Over the weekend the country learned about the details of a story about how the vice president of Taeyoung, the main shareholder of Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), invited the head of the news desk at Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and the program moderator and reporter for an MBC program that has been critical of SBS and Taeyoung to a fancy hotel where the three from MBC were served drinks and given expensive women's handbags. The affair came to light when the reporter, Lee Sang Ho, posted a "confession of conscience" on the internet after the fact. Since then both MBC and SBS have issued apologies to their viewers and the program might end up being scrapped. You cannot conceal your shock and disappointment at the tenacity of the use of connections, so widespread in our society, and the way it has desensitized the ethical awareness of people in the news media.
According to the reporter's written comments on the internet, at first Taeyoung's vice president tried to use school connections as pretense for the little gathering. Starting on October 22 of last year, the program ran three reports critical of SBS's public service advertising campaign about the use of water and Taeyoung's dealings in the wastewater treatment business. That was around the same time the Korea Broadcasting Commission was reviewing SBS's application for a permit renewal, and it was one of the reasons SBS and MBC are engaged in such fierce criticism of each other.
The key issue here is that key individuals from a broadcasting company were entertained at great expense and even the reporter forgot about his professional obligation to play the role of critical observer. It goes without saying how Taeyoung should be behaving, since as SBS's biggest shareholder it is borrowing the public's airwaves and is supposed to uphold the public's interests. There is no way Taeyoung executives are unaware of how SBS's failure to carry out its initial commitment to return 15 percent of its net profits to society has become a much talked about issue. Taeyoung needs to confess the truth behind all that transpired and apologize before the people.
The MBC reporters' organization formal statement on the matter says journalists at the company feel so bad they "cannot lift their heads," MBC being the company where the head of the news desk made sure the reporter was in attendance at the little gathering with Taeyoung's vice president. There had already been internal concerns and criticism at MBC about an "increasingly conservative trend." One would like to see the affair trigger self-reflection and reform at MBC.
The Hankyoreh, 10 January 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Bad Date Between MBC and Taeyoung |
