WHAT OTHERS SAY
Ferry tragedy - S Korean media owes an apology
Lee Sun-young
The Korea Herald
asia news network

SEOUL: - A few weeks ago, before the ferry Sewol sank, I interviewed a theatre director from Germany. He had just finished a show in Gwangju during which staff and audience members asked questions to 100 citizens, all nonactors, on stage, conducting an instant opinion poll.

What came as a shock, said the director, were the answers to the question, "Who here believes that news reports are manipulated?"

"Surprisingly, the vast majority said yes," he said.

To me, it wasn't surprising at all.

During my 10-plus years in journalism, the Korean media has been routinely blamed for political bias through misleading and often outright false reports. Journalists have been more often described as irresponsible, insensitive or malicious than as responsible, subjective or insightful. I am not at all proud of the quality of news reporting here, but it seemed to me that, to some degree, a public hostile to news reporters has become a part of the Korean journalistic tradition.

I told the German half-jokingly that I was relieved it wasn't 100 per cent.

Then the Sewol sank.

From day one, the local media's coverage of the incident was itself a disaster. The Korean media couldn't get the facts, let alone verify them, and just parroted the "official" announcement that all 338 Danwon High School students and teachers on board had been rescued. It later turned out only 78 had been rescued. The main blame should lie with the ill-prepared, incompetent authorities who made such a grave mistake in tallying up the numbers.

But just recall the number of errors and misleading, irresponsible and insensitive reports that followed. It hurts to say this, but we proved that we were indeed all the things that people have called us - irresponsible, insensitive and, most importantly, inaccurate. We gave them only more reasons to hate us.

On Wednesday, about 40 junior reporters of KBS, the largest of the three major broadcasters in Korea, posted letters of apology on its internal bulletin board. They were the ones who covered the ferry disaster from the field.

"We were in the field, but we didn't cover the field," one of the letters read. "When families of the victims cried and screamed that rescue efforts weren't going as the government said they were, we turned a deaf ear, pretending to be impartial, non-involved observers, writing our reports based on numbers released by the government and the marine police, who were absent from the scene."

Another painfully recounted how the families, frustrated at KBS and other mainstream media outlets, resorted to one-person Internet media outlets and a cable channel, desperate to get their side of the story across to the public.

Many of my acquaintances spoke of such frustration, too. Instead of watching mainstream media reports, they decided to rely on independent alternative media outlets - many of them run by one person - to find out what was really happening on the island of Jindo, off which the ferry sank.

All of this is proof that the mainstream media has failed.

It is really a time for soul-searching for the Korean media. We need to ask ourselves the same questions that we have asked government officials and others: Is this disaster-prone country, why haven't we learned any lessons from past experiences? What will we do to prevent this from happening again?

But before we begin to think about the answers, why don't we start by saying sorry? We owe the public an apology.

-- The Nation 2014-05-12

Does The Nation think they are immune from this?

Does The Nation think they are immune from this?

The article is not from The Nation but a South Korean publication - published first in Asia News Network and republished.

Lee Sun-young

The Korea Herald

//Admin

Here is journalist writing about the shortcomings of the Korean media - without investigating the root causes, without asking questions. Are they lazy, inept, afraid of government pressure, biased, corrupt? A reporter deploring investigative reporting in his country without trying to investigate his own article, indicative of what?

Here is journalist writing about the shortcomings of the Korean media - without investigating the root causes, without asking questions. Are they lazy, inept, afraid of government pressure, biased, corrupt? A reporter deploring investigative reporting in his country without trying to investigate his own article, indicative of what?

Yes. And thanks for pointing out the irony. Many would miss it. This writer is in total lockstep with mass thinking, reporting the mainstream view, without the slightest attempt to analyse or accept any disagreement with this view. heh

.

After reading this, it comes to mind what I believe Walter Chronkite once said. It went some thing along the lines that reporters have become repeaters.

In this day and age the media doesn't report news, it distorts and regurgitates it for its own ends. You only have to look at the garbage coming from the Murdoch 'empire' and its so-called newspapers, including Australia's worst rag, the Northern Territory News. The other very real problem is that the media collectively sees itself as a 'king maker' in quite deliberate political campaigns either for or against the parties of its choice - again, read Murdoch.

End of rant...

Bob A. Relaxed in Lampang

Could this a stem from a subconscious sense of altruism East Asians are well known for where the good of the many (lies to conceal incompetence and thus bring shame to the country) is more important then the good of the few? (the truth to the families).