(EDITORIAL from the Korea Times on Dec. 27)

Media big bang
Governing camp should follow democratic procedure

Everything seems to repeat in a decade-long cycle in Korea these days:
Broadcasting workers went on a strike Friday for the first time since 1999.
What drove the TV journalists and program directors into the street this time
were the government-promoted "seven media laws," which eventually aim at allowing
newspapers and big businesses to own TV channels offering broadcast news ??? a
complete network station, in other words.
Officials of the government and ruling Grand National Party say the law reflects
global trends of "media convergence," in which cross-ownership of newspapers and
broadcasters is a common move to expand markets and sharpen industrial
competitiveness.
This logic is hard to refute for those familiar with the modern media industry,
except that Korea has its own peculiar situation that makes it difficult to just
import and try foreign systems. For instance, there are numerous newspapers and
broadcasting stations in the United States, but Korea has just a handful of
national papers and five ??? or three in terms of ownership ??? terrestrial
broadcasters.
In addition, U.S. media ownership rules set a strict limit on the size of media
companies subject to takeover by other firms to prevent industrial concentration
and forces each area to maintain a certain amount of news supply sources to
ensure diversity in public opinion.
The government-ruling party proposals, devoid of any system for checks and
balances, is likely to result in a free-for-all "media big bang" in the
relatively small domestic media market, leading to the domination of print and
electronic media markets by some chaebol or the three major newspapers
collectively called "Cho-Joong-Dong" after their initials.
If such turns out to be the case, the conservative conglomerates and big papers
will be able to control up to 80 percent of the nation's public opinion, which in
turn would hold sway over most elections here. Some governing camp officials'
"public" remarks that they lost the previous two elections because of progressive
broadcasters back up such suspicions.
Media convergence is an industrial trend and the increasing alliance between
like-minded political parties and media outlets is a political trend in many
countries, so one cannot say this should not happen in Korea.
Still, the way the governing camp is pushing its media agenda is definitively
lacking in due democratic process. Even many GNP lawmakers say they have not been
given opportunities to present their views, with some of them just "handing over
their seals" without looking at the bills' drafts. In short, the GNP is
railroading a bill worked out by a handful of officials in a closed room, against
which the opposition legislators are vowing to fight till the end.
In a way, the parliamentary paralysis is directly related with partisan
competition to snatch influential media outlets, as politicians are bound to
excessively depend on opinion-manipulating machines when representative politics
do not function normally. For them, the people, as consumers of news articles and
TV programs, were outside the question from the start. As various surveys show
about 60 percent of people are against the takeover of network stations by big
businesses and large papers, the governing camp should start from the ground up
by taking a more democratic process.
If things continue as they are now, many Koreans will have to watch ??? or join
in on ??? "Candlelit Vigil-Season 2" next year.
(END)