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DPP blasts mega media
merger deal
'MEDIA MONSTER’: The party said that Want Want
China Times Group could use its media clout to monitor people’s viewing habits
and seek to influence their perceptions
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The National Communications Commission’s (NCC) conditional approval of a massive
media merger on Wednesday marked the darkest day in the history of media freedom
in the country and continued political interference in the media, the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
The party “strongly opposed” the commission’s approval of Want Want China Times
Group’s (旺旺中時集團) NT$76 billion (US$2.52 billion) acquisition of cable television
service provider China Network Systems (CNS, 中嘉網路), which would create an
intermedia monopoly, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Lin said the party condemned the commission’s opaque, closed-door review of the
merger application and demanded full disclosure of all records and video
recordings of the meeting.
While the deal was neither legitimate nor urgent, it was hastily approved with
one week left before the terms of the four remaining NCC commissioners ended, he
said.
“We suspect that it was President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) paying back those
corporates that supported his re-election bid,” Lin said, describing the deal as
“political interference.”
A corporate head like Want Want Group chairman Tsai Eng-ming (蔡衍明), who has
claimed that very few people actually died in the Tiananmen Square Incident in
1989 and that he did not understand why news reports cannot be sold for profit,
is not qualified to run a media group, the DPP said, adding that was why
academics and media watch groups here and abroad opposed the deal.
The party said that freedom of speech was deteriorating, with Taiwan’s global
press freedom ranking by the US-based Freedom House dropping from 32nd in 2008
to 48th this year.
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) questioned whether the three suspension clauses
listed by the commission as mandatory requirements would be effectively
implemented.
The three clauses require that Tsai sell CTiTV (中天電視), transform China
Television Co’s (中視) CTV news channel into a non-news channel and that CTV
establish an independent news review and editing policy.
While the term of the four commissioners — including NCC Chairperson Su Herng
(蘇蘅) — run through the end of this month, the controversial deal, which had been
stalled for 18 months, was hastily approved after two NCC meetings, DPP
Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said.
“The three suspension clauses and the 25 additional clauses are meaningless if
you cannot monitor whether they are actually implemented,” she said.
“Let me tell you what media monopoly is. It’s a media company with 19 TV
channels, three newspapers and a magazine now adding 11 cable TV channels and
which [has the power to] influence about a quarter of households with a TV
nationwide,” DPP Legislator Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said.
Such a media monster would not exist in other democracies, she said, adding that
the group would be able to remove the channels it dislikes.
It could even operate for political gain with its technology, which is able to
record the viewing behavior of all home users and get to know their political
affiliation and use this information as a campaign tool, Cheng said.
“In other words, it can manipulate the democratic system we now enjoy,” she
said.
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