A sinister frame on fake news

Free press is the pillar of democracy.

The New York Times has recently devoted the front page to Korean news. On its international edition published on Monday, it carried an article titled “South Korea Targets’ Fake News,’ but Journalists Fear Censorship” to highlight the governing front’s all-out war with news outlets spreading what it calls “fake news.”

The NYT claimed that since President Yoon Suk Yeol was elected in May last year, the police and the prosecution have regularly raided the homes and newsrooms of journalists accused of writing and spreading fake news. The paper noted that “authorities have rarely taken such measures since South Korea democratized in the 1990s” and that the president, a former prosecutor, is turning to lawsuits, state regulators, and criminal investigations to “clamp down on speech he calls ‘disinformation.’”

The NYT pointed to People Power Party (PPP) leader Kim Gi-hyeon, who demanded a death sentence for a case of “high treason,” and to the foreign ministry that sued MBC reporters for the so-called hot-mic clip of the president in New York. “It is dangerous to leave it to the government to determine what is fake news,” the paper quoted a journalism professor at Sookmyung Women’s University. The Korea Communications Standards Commission has launched a center devoted to eradicating fake news.

Fake news deliberately manipulating and spinning news is a serious crime that should be rooted out. But framing misinformation as fake news and a rush of lawsuits and raids can dampen investigative journalism. On a visit to Seoul last month, former NYT Company Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. raised questions over the use of the term “fake news” during his lecture at Seoul National University. He defined the term “fake news” as being “insidious,” as “the history of fabricated news originated from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.”

Free press is the pillar of democracy. The media keeping watch and checking on the sitting power can prevent corruption. Both liberal and conservative governments in Korea tried to muffle media organizations critical of them. The NYT noted the former liberal government tried to enact a law that would allow high penalties for spreading fake news by calling them “public enemy,” although the attempt failed.

The concerns raised by a foreign media outlet call for our soul-searching. Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung mentioned the NYT article to claim that the revisions to the Broadcasting Act recently passed by the DP can correct the “undesirable perspective of the media by the Yoon administration and restore freedom of the press.” But Lee is hardly a person who can talk of freedom of speech because the revisions were railroaded by the majority party to build a broadcasting environment in favor of the party. Soul-searching and self-correction are demanded from the DP, too.