
RSF also stated that the denial of license renewal is an extreme measure that needs to be properly justified. RSF called on the NCC to provide the public with complete information about the potential harm to the public interest if CTS were to renew its license, and asked that the same standards be applied to future media license reviews of different political stripes.
Ltd. is a Taiwan-based satellite television station that is part of the Wang Chung Group. The group has three domestic channels, namely, CTS News, CTS Variety, and CTS Entertainment, and two overseas channels, namely, CTS Asia and CTS North America.
The largest shareholder of CTS TV is the founder of Want Want Group, Yen-Ming Tsai. According to the data, Tsai moved to mainland China in 1992 to run Want Want China Holdings Limited, a Hong Kong-listed company, and since then, the source of 90% of its capital and property income has been the Want Want Group. Since then, 90% of its capital and property income came from mainland China, so it bought CTS, CTS, China Times, and Business Times, and renamed the CTS Group as Want Want CTS Media Group.
The Hong Kong and Taiwan media reported that CTS News was fined about NT$10 million by the NCC for “failure to verify facts” in the past two years, and was accused of not being professional enough, creating fake news, deliberately manipulating political winds, and even hindering press freedom in Taiwan. It is also alleged that the position of CTS News is in favor of mainland China. CTS major shareholder and Want Want Group Chairman Tsai Yen-ming denied receiving financial assistance from mainland China when he attended the hearing earlier.
Reuters reported that Cai could not immediately be reached for comment, but that he had previously dismissed allegations of news interference.
Taiwan’s United Press reported that the NCC has completed its political mission, saying that Wednesday was “the darkest day for freedom of the press and freedom of speech since the lifting of martial law in Taiwan for more than 30 years,” and that the NCC will definitely propose a follow-up legal remedy procedure to fight to the end for freedom of the press and the right to work for all employees, in a statement issued Wednesday evening.
Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), said it opposed the decision because it could have a “chilling effect and seriously affect press freedom.
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