'Next' hit with 2nd fine

The city government also decided that all elementary and high schools in the capital are prohibited from subscribing to the group's Apple Daily until it observes the rating regulations for Internet content.

People wishing to read and borrow the daily at municipal libraries will have to show their ID cards proving they are above the age of 18.

After imposing the first fine a day earlier, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin said at a press conference that the city government respects the freedom of the press. But he vowed that the youngsters and schools will not be contaminated by the bloody, violent, and pornographic images which Next Media plans to quickly build up a huge clientele for its new mobile electronic information service. Hau urged the National Communications Commission (NCC) and other government agencies to set up specific guidelines on how to handle mobile motion graphics news as soon as possible. City government officials said new fines will be meted out on Next Media until necessary improvement is made.

The group was already told to correct its practice of providing a serial bar code on Apple Daily's front page that can be used as a password for access to all motion graphic news on the Apple Daily's Web site.

Mayor Hau said the city government's Department of Education will ask teachers and students not to circulate Apple Daily on campuses and said the newspaper's Web site access will be blocked from schools.

Next Media, publisher of the Chinese-language Apple Daily and weekly magazines in Taiwan and Hong Kong, started its online motion graphic news service Nov. 16. Its reports about sexual assaults, incestuous and kinky sexual relationships, homicides and suicides with highly disturbing motion graphics and narration, drew immediate complaints and stirred anger among many civic groups and parents.

More than 20 civic groups, including the welfare and reporters associations, staged a protest in front of the Apple Daily's Taipei office building yesterday, demanding that the media group establish self-discipline guidelines within two weeks and stop producing motion graphic news about sexual assaults, sexual harassments and molesting, child abuse and domestic violence.

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