The Marmot’s Hole

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) descended upon the COEX Mall area of Seoul from May 29th to June 1st and we here at The Marmot’s Hole were able to attend a few sessions.

Our thin-slice thinking of the event is that it was something of United Nations of the newspaper business. To outsiders, we could understand how the event would seem dry as dirt, but to us newspaper nerds it was actually kind of interesting.

During the Congress’ opening session, President Roh of RoK made some remarks regarding the need for the press industry to show more “responsibility” when reporting on such matters as weapons of mass destruction that caused immediate reaction on the part of the media.

Then acting President of the WAN shot back at President Roh after he left, leading to this editorial by the International Herald-Tribune, which said, in part:

For the 58th World Association of Newspapers conference’s opening ceremony yesterday, President Roh Moo-hyun regarded newspapers as powers to be reckoned with and emphasized the need for a system to control the abuse of the press’ power.

In contrast, Gavin O’Reilly, WAN’s acting chairman, said Korea’s media legislation to adopt such a system is “not something that is prevalent anywhere else in the democratic world.”

In particular, he said, “There are problems, as the Korean government is aware, with other proposed law revisions, that appear to us to constitute an unwarranted interference in the freedom and autonomy of publishers and their editors.” He also said that press freedom in Korea “is still not flawless.”

Mr. Roh said the Korean government does not exercise unwarranted influence on the press. But Mr. O’Reilly said, “We are aware that significant tensions exist between major newspapers and the state. Bills passed by the National Assembly which aim, among other things, to set limits on the market share of newspapers, are not, in our view, a sensible way of dealing with what some may consider is excessive influence.”

The essence of differences in opinion between Mr. Roh and Mr. O’Reilly is whether to regard the press as a power or not. Since taking office, Mr. Roh has made remarks suggesting the former, and his address yesterday confirmed that his view has not changed. It is no secret that the newspaper laws were enacted with this perspective and that they were designed to target the nation’s top three newspapers: the Chosun Ilbo, the JoongAng Ilbo and the Dong-a Ilbo.

Meanwhile,we here at The Marmot’s Hole were able to meet for a moment Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times who was in Seoul attending the WAN Congress.