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Stop the move to control public broadcasters

Published: 29 Jul. 2024, 19:55

The fierce battle over the passage of the revisions to the four Broadcasting Acts is going overboard. The majority Democratic Party (DP) is bent on passing them to create a media environment friendly to the opposition. Whenever the government changed, ferocious fights erupted over changing the governance structure of public broadcasters in favor of the governing power. But such a perpetual war only deepens people’s fatigue. We cannot but wonder why our politicians are trying to “protect public interests” in such ways.

On Monday, the DP unilaterally passed a revision to the Act on Broadcasting Culture Promotion, the third act of the four acts. The party ended the People Power Party (PPP)’s filibuster after 31 hours and railroaded the revision with 187 votes from the DP in the 300-member legislature. National Assembly speaker Rep. Woo Won-sik, a DP lawmaker, also submitted a revision to the EBS Act. The DP plans to pass the revision in the same way. Starting with the passage last week of the revision to the Act on Establishing the National Communications Commission (NCC), the DP repeated the farcical cycle — from submitting a bill to the PPP’s filibuster to its forced ending of the filibuster to the DP’s unilateral passage — over the past six days.

The revisions are aimed to nearly double the number of board directors at KBS, MBC and EBS to 21 to allow liberal stakeholders — including broadcast journalists, producers and technical staff — to recommend candidates for the members of the NCC. The DP cites the need to “end public broadcasters’ political subjugation to the sitting power” and “ensure the freedom of the press.” But if the party is really faithful to the cause, it must explain why it didn’t revise the broadcasting acts when it was a governing party.

As an opposition in 2016, the DP did push for similar revisions, but abruptly changed its position after taking power. The party immediately replaced the heads of KBS and MBC. At that time, President Moon Jae-in even asked, “What use is there if we seat people, who only wants to keep ‘mechanical neutrality,’ as CEOs of public broadcasters?” Since then, the Broadcasting Act has been gathering dust in the legislature. But the drastic move by the DP is most likely related to the need for the party to build the ground for impeaching President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Our public broadcasters have been festered with parachute appointments, labor unions’ strikes and biased reports. Internal division also has reached a serious level. If the DP wants to prove its sincerity in pushing for the revisions, it must first stop its ill-conceived scheme. We hope the DP first talks with the PPP over effective ways to guarantee independence for public broadcasters.