During the opening events at the Seoul gathering of the World Association of Newspapers, Gavin O'Reilly, the group's acting president, criticized the newspaper law set to take effect at the end of July. He said that it not a wise method of handling excessive influence to have a law that's main purpose is to restrict newspapers' market share. He said it is unusual anywhere in the democratic world to restrict readers' choice of newspapers. He also took issue with the law's clauses on editorial committees and editorial rules.
There is nothing surprising about the way the old establishment newspapers covered his comments in a big way, as if they had been waiting for them all along. The problem is that a man who is the acting president of the world's largest gathering of newspaper publishers said what he did without a minimum of fact checking. We do not expect he would take into consideration the situation in Korea, where unreasonable competition to increase circulation even led to a case where one newspaper distribution center's employee was killed when he got in a knife fight with someone from another paper's distribution center.
Anyway, if what he says is true it means that the government, the ruling party, and also the opposition are in on suppression of press freedoms, because the legislation passed in the National Assembly with approval of the ruling and opposition parties. Article 17 defines a newspaper company as one that has undue control on the market if it publishes a single paper that holds 30 percent or more of the market, or when three papers have a market share of more than 60 percent. The only way papers that control the market are penalized is by denying them access to the "Newspaper Development Fund" (Article 34, Section 2). There is no reason to give government financial support for papers that have excessive control over the market. The stipulations about editorial committees and editorial rules are only standards for selecting primary recipients of government support. Saying that "restricts readers' choice of newspapers" or "restricts the authority of editors and publishers" is only the product of ignorance.
As he concluded his comments about Korea, O'Reilly said that WAN is always open to discuss the issues. If that is true, he should start by reading the law. A publisher cannot be ignorant of the fact that the most basic practice of a newspaper is to be as close to the facts as possible.
The Hankyoreh, 1 June 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
WAN President's Baseless Criticism |
