And in Today’s News…
- Rep. Park Hee-tae — all 70 years of him — has been elected head of the ruling Grand National Party, beating out Chung Mong-joon.
- Let’s see, who did the Chosun Ilbo bash today? Hmm, alright, I see the KTEWU, KBS and online portals. Very good. And who did the Hankyoreh bash? Hmm, alright, I see right-wing thugs and LMB. Very good.
- Actually, the portal site case is rather interesting. Seoul High Court ordered four major portals to pay a man US$30,000 in compensation after Internet users posted his personal information on comment boards following accusation that he let his pregnant girlfriend commit suicide. It gets better — the court also ruled that slanderous comments left on cafes, blogs and minihompis must be erased on pain of lawsuit. This could turn into a truly frightening mess, but one the mainstream conservative press might welcome because…
- The Cho-Joong-Dong have declared war on Daum, informing the portal site on July 2 that they would suspend syndication of their news to the site. They didn’t say why, but according to ZDNet Korea, it’s believed to be because Daum was looking the other way while netizens used Daum sites to conduct boycott campaigns directed at Cho-Joong-Dong advertisers (since declared — controversially —illegal, which might cause Daum more headaches, since some users are threatening to sue it if it tries to delete posts). Daum users are split into two camps on this, the “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out” camp and the “Daum has signed its own death warrant” camp. At any rate, it looks like the move will hurt Daum, both in terms of traffic and stock prices.
- In regards to the fight mentioned above, this is part of what I was talking about yesterday. The netizens are starting a war they might not be able to finish. Netizen outrage comes and goes, but the Cho-Joong-Dong is forever, and the papers now smell blood in the water (see this, too). Poor bastards… they know not what they’ve started.
10 Comments
I found this in the Joongang:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....id=2891912
Damn teachers union are now really pushing the anti-us beef agenda.
Imagine a teachers union in the States doing anything remotely like that, those teachers would be fired so fast.
not unless it was some anti-bush slogan.
That’d be Chung Mong-joon…
It looks like it’s going to be harder for few individuals to make the internet their own playground. Portal sites are forced to crack down on mass postings by same posters. As suspected, Agora site was inhabited by only few posters who post anti government messages for a living.
http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....40010.html
And the police seems to have problems investigating MBC and KBS, as those two stations are not cooperating.
http://news.chosun.com/site/da.....01058.html
It seems to me, the police are dragging their feet.
Great. But here’s the thing, cm — reports like that last Chosun Ilbo piece are problematic, too. Wouldn’t have been nice, for instance, to get a quote from an MBC official explaining why they weren’t turning over the material? If Roh’s prosecutors had asked Chosun reporters and editors to turn over their notes, how would the Chosun have responded? If MBC intentionally lied to the public for political reasons, isn’t it up to the media-consuming public — and the Press Arbitration Committee — to handle the problem, not the prosecutors? In the case of KBS, at least, I could understand if a parliamentary oversight committee looked into the matter since the station is run on the public coin, but even then, sicking the prosecutors on them seems hamfisted at best. And how far are we going to take this? Just suppose someone suspects a certain newspaper of sitting on potentially damaging information concerning a political party that the newspaper supports ideologically. Does that warrant a visit from the Central Prosecutor’s Office? I’m definitely not trying to attack your position, cm, and truth be told, I agree with you at least in sentiment about MBC, but I think these are questions that need to be raised.
I am still waiting for E-Bay to sue Daum for blatently ripping off their logo.
“Wouldn’t have been nice, for instance, to get a quote from an MBC official explaining why they weren’t turning over the material? If Roh’s prosecutors had asked Chosun reporters and editors to turn over their notes, how would the Chosun have responded?”
Agreed with you there. But with journalistic integrity so bad, who and what are we supposed to trust? I’d have to choose the lesser of the two evils, over the others (especially Hani, KyungHyang, etc).
“If MBC intentionally lied to the public for political reasons, isn’t it up to the media-consuming public — and the Press Arbitration Committee — to handle the problem,”
Once again, that is what happens in Western democracies, but I don’t think that can ever happen in South Korea, especially with an immature public with a boiling pot mono culture/mindset that can be easily swayed by rumors and innuendos instead of facts. You can forget about depending on the Korean public to become the true arbiters. It’s time the government get in there and pull out the destructive roots of leftism and anti-Americanism once and for all. And I’m not just talking about just the media, but also the trade unions and the Korean Teacher’s Union too.
A timely post that reminds me of why I’m grateful for our country’s generous interpretation of the First Amendment.
And the 2nd!