Instances of government interference in the media are rare in Taiwan, a model for press freedom in the Asia-Pacific region, ranking 27th out of 180 countries and territories in this year’s RSF World Press Freedom Index. Yet on 9 November 2024, Taiwan’s public broadcaster, Public Television Service (PTS), acknowledged that it had removed, then altered, a report from its English-language channel TaiwanPlus, citing “concerns over the objectivity, fairness, and balance of the report”, following the government’s intervention.
In the report in question, journalist Louise Watt referred to the newly elected US president, Donald Trump, as a “convicted felon” – a factual description referring to the criminal conviction handed to Trump in May 2024 by a US court on the charge of falsifying business records.