Legislature to form task force to probe Mirror TV license application

Taipei, March 11 (CNA) The Legislative Yuan's Transportation Committee on Monday approved a proposal to establish a special task force to look into the controversy surrounding Mirror TV's application for a broadcast license.

The motion proposed by Kuomintang lawmaker Chiu Jo-hua (邱若華) was passed by a 6-5 vote during a committee meeting after National Communications Commission (NCC) Chairman Chen Yaw-shyang (陳耀祥) gave a report on the review of broadcasting license applications that was panned by several lawmakers.

The 13,000-word NCC report submitted to the committee was criticized for having 9,300 words that were identical to the previous report in 2023.

Under the proposal, a special task force shall be set up to get access to documents related to the controversy over Mirror TV's license application and its subsequent flawed practices.

The task force would also be tasked with examining whether there was any illegality in the review and approval of Mirror TV's license application.

The NCC responded in a statement Monday that it had fulfilled its duty to launch an administrative investigation into numerous issues facing Mirror TV, and said it was regrettable that some legislators had gotten overly involved in the case.

According to the NCC, it has briefed the Legislature on the commission's issuance of the Mirror TV broadcast license five times to date.

Mirror TV has been embroiled in controversy since it obtained a broadcast licence on Feb. 11, 2022.

Opposition parties accused high-level officials of the government of intervening in the company's news station application so that it could get a license.

Other issues raised against Mirror TV include financial disputes between Mirror TV and its parent company Mirror Media, the failure to separate its operations from its management, and frequent changes of its managers.

The TV company has denied, however, that it received unfairly favorable treatment from the government.

It said in a statement that it filed an application with the NCC for the license on Dec. 10, 2019, and it took it two years and two months to obtain the license, a longer process than has been the case for existing cable news stations.

If there had been favorable treatment from high-level officials, the application process would not have been repeatedly delayed, it contended.