Headlines and Journalistic Integrity
As I said last November about an article headlined “Iraqis Oppose ROK Troop Dispatch”: ” While this headline is technically accurate, in that two or more Iraqis are opposed to ROK Troop Dispatch, it is nothing short of misleading, as are most headlines in Korea’s English-language media. You constantly see headlines such as “Korean Government to do … ,” but after reading the article, you realize that the headline should have actually said, “Korean Government briefly mentioned the possibility of maybe one day considering whether or not it might be useful to give some thought to looking further into the matter of deciding whether or not they should try to do …” Whoever wrote the headline to this article should be ashamed of themselves. Clearly, the headline is misleading at best and an outright lie in an attempt to deceive at worst.”
A week or so ago, there was a big flap around the country about the president of Harvard University allegedly saying that “all girls in Seoul in 1970s were prostitutes”. I read the related article on Daum and was disgusted by how utterly wrong and misleading the headline was. Of course he didn’t say that. I was going to say something about it earlier, but that was right in the middle of my ultra-busy period. It looks as though I was beaten to the punch by a Korean, Joshua Park, who seems to feel the same as I do about the headline, accompanying article, and Korean journalism in general. In the “Crimson Report” in the Korea Times, Park says:
Last Friday, July 9, as I was browsing through the day’s news on Daum, I was met with a shocking news headline. It blared: “Harvard University President: `All girls in Seoul during the 1970s were prostitutes.’ ” Half-doubting its validity and cursing myself for perhaps falling for more “click”-inducing sensationalism, I clicked on the link for the story.
I was momentarily taken aback. A cynical, skeptical Korean. In a country where far too many people place such an irrational reliance and trust in the veracity of the media that they believe the headlines and don’t bother even reading the article (Forget about critically analyzing the article), this was a breath of fresh air. He knew before he clicked on the article that he probably wouldn’t like what he saw.
Of course, I was not very surprised to find that Larry Summers had not actually uttered the words found within quotes in the title _ I have learned from several personal experiences that some Korean reporters are rather liberal with the use of quotation marks.
Several years ago, I ceased having anything to do with Korean media because of my bad experiences with having television segments selectively edited and my newspaper qutations either heavily altered or completely invented. I don’t know if reporters, editors, etc. are fully aware that what goes between quotation marks should be an exact quote.
His actual words, which, according to the report, were uttered during a speech at a public, official forum, were the following: “In Seoul, Korea, in 1970, it is estimated that there were close to a million child prostitutes.”
I would agree that saying a million girls were prostitutes and saying all girls in Seoul were prostitutes are quite different statements. But who wants to let such a huge difference get in the way of a good, scandalous headline.
Upon mentioning this quote, the reporter proceeded to rant about his disappointment over the ignorance that Summers showed about Korea. According to the reporter’s estimates, the total number of teenage girls in Seoul during the 1970s could not have been much more than a million _ therefore, Summers’ words could be interpreted as meaning that all girls in Seoul during the 1970s were prostitutes. The reporter also mentioned that child prostitution is a recent phenomenon and was very rare in the 1970s. The reporter then went on to lament how no one in the audience at this public forum spoke up and called Summers on his mischaracterization of Korea.
This is another problem that I have with Korean newspapers. There is a distinct lack of straight reporting on the facts of a story. Far too often the article reads like and editorial, opinion, or advertisment rather than a straight news story. I don’t care about the opinions of the reporter. Save it for the editorial. I just want the cold, bare, facts as best they are understood.
There were several problems with this report. First, the context under which the statements were uttered was unclear. The report merely stated that it was a “public” or “official” occasion on July 1, and failed to mention where and to whom the address was given. Second, the accuracy of the reporter’s statistics and reasoning was questionable. The reporter did not mention where his own estimate of the population of female children in Seoul during the 1970s came from, nor did he mention any supporting documents for his assertion that child prostitution was rarer then than now. It seemed as though the entire article was based on the assumption that Summers had uttered the words with the intentional meaning that all girls at that time, which would include many of our mothers and sisters, were prostitutes. Because without this assumption, Summers’ statement could just be passed over as a simple mistake, rather than an insult to the nation. After seeing the article was from an offbeat Internet news portal (dkbnews.com) and that the reporter himself was not even identified with a real name (choosing to use the ID “Winter Vagabond” instead), I initially dismissed this report as nothing more than a cheap tabloid article, sure that it would hardly receive any serious attention.
This is what passes for journalism in Korea today. There is no elaborate deception involved here. It is quite simply bias run amok in an editor-free environment. Statements taken out of context, refuting statements with even more dubious statements, and irrational extrapolation of meaning are all elements that can be found too easily in the media. Combine this with the fact that it comes from a dodgey news “agency” and from a reporter hiding behind an anonymous ID, and you have a complete waste of time and effort spent reading the garbage.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. As I said, there is very little critical analysis of headlines and news stories here. Shame on you in Korean and anywhere else in the world if you accept any news story at face value without bothering to at least find another source. Park goes on to discuss another huge social problem, the knee-jerk, over-reaction of the government and ordinary citizens. As I have said many times, any little comment about Korea and its problems by an outsider is immediately viewed as an attack on the Korean psyche and the nations pride. Protests, internet attacks, petitions, apology demands and the like begin flying around.
But boy, was I wrong _ not about the article’s worth but about the response that it would generate. Soon, the three major Korean newspapers had reported on the issue. Then, Kim Gun-tae, minister of health and public welfare, chimed in, formally expressing his disappointment and regret over Summers’ statements published in the news report. “Netizens” were outraged, viewing it as a personal and national insult, and movements to send letters of protest to the president’s office were being organized. This prompted me to look further into the issue. I was more than a little disappointed that none of the major news bureaus nor the government official had bothered to do any additional, independent investigation into the issue to clarify the matter, and even though newspapers, weekly journals, and Internet Web sites were littered with reports and comments on the issue, they were all nothing more than restatements of the original report and personal interpretations of it. So I sent an email to the president’s office for clarification on the issue, and I received an immediate response.
Rather than a single person in the entire country taking 5 minutes to check a single fact you have a story from a completely unreliable source under a bogus headling spreading like wildfire across the country. It gets picked up by other news outlets, government officals, NGO’s etc. who do not simply parrot the erroneous details, but they, in turn, interpret and expand on the flawed information.
So what did happen?
It turns out that the speech was not given at a “public” or “official” forum after all. Larry Summers had spoken at an internal event on July 1 to welcome Harvard Summer School students, a non-selective program open to high school students who wish to get a sample of Harvard education. Summers gave short welcoming remarks at the event, and his speech was not published. Furthermore, the office issued an apology as soon as it realized the mistake, on Friday, July 9. The apology was as follows:
“President Summers acknowledges that he misremembered a statistic outlining the numbers of child prostitutes in Seoul in 1970 in his remarks to Harvard Summer School students, July 1. He had intended to illustrate the comparatively rapid progress made in lowering the number of child prostitutes over a generation. He would like to apologize for any offence caused.”
Much less dramatic that reported. And the apology was issued immediately.
I found it incredibly refreshing that a Korean took the initiative of questioning the media and taking the time to do a little investigating on his own. I was equally impressed to see Park take the Korean media to task for their negligence and even to raise the issue of the possibility that the story, headline, and suppression of the apology may have been a deliberate attempt to stir up controversy.
A few points to mention, the first being the irresponsibility of Korean news bureaus on the matter. Any one of them could have easily contacted the office and received an explanation that would have made their stories more accurate, but they chose to merely parrot the words from an offbeat report. The speech was at an internal gathering, not during a public conference, and the spirit of the message was not to insinuate that all Korean girls during the ’70s were prostitutes. It was merely to illustrate what kind of benefits economic developments can have on a society. The failure of the Korean media to look into the issue is inexcusable.
Or perhaps it was not mere negligence. The apology was issued on July 9, the same day that I had read the initial report on the matter. That was two days before the news bureaus reported on Minister Kim’s statement of protest, two days before JoongAng Daily’s New York branch reported that they received this apology via fax, and three days before news of the apology was made known to the Korean public. What if these news services had shown some initiative and looked into the matter on their own? They could have easily discovered that an apology had already been issued and much of this public uproar could have been clipped in the bud. Or did they want to stir the pot of the Korean public mind?
President Summers made a misstatement. It may be argued that a man of his stature should be careful with his words regardless of the situation. However, as one proverb states, “the tongue, not one of mankind can get it tamed.” And in this case, Summers’ tongue, or his memory, failed him. But the transgression committed by the Korean media in this case is something much worse. Whether their action (or inaction) was due to negligence or was calculated, it caused much unnecessary bad blood and infighting among the public. I believe it’s time for an apology _ not from President Summers but from the media to the public for its failure to do its job right.
As I finished the article, the big questions of who is Joshua Park and why is he so different than most other consumers who shamble through news sucking up everything like a mind-numbed robot were answered. I saw his email address:
joshuapark@post.harvard.edu
Oh… That explains it. Now, rather than submitting his critique to an English-language paper with such a limited readership, he should forward it to every media outlet and government official that he knows repeated this garbage.