By Kim Rahn
An indefinite production boycott by MBC reporters protesting executives’ allegedly unfair programming crippled its main news programs for a second day Thursday.
It has had to cut the broadcasting hours of its flagship 9 o’clock evening news from 50 to 15 minutes as reporters have refused to participate in its production.
On Wednesday, the main news program only aired with male anchor Kwon Jae-hong delivering the news alone without his co-anchorwoman. The program was mostly comprised of Kwon reading items without footage of other reporters or video clips.
Other news programs on MBC were also shortened or suspended. Senior reporters and executives, who are not members of the MBC reporters’ association, are now producing the news.
“It is the company’s policy to cope with the situation according to the firm’s regulations. Management makes agreements with the labor union, not with the association which is only a social association. From the beginning, we said we won’t allow a boycott of duties,” a company official said.
The association launched the boycott at 6 a.m. Wednesday. Some 130 reporters and 30 cameramen, or about 70 percent of the total staff engaged in news production, are taking part in the collective action.
The reporters staged sit-ins at the lobby of the broadcasting company, calling for personnel reform including the resignation of Jeon Yeong-bae, head of the News Reporting Headquarters, and Mum Cheol-ho, head of the News Reporting Department.
They said MBC news programs have been criticized for remaining silent on sensitive issues and releasing biased reports on specific issues, claiming they are losing credibility because of this.
“We don’t want this disruption to programming to continue. But more importantly we don’t want biased reports to continue,” Park Seong-ho, head of the association, said Thursday.
“The management just ignores us. It doesn’t worry about crippled broadcasting but rather came up with the 15-minute 9 o’clock news plan immediately, as if they had been waiting for our action,” he said.
The broadcaster’s union is holding a vote until Friday to decide whether to go on a general strike to call for the resignation of President Kim Jae-chul. Kim is currently in Japan attending a fashion show.