Violations of the "newspaper directives" by the Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and DongA Ilbo are going too far. According to a study by the Citizens Coalition for a Democratic Media of neighborhood distribution centers belonging to those three papers and the Hankyoreh Sinmun, 95.6 percent of the Chosun, JoongAng, and DongA's distribution centers violated the directives, or just one or two out of thirty centers of each paper that were looked at. That is far more than the average of 80 percent found in the same review last November.
Furthermore, the violations are serious enough to make you wonder if the directives are worth nothing more than scrap paper. The Chosun styles itself as "Korea's best newspaper," but it gives away two thirds of the papers that pass through its distribution centers and it also gives away prizes just for subscribing. Some JoongAng centers give away department store gift certificates if you subscribe for a whole year. The situation is similar at the DongA.
Seven Hankyoreh distribution centers were found to be giving away three month subscriptions. Regardless of the weight of the matter, we express our regret.
Those in the know will tell you that other papers just have to bite the bullet and follow suit. It's not as if they have any choice when these papers are taking up all the potential readers. The result is that the situation has returned to what it was back before the directives were revised, back in April of last year, and again the market is a jungle. It's pathetic, and you wonder what the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has been doing while the program is being trampled on.
Aside from the FTC's noncommittal attitude, other big problems are the complicated regulations regarding the new award program, in which citizens can win prizes for reporting violations. Most subscriptions are established through oral contract, but the FTC requires the citizen filing a report submit the subscription contract along with the prize in question. There just was not going to be any citizen watch activity going on when the regulations were so out of touch with the reality, which is that there is not a culture of reporting legal violations in Korea. The criteria for reporting violations have to be made more realistic. The government also needs to consider prohibiting prizes altogether instead of allowing prizes of up to price of 20 percent of the subscription rate.
The Hankyoreh, 13 March 2006.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] 'Newspaper Directives' Having No Effect |
