In Korea, many journalists are being criticized for writing about this issue based on emotion. Normally in "breaking news" format, provocative headlines and articles are delivered. "Everything Went Wrong from A to Z" Most article mention what happened in two hours but only interviewed one sided party. For example, if the article is about 119 (911) person who first answered the call from the passenger, it says how a student called 119 to report about the ferry sinking, but the police kept asking longitude and latitude. After sharing the transcribe of the conversation between the two, the article ends like this: The cop said he THOUGHT the caller was a captain. If the cop asked for the name of this ferry, since this student was the very first one to call the police, it would have given extra 6 minutes to save these kids. -the end-
Before I took this class, the article like this didn't bother me, but now I understand why this class has thought me to interview at least three sources. Articles like that are outraging the Koreans. We fired three ministers (including a house representative) in a week due to this accident. One was eating cup noodles at the scene. The other one was trying to take a picture with public officials at the scene. The other didn't show up immediately after the ferry sank. I mean, I don't get to hear why the minister ate cup noodle at the rescue scene, I don't get to know why that minister showed up late, it is all about if this person sent the aids when, then the ferry wouldn't have sunk, and if this minister took in charge from the beginning, then the rescuers would have tied the inner ropes to buy more time....etc. Chosun Daily- nation's no. one newspaper- mentioned yesterday, the reporters are being provocative, please report about this issue based on facts, not on emotion, and from one sided point of view. Many Koreans read news articles (streaming news articles on naver.com) so many young people click the news by intriguing headlines. Many online news media are uploading articles on naver.com and they are all about click numbers. This somewhat relates to the class reading "Online witch hunt for Boston bomber leads to NY Post cover photo of innocent 'suspects'.
Clair, this back story on the news reporting added another dimension I was not aware of. I'm sure it felt deeply disrespectful to have a minister eating noodles at the scene where so many young people died. A deep tragedy and loss for Koreans.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting. This is very sad. The minister eating noodles at the scene is completely unacceptable.
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