By Lee Kyung-min
Twenty-seven newscasters at local broadcaster MBC continued their strike, Wednesday, alleging the management wrongfully reshuffled staff.
They are among more than 300 journalists there on strike since 2012 against then-head of the company Kim Jae-chul who they said was parachuted in by then-President Lee Myung-bak.
Since then, the management has been criticized for exercising undue editorial discretion to suit the conservative presidents.
It reduced or removed airtime of hard-hitting critical social documentaries and banned media appearances of panels that were critical of conservative administrations.
The newscasters say it is part of what they deem a continuing abuse of power by a few at the top.
They demanded the immediate resignation of department head Shin Dong-ho and news division chief Kim Jang-gyeom.
They also criticized former star newscaster Bae Hyun-jin for pulling strings to demote colleagues she disliked using her prominent status as the main newscaster for the 8 o’clock evening news. Bae recently left the position.
“Shin constantly threatened us that he would not renew our contracts as newscasters, all of whom are all irregular workers. Twelve have left, and 11 were reshuffled to positions irrelevant to delivering news to the public,” they said in a statement.