On September 13, the Munhwa Ilbo reported in an article about Shin Jeong-ah’s fake degree that maybe she lobbied high ranking people for a professorship with her nude photos. Her nude photo was unnecessary material. The Munhwa Ilbo turned a person’s fake degree into a young woman’s sex scandal by using her nude photos. The Munhwa Ilbo’s sensational article was unfair by infringing a person’s privacy.
There were two big cases in the second half of this year: the issue of 23 Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan and Shin Jeong-ah’s fake degree. The two issues suggested Korean society’s problems, so most media focused on these issues excessively. There are two negative effects which are caused by the media focusing on a big issue. The first negative effect is that most media focus on one issue which causes hot controversy, so they are careless about other happenings. Actually, most newspapers gave a lot of space to the issue of 23 Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan in July. At that time, we easily found the news of people kidnapped in Afghanistan. However, the media didn’t show a lot of interest in the competition for the presidency even though this is directly related to people’s lives. In addition, most media reported on Shin Jeong-ah’s fake degree excessively. However, they also reported carelessly on Typhoon Nari which caused extensive damage. The media deprived people of the right to know various news.
The second negative effect is the media report when a big happening occurs, and then when another happening occurs, they forget the former happening and move their interest to the other happening. In other words, the media don’t report the whole process to the end, and they just repeat articles which raise people's temporary interest. When Shin Jeong-ah’s fake degree was discovered, most media reported the beginning in detail, so they stimulated people’s curiosity. However, after she was arrested, the media lost interest in the story. Almost all media push cameras or pens into some issue excessively in the beginning, but it is very hard to watch the report continue until the end of an issue. In addition, the media have misused a Korean propensity, so called neambi. Most Koreans are easily excited about one issue, but their interest also easily cools. The media misuse this propensity and focus more on the beginning of the issue.
The Korean media’s other serious problem is there are some speculative news and articles based on guesses. The Internet sports and entertainment news OSEN> uploaded an article about Seo Jae-weong rejoining the Kia Tigers on October 24. They reported Seo Jae-weong had agreed in principle to rejoin the Kia Tigers, and he would wear Kia’s uniform next year. In addition, they wrote he had a plan to negotiate money in November, and he would participate in Kia’s overseas training in January of next year. Not only OSEN, but Donga Sports and Hankook Sports also uploaded speculative articles that it was nearly certain he would rejoin Kia. However, they wrote articles to reverse the former articles the next day. Actually, there have been rumors about Seo Jae-weong’s rejoining Kia since 2003, so many media repeated speculative articles based on guesses and incorrect facts. However, Seo Jea-weong said that he didn’t have a plan to rejoin Kia Tigers, and he would still play baseball with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
Reporters have written speculative articles with incorrect facts and information, so many people who read an article make more rumors about the article. The media should report with objective materials which are acknowledged as facts and write fair articles. Reporters need to write correct facts and proven information when they write articles because speculative articles might infringe personal privacy or personality.
Online newspapers are more serious. When you use some websites on the Internet, you might have been attracted by articles having lascivious titles. In Korea, many websites for online newspapers have suddenly come out because the number of Internet users has increased rapidly. In December 2005, there were about 300 legitimate websites dealing with online news. Now, there are about 900. Of course, many articles have been uploaded to these websites, and these websites’ influence is bigger and bigger.
However, do all the articles on the Internet provide you with certain facts about events, and do the titles of articles represent those articles’ contents? They sometimes do not in online newspapers. We can easily find articles having lascivious titles on the Internet, for example, “Korean Women Crazy about Losing Weight,” “Fools’ Nationalism,” and “English, Be gone! Translation Machines Are Here.” The second article is about the movie D-War which got much attention, and the third article introduces a machine which will be invented in about 10 years as if it is being sold now. Furthermore, have you visited “Most Popular News Stories” on Naver News? This shows articles read by many people and articles with many comments by netizens. Those articles’titles and contents tend to be lascivious and don’t have sufficient objective information.
Why have these problems happened in online newspapers? In other words, what’s the reason that these lascivious and subjective articles are increasing online? Three causes could be answers: the ease of uploading articles on the Internet, online reporters’ quality, and netizens’ attitude.
The first cause is the ease of uploading articles on the Internet. Articles for the Internet can be uploaded without printing articles as in paper news. Moreover, if the wrong articles are uploaded, reporters can erase them from the website. In short, writing lascivious and subjective articles on impulse is as easy as uploading and erasing articles.
The second cause is online reporters’ quality. The more websites increase, the more online reporters are also needed to work on the Internet. A few days ago, I was shocked after seeing a wanted advertisement from Gyungju Internet News for online reporters because the requirement was that if you have an overly critical personality, you can be an online reporter. It means that it is okay to hire any person if they can just write articles which attract many readers. Like this, rapidly established websites pay little attention to hiring reporters. Furthermore, they have an influence on making online reporters’ quality lower than offline reporters.
Lastly, the third cause is low-level netizens’ attitude. These netizens tend to avoid reading long articles with overall objective contents. In addition, they have a shortage of ability to distinguish correct and objective articles. Some netizens are more interested in gossip. On Naver News, articles about Shin Jeong-ah’s nude pictures, criticism about the 23 Koreans kidnapped in Afghanistan, and entertainers’ personal lives have thousands of comments, but columns and in-depth analyses either don’t have comments or have few comments. These netizens’ attitudes make reporters’ will to write more important and substantial articles decrease. Therefore, online newspaper reporters repeat a vicious circle to satisfy netizens who are infected with the lascivious aspect of Internet culture.
Recently, a new system in which anybody can be a reporter has been introduced. This system is called the "civic reporter system." The representative website is OhmyNews,established in 2000. OhmyNews has grown steadily to be competitive with conventional mass media with the slogan "Every citizen is a reporter." The OhmyNews slogan indicates that anybody can be a reporter if they have news stories and an ability to convey them honestly to other people. OhmyNews has about 52,000 citizen reporters (also called news guerrillas) together with about 60 professional reporters. Any ordinary citizen can easily be a citizen reporter after submitting an application with some personal information. It’s just like a membership to use a website. Of course, every news story from citizens is not uploaded. News stories are selected, filtered by an editorial division, and then uploaded. This system enables people to experience an emerging news medium characterized by interactivity on the Internet. In addition, we can hear not only professional reporters’ voices, but also various opinions of diverse groups of social actors in reporting social problems and conflicts through the civic reporter system. The system also helps citizens restore the freedom of the press and exercise their rights independently. Many articles and studies about OhmyNews’ new system, which first emerged in Korea, have poured out from many overseas journals such as the New York Times, Newsweek, the Guardian, and CNN. The New York Times reported about OhmyNews with the title "South Korea Dissolves Ties That Once Bound the Press to the Powerful" in June 2004. This article showed the big influence of OhmyNews in society. Newsweek wrote an in-depth story about it with the title "Is This the Future of Journalism?" in June 2004, and members of CNN dropped by the main building of OhmyNews twice to do research on the system. It is true that the system has received favorable receptions from many journals. However, there are also several weak points such as the low quality of citizen reporters and superficial views from insufficient research by citizen reporters. As I mentioned, any ordinary citizen can easily be a citizen reporter after submitting an application with some personal information. Even elementary school students can be reporters if they have permission from their parents. They don’t have regular training courses and education for quality articles. They just get some instructions to upload their writings. The number of articles related to information like politics, international events, economics, and IT are not sufficient compared with news items from citizen reporters’ daily lives and experiences. OhmyNews is trying to solve this problem by hiring more professional reporters to write about politics, international events, economics, and IT. However, Internet websites still have far more nonprofessional articles than professional articles. In addition, many articles in OhmyNews just have a tendency to pose problems about some events and have arguments about the problems. There is a lack of articles providing in-depth analyses about controversial social problems. Furthermore, the problem about the number of articles expressing the reporter’s partial attitude is serious. Even though those articles written by citizen reporters are filtered through the editorial division, there are large numbers of articles having subjective views against, for example, specific politicians.The reason might be civic reporters’ lack of critical and analytic thinking and the low number of about 10 editors compared with about 52,000 citizenreporters. Editors don’t have enough time to edit articles carefully in the situation that so many articles are submitted every day. As we mentioned above, the Korean media have problems. One of the main problems is, I think, just chasing the public’s temporary interest. TV just wants people to stay on their channel, newspapers just want more circulation, and Internet news wants a bigger number of clicks. I hope the Korean media strengthen their original journalism rather than consider temporary public interest so that people have correct information through the media. |
