With the overwhelming victory in the June 1 local elections for Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, the power of the people swept the majority of the seats in the Seoul City Council, effectively turning a red light on the fate of TBS.
Mayor Oh said that during the election period, TBS had fulfilled its role as a traffic broadcaster and declared that it would change its function to an educational broadcaster when a majority of seats in the Seoul City Council were secured. Accordingly, a violent collision with the inside of TBS is predicted. However, it seems that the number of internal efforts to secure the fairness of ‘Kim Eo-Jun’s News Factory’, which ranked first in the listening rate and was the target of criticism of representative polarized broadcasting, is expected to rise to the test stand.
According to the list of elected candidates compiled by the National Election Commission on the 2nd, the distribution of members by party in each constituency of the Seoul City Council was 70 seats for People’s Power and 31 seats for the Democratic Party, with 6 people from the People’s Power and 5 from the Democratic Party of Korea as proportional representatives. The People’s Power won a majority of 76 seats, while the Democratic Party of Korea won only 36 seats. It is the first time in 12 years that the Democratic Party has lost a majority of the seats in the Seoul City Council since the 2010 local elections.
Accordingly, attention is focused on how the Seoul City Council, in which the power of the people has a majority, will solve the TBS problem. Since Mayor Oh Se-hoon was elected in the April 7 re-election last year, he tried to cut the TBS budget by a large amount, but it was not carried out due to opposition from the city council.
Then, during this election process, Mayor Oh put forward the idea of making TBS into educational broadcasts and professed to help TBS. Mayor Oh’s plan was first revealed in an interview with Yonhap News on the 12th of last month. Regarding Kim Eo-jun’s reorganization of the news factory, Mayor Oh said, “It’s time to think regarding changing the essential function of traffic broadcasting, while saying, “It’s something I don’t have the authority to do and it’s something I shouldn’t do.” In that regard, once the majority of seats (Seoul City Council) are secured, we will begin the discussion in earnest.” In the case of the TBS Foundation audit results, Yonhap News reported that when asked if there was a possibility of an announcement following the election, he answered, “It should be.”
Mayor Oh mentioned the disappearance of the traffic broadcasting function on the next day, the 13th of the same month, in MBC radio ‘Kim Jong-bae’s Concentration of Eyes’ and telephone connection. He said, “The case of driving while listening to traffic information provided by traffic broadcasting has almost disappeared. It’s not worth returning the frequencies you’ve already received… We are thinking of changing the function to education for children of low-income families and the convergence of lifelong education systems.” Regarding whether or not the ordinance of the independent foundation was to be changed, Mayor Oh said, “If the name and function are changed, the frequency will be used in a way that is helpful to the citizens of Seoul.”
On the 16th, in a telephone connection with CBS Radio’s ‘Kim Hyun-jung’s News Show’, Mayor Oh said, “Since the ordinance needs to be changed, we will discuss it in earnest when the city council is newly formed.” In response to criticisms of ‘regression of controlled broadcasting’ and ‘blasphemy of control of broadcasting,’ Mayor Oh said, “The tenure of TBS’s president will expire soon. He explained, “I’m going to give up on that and change the broadcasting function, but does that really mean that?” At the public debate on the 17th, the next day, Choi Gwang-sook asked a Seoul newspaper waiter, ‘Isn’t the reorganization into an educational broadcast naturally aiming for both sides to organize the Kim Eo-jun program?’ “I came up with the idea of an educational broadcast because of the importance of lifelong education, We will fully discuss its function,” he said. He said, “I spoke with such a reality in mind, but my intentions are being questioned because Kim Eo-jun’s broadcast is often engulfed in political bias and controversial,” he said. “That part is rather unfair.”
When criticism of the suppression of broadcasting began pouring out from within TBS, Mayor Oh said, “I never said that the liberal arts program would be removed, but I criticized it on the premise that the liberal arts program would be removed.” “It seems that a thief is numb. I think that there can be a liberal arts program even if it is an educational broadcast. Did you decide to change it yourself? After sufficient discussion in the city council, we decided to change our position,” he said.
Previously, internal members such as the TBS Journalists Association, the PD Association, the Announcers Association, the Broadcast Engineers Association, and the Korea Broadcasting Cinematographers Association issued a statement on the 16th of last month and protested that it was a ‘spectre of the 5th Republic’. When Mayor Oh Se-hoon remarked that ‘TBS can be used as a publicity tool, but they are giving up on it and switching the broadcasting function’, they said, “I can’t stop laughing.” Candidate Oh Se-hoon really doesn’t know that?” he asked. They urged Mayor Oh to “immediately stop taking over public broadcasters and oppressing the media, which are reminiscent of the military dictatorship,” and “We declare full resistance.”
As the result of the local elections, the people’s power occupied a majority of the seats in the Seoul City Council, so the political environment was secured in which Mayor Oh and the city council might forcefully change the TBS function or cut the budget if they wished. However, if pushed forward, it will not be able to avoid harsh criticism of broadcasting suppression, and it will have to bear the political burden of being branded as a politician who first suppressed the press under the Yun Seok-yeol administration.
Separately, it is pointed out that a thorough verification should be done at this opportunity to determine whether internal members are struggling hard enough to resist external criticism regarding the fairness of TBS’s representative program, Kim Eo-jun’s News Factory. It is also controversial that ‘Kim Eo-Jun’s Thoughts’, which has shown a pro-Lee Jae-Myeong anti-Yoon Seok-Yeol tone, or that the host said ‘I need to help Lee Jae-Myeong’ on a popular YouTube broadcast (Das Voyder) that he runs.
