'Technical' Censorship in Presidential Broadcast: Ko Wen-je's Speech Muted for 44 Seconds by FTV

In December 2023, during the first televised policy presentation for the 2024 presidential election, TPP candidate Ko Wen-je's criticism of the government's social housing policy mysteriously "disappeared" for about 44 seconds on Formosa TV's (FTV) YouTube live stream. Although FTV later argued it was a "technical issue" related to "system packets and network transmission" rather than malicious editing, this "technical muting" during a national election broadcast sparked strong suspicions that the network was using its public platform to censor and politically suppress a specific candidate, severely damaging the fairness of the election.