Platform and content competitiveness is key

Public broadcasters must be returned to the public. They have lost public confidence for their political bias and lopsided reporting.

The National Assembly has finished a confirmation hearing for Lee Dong-kwan who was nominated to head the mighty Korea Communications Commission. Opposition parties grilled him over the charges about his overbearing ways to control public broadcasters while serving as a senior presidential secretary for former conservative president Lee Myung-bak and over allegations about his son’s school bullying history.

Lee strongly denied the allegations. The hearing ended without much revelation since it lacked witnesses due to disagreements over the list. The rivalling parties widely differ in their evaluation on Lee’s nomination.

If the legislature misses the 21-day deadline to submit their bipartisan judgment on him, President Yoon Suk Yeol can set a new deadline within the following 10 days. If the legislature fails to provide its evaluation by the new date, the president can execute the appointment. The governing People Power Party thinks the appointment should proceed even without legislative approval. If so, Lee would make the 16th ministerial-level official to take office without legislative approval.

During the hearing, Lee vowed to redefine fairness and the public role of the media in response to the digital age. He promised to reform public broadcasters to raise transparency and objectivity in their funding so that they can fulfill their role in society. He pledged deregulation to meet the convergence environment and support a sustained growth of digital media.

Public broadcasters must be returned to the public. They have lost public confidence for their political bias and lopsided reporting. More than half of the regular employees at KBS earn more than 100 million won ($74,460) a year — and 30 percent of them pack that much money even without any official role.

The terrestrial broadcaster sought to raise fees without any efforts to reform the negligent management and invited censure from authorities to lose the fee bundled with utility bills. Media organizations can be sustained only when public broadcasters focus on their public role while private broadcasters specialize in commercial business.

Global media giants like Netflix and YouTube are expanding beyond borders and language barriers. The Broadcasting Act of 2000 cannot ensure the competitiveness of Korean content and platforms.

The law must be able to feed benign cycles where local players can expand content and consolidate to compete better with global counterparts. Whether mobile giants like Naver and Kakao are doing their social roles tantamount to their influence also needs examination.

Lee would have to proactively answer the allegations around him. If he has no intention of influencing or interfering with broadcasters, he must prove it with action. Politicians also must not lose the timing to build an innovative media ecosystem after adhering to partisan interest ahead of the parliamentary elections next year.