A proposal by Next Media Interactive Limited to launch an animated Internet news channel was unlikely to receive approval because of its graphic violent content, the National Communications Commission said yesterday.Associations of teachers, women's rights and children activists were planning to visit the Taiwan offices of the Hong Kong-invested media group Thursday to protest against the images, which they say will harm women and children.
Late yesterday, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin announced the capital was levying the highest possible fine of NT$500,000 against the media company under a child welfare act.
Next Media, already known for its weekly Next Magazine and Apple Daily, has been broadcasting the animated Internet news for about a week as an experiment, reports said. Most of the content was focused on the recreation of crimes, some of them featuring intense scenes of violence, according to reports.
Social groups said that repeating the animated footage of the crimes would cause more harm to the victims, while there was a high likelihood that children would have access to the images of violence.
NCC Chairwoman Bonnie Peng told lawmakers yesterday she didn't see the service as news.
'The basic preconditions for news programs are that they have to be fair, objective, balanced and tasteful," she said.
The NCC would invite children welfare groups, psychologists, news experts and animation specialists for a seminar on the phenomenon next Wednesday. The conclusions of the meeting would form the basis for the NCC to review Next Media applications for five television channels in the middle of next month, Peng said.
The company later said that the animated news was a service of its Apple Daily newspaper and was completely unrelated to the television project.
Peng argued that because the animated news was still in its trial period, there were no laws available that could be used to ban the service. Legislators demanded she come up with such laws within a month. The NCC suggested using child welfare laws to fine Next Media.
Interior Minister Chiang Yi-huah told reporters that an eventual penalty could include a publication ban ranging from one month to one year.
National Taiwan Normal University Professor Hu Yu-wei said the company might be using the images to try and create public interest for its animated service, but was still wrong to produce such violent content.
The animation could also be downloaded directly to cell phones, reports said. The NCC's chief of content, Ho Chi-sen, told lawmakers that it was impossible to stop the service because its server was located in Hong Kong, but the government could ask Chunghwa Telecom to take down the controversial content based on decency laws.
The publications of the Next Media Group, run by Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai, have attracted attraction by their sometimes graphic reports and pictures about sex and corruption scandals involving entertainers and politicians, and bloody scenes of crimes and accidents.
