On the 7th, I was shocked to hear the ruling party leader talk about the “death penalty” in response to Newstapa’s report on Kim Man-bae’s audio file. Just a few days ago, after hearing a report that the Minister of Justice had ordered correctional institutions across the country to inspect execution facilities, I thought, ‘No way.’ Even when I thought about it myself, I laughed at the unreasonable connection, but it was not an exaggeration to feel ‘fear’ at first glance at the ruling party’s offensive against Newstapa.
It wasn’t until a few days ago that I remembered the old saying, ‘Even the devil can catch a person’. This is after looking at the ‘Plan to eradicate fake news’ announced by the Korea Communications Commission on the 18th. The Korea Communications Commission revealed its plan to promote the ‘one-strike out system’ and further said that it would review measures to “recover economic profits from fake news and prevent so-called switching, where business operators who have been subject to the one-strike out system reactivate in other media.” In short, once you are outed for fake news, you will never be able to set foot on ‘this floor’ again. Isn’t this a ‘death penalty’ sentence for journalistic activities? Indeed, CEO Kim Ki-hyun’s words were not empty words.
In that case, why not just stop writing and publishing fake news? It’s not that simple. “The definition or criteria for identifying fake news are unclear.” These are none other than the words of the head of the ‘Fake News Eradication Task Force’ of the Korea Communications Commission . They are unable to clearly explain what they are trying to ‘eradicate’. Of course. Although there is a widely accepted view in academia regarding fake news, it is not a clearly agreed upon concept. This is because “fake news is closer to a competing discourse rather than a universal concept” (Lee Jeong-hyeon and Park So-young, 2023). This is why the argument that the expression ‘fake news’ itself should be avoided or used cautiously has gained strength.
However, the Korea Communications Standards Commission rolled up its sleeves to identify fake news, which even the Korea Communications Commission said was “not an easy task.” 메이저놀이터Lawsuits requesting correction of misinformation also take several months in court to reach a decision, but the National Defense Commission announced that it would quickly process everything from fake news review requests to emergency review in a ‘one-stop’ manner. Whether or not to review the report that has been reported, whether or not it is fake news, and whether to delete it or not are decided solely by the judgment of the review committee. In terms of a trial, everything from indictment to sentencing is taken care of. The President, the ruling party, and the opposition party each recommended three members, so the committee is clearly partisan, and since two are currently vacant, the ruling party, which has secured a numerical advantage of only one member, has come to play the role of judge of fake news. If the ‘one strike, out system’ is actually implemented, the fate of media companies will virtually be left to the decisions of the National Security Commission.
But it’s so strange. Most media outlets do not seem to take seriously the fake news measures being pushed by the Korea Communications Commission and the National Defense Commission at an alarming rate. This is contrary to the unanimous criticism that the revision of the Press Arbitration Act, which the Democratic Party of Korea pushed for during the Moon Jae-in administration, was a ‘press punitive law’. According to Big Kinds, a news big data analysis system of the Korea Press Foundation, there were 229 editorials written by newspapers related to the Press Arbitration Act from July 27 to September 29, 2021, when the National Assembly was disrupted by the Democratic Party’s forced passage of the bill. The average was 3.5 cases per day. However, since the 18th, when the Korea Communications Commission introduced countermeasures against fake news, the only newspapers that wrote related editorials were the Hankyoreh (2 articles) and the Kyunghyang Shinmun (1 article).Did they decide that they can rest assured that this measure is not included in the targets they are directly targeting? However, it is unclear who will be targeted, as the National Security Commission arbitrarily interprets laws and regulations and announced that it will expand its review to virtually all media reports, including Internet media and videos. Moreover, under this hard-line stance of the ruling party, a decline in media activities and the public’s right to know is already occurring, with the new Minister of Gender Equality and Family candidate criticizing reports of suspicions about her as ‘fake news’ and refusing to give a responsible explanation. . So it’s just a moment. ‘No way’ becomes ‘Oh no.’