Neutrality is key to broadcaster reform

Given that the problem originates from their partisan broadcast and complacent management, their reform cannot be delayed any longer.

In his inaugural ceremony Monday, Lee Dong-kwan, new chairman of the mighty Korea Communications Commission, pledged a fundamental reform of public broadcasters. Pointing to their perennial “political bias and spreading of fake news,” he underscored the need for a massive revamp of their services and manpower to put public broadcasting back on track. Given that the problem originates from their partisan broadcast and complacent management, their reform cannot be delayed any longer.

The question is the direction of reform. Korea’s public broadcasters are infamous for parachute appointments and biased broadcasting, not to mention a heated internal battle whenever a new administration is launched. An ideological division between reporters also reached its limits. Politicians were no exception. When they lost power, they sang of political independence for public broadcasting. But once they took power, they were bent on pressuring public broadcasters to represent their own interest.

The practice of filling major posts of public broadcasters, including executives, with their allies must be ended. The Democratic Party submitted a revision to the Broadcast Act directly to the plenary session of the legislature to change the governance system of public broadcasters in its favor. After sitting on its hands for a while, the majority party is desperately trying to fill them with their allies in the broadcast field after it was defeated in last year’s presidential election.

In 2009, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy nominated a figure, supported by both parties, as head of the public broadcaster. But he already changed the appointment process from the appointment by the broadcasting commission to the appointment by the president, followed by a hearing at the legislature. But the opposition camp and the union of the public broadcaster vehemently opposed it after finding fault with the president appointing the head of a public broadcaster. This episode shows that political circles must not attempt to control the public broadcasters if they really want to reform the sector.

Another problem is that there are too many public broadcasters in Korea, including terrestrial broadcasters like KBS, EBS, MBC and cable news channels like YTN, Yonhap News TV, KTV, NATV, TBS, Arirang TV, and Defense Media Agency. Most of them, except for KBS, need to be privatized. Other advanced countries have only one public broadcaster — BBC and NHK, for instance — with international competitiveness.

The government must privatize most of the public broadcasters so that they can be evaluated by the audience. At the same time, a CEO with expertise in management must serve as head of KBS, as seen in the case of NHK, to reshape the public broadcaster and gain future competitiveness.