There are sentences such as ‘The National Press Union (hereinfollowing referred to as the Press Union) is close to the Democratic Party’ or ‘In the case of broadcasting organizations, the KCTU Press Union, which is close to the Democratic Party, is in many cases dominated’. The factual relationship is not important to the speaker who used this sentence for the first time. The purpose itself is to smell like a close relationship between a labor union and a particular political party.
From the perspective of journalism in the classical sense, facts survive and interpretations and arguments made by distorting the facts are naturally weeded out, but it is quite difficult to break them once they are hardened into a frame. The point that Professor George Lakoff of the University of California, Berkeley, who created the concept of frame, argued in his book is that the existing frame cannot be broken without reconstructing it.
Let’s see the effect of continuing to make the ‘press union=Democratic Party’ scheme a fait accompli. When these relationships are equated, they are reaping significant political effects as a counterbalance. If you combine the two, the media union becomes a minion of the Democratic Party, or the Democratic Party becomes an outpost of the media union. Policies and systems that they are pursuing or underway are regarded only as the results of a particular political party and a particular group.
In the evaluation of the conservative camp on the amendment to the Broadcasting Act proposed by the Democratic Party, the frame of the Democratic Party = Media Union appears regularly. From the time the Democratic Party proposed the broadcasting law last year, it has emerged as a strong frame as the passport and conservative media have been back and forth.
In an editorial in May of last year, the Chosun Ilbo said, “According to the amendment to the Broadcasting Act proposed by the Democratic Party, the right to recommend 25 members of the public broadcasting steering committee is distributed to the National Assembly, broadcasting organizations, viewer organizations, and media societies. In the case of broadcasting organizations, the KCTU media union, which is close to the Democratic Party, is often in control.” Regarding the editorial, “The National Press Labor Union informed us that it is not true that the press union is close to a specific political party or that it dominates a broadcasting organization.”
Evidence for rebuttal abounds. The fact that the broadcasting organizations with the right to recommend among the contents of the amendment to the Broadcasting Act are autonomous etc.
Even following the counterargument report was published, the frame of the Democratic Party = Media Union = broadcast control continued. As of October of last year, as a result of mediation requests from the Press Arbitration Commission for reports that made similar claims, there were 8 counter-reports, 1 correction, and 2 deletions.
Going one step further, even though the press union did not have the right to recommend the public broadcasting operating member itself, it showed a definitive behavior as if it had the right to recommend it. A counterargument report (Dong-A Ilbo) was even published. It is in the form of a counterargument, but in fact, the facts are wrong.
Conservative media organizations then changed their words and insisted that “the core content of the Public Broadcasting Corporation Governance Improvement Act, which the Democratic Party and the media union are trying to revise, is that the majority of the members who elect the president of the public broadcasting company are composed of the pro-media union and the pro-Democratic Party.” are unfolding
At first, the media union close to the Democratic Party threw the so-called bait by saying that there are many cases in which broadcasting organizations were dominated, and fished that the media union had the right to recommend members of the public broadcasting steering committee. They managed to find it and continue the frame. Organizations recommended by the operating committee of public broadcasting even appeared in an ingenious expression, “a place that operates under the influence of the press union” (Seoul Shinmun). To use the expression unverifiable breath is to admit that there is no basis.
Leaving aside camp logic, breaking the frame of control over broadcasting would ultimately be the answer to the question of who is blocking the political independence of broadcasting. The diagnosis of the current broadcasting law, which is “political guardianship that turns public broadcasting into spoils for the ruling powers” (Chairman of the Press Union Yoon Chang-hyeon), is clear. And an alternative came out. We have to ask ourselves, ‘What exactly is the broadcasting independence you are trying to protect?’ Here is the first starting point for reconstructing the frame to break the broadcast control frame.
