ed Mass media in mess

It’s time to tidy up broadcasting sector

The domestic broadcasting industry is in utter shambles, reeling under the combined pressure of political maneuvers and corporate selfishness. And nothing shows this better than a broadcasting-related law that passed the National Assembly last week.

The Media Representative Law, passed yet again thanks to the ruling Grand National Party’s majority seats calls for, among other things, giving enormous advertising benefits for the four new ``general service channels” opened by the nation’s large conservative newspapers last year, by allowing them to sell advertising directly to companies for three years instead of going through media representatives.

The viewer ratings of the new channels, technically cable stations but that actually work as terrestrial networks under the government’s protection, are dismal. They are at 1 percent or below but they demand up to 70 percent of the existing network stations’ advertising incomes, citing the bizarre logic that a 1-percent rating for cable stations is tantamount to 15 percent for terrestrial networks.

Equally outrageous is that the GNP inserted a clause that will raise its subscription fees by 1,000 won for the state-run KBS to help it make up for losses from dwindling advertising revenue.

All this sums up to the fact that the government and governing party have enabled the oligopoly of domestic media markets, public opinion in other words, by conservative, pro-government newspapers and their sister broadcasters with taxpayers’ money. The reward was immediately visible: KBS and another public broadcaster MBC both refused to air candidate debates of the opposition Democratic Unity Party Saturday.

Even more glaring were reasons for their failure to do so. KBS said the opposition party did not cooperate for the fee raise, and MBC also complained about the DUP’s failure to exclude it from the cumbersome Media Representative Law. So these so-called public broadcasters were tramping on the public’s right for knowledge out of corporate selfishness.

Nor was it the first time that the two networks, headed by former media aides of President Lee Myung-bak, failed to meet public expectations by ignoring or downplaying news unfavorable to his administration. It is of little surprise then that SBS, the only purely commercial network, has recently emerged as the most faithful deliverer of news.

The clocks have been turned back in many areas since the inauguration of this government. The media industry is no exception by running counter to the global trends toward the diversification of the sector.

Unfortunately, the duty of checking the power of the quasi-official media has fallen on the shoulders of viewers until another election can put broadcasters back on the path to true journalism.