STRUGGLE FOR FAIR BROADCASTING (IN S KOREA)
Struggle for Fair Broadcasting
Media persons and announcers of the Pressmen Association and the Cameramen Association of the MBC went on strike on January 25 to denounce the chief executive for disparaging the trust of the MBC among the public and reducing it into the most unfair media organ by appointing his henchmen to the high posts. They criticized them for not even mentioning the people's struggle to disclose the irregularities of the ruling quarters and to defend the right to existence. They condemned the chief of the reporting center and the news director for resorting to distorted reporting and punishing those standing for justice. Meanwhile, the trade unionists of the MBC went also on strike on January 30 in the wake of its media persons. They stressed that they would turn the MBC, a public broadcast, to a media of public opinion, not a propaganda tool for the regime, without fail and there is only a way out; either president Kim Jae-cheol resigns or the trade union is disbanded. The United Progressive Party emphasized that it, representing the people's mindset, warmly supports and joins in the MBC unionists on the general strike against president Kim Jae-cheol. It held that it is the people who fell the biggest victim being denied to the just news due to the gagging on the MBC’s fair broadcast and the suppression of the producers of current issues and education including the Program Directors’ Notebook since Kim Jae-cheol took office. It stressed that the resignation of Kim Jae-cheol, normalization of the MBC and democratic and fair broadcast are the people's slogan. In solidarity with the MBC pressmen and unionists, the two major unions of the KBS Broadcast, the National Professors Council, the National Professors Trade Union, the Council of Academic Organizations and the Trade Union of Part-time Professors released joint statements on January 30 and February 1 demanding the resignation of president Kim In-gyu who makes a mess of the KBS through preferential appointments, improper management and unfair broadcast. The south Koreans will more vigorously struggle against the anti-democratic acts of the Lee Myung-bak group of traitors which reduced the broadcasting organs into the tools for its maintaining and control of power by preferential appointments and the suppression of progressive media persons. |