hankyoreh

The Federation of Korean Industries and other business organizations are volunteering to be a fighter against Koreans online who are pressuring advertisers in the Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and DongA Ilbo. The ruling Grand National Party is joining in the counterattack, working hard to help these three papers.

The three conservative newpapers are the media outlets and leaders of the big companies and the GNP. While you can sympathize with wanting to help them out in difficult times, that is not only the wrong way to go about things, it is also foolish to hurt their own positions.

One of FKI’s vice presidents, in a DongA Ilbo interview yesterday, said pressuring advertisers “is about upsetting the basis of the market economy.” What he does not get is that the market has shifted. The market is no longer a seller’s market; it is a buyer’s market, a market where consumers are at the center.

“Companies advertise when they need to. It makes no sense to tell them whether to advertise or not,” he went on to say. However, before going on like that he should first consider why consumers are going online and calling on specific advertisers to stop advertising with certain papers. Companies may protest, demanding to know how such pressure is a consumers’ movement, but the horizons of the consumer movement are gradually growing.

There is even rumor that the country’s five major business organizations are asking internet portal sites to do something to stop the calls online because these three newspapers asked them to. It is hard to have to watch business groups that are supposed to be contributing to the development of the national economy defending certain newspapers.

One thinks they may have had no choice when faced with the massive influence these three papers enjoy, but it is sad to see organizations representing our country's biggest conglomerates taking hits for newspapers.

GNP floor leader Hong Joon-pyo goes even farther. He calls pressuring advertisers a “new form of tyranny against the press,” and says he is going to come up with concrete ways to fight it. We would like to think he was just trying to impress the Chosun, DongA, and JoongAng, but if he really is thinking that way, he as a politician is thinking way back in yesteryear.

Suppressing the media is when those with state or economic power use violent methods to hurt the ability of the media to serve the public. Netizens are saying media that no longer functions in public service should be gone from our society. Pooling their small strength together to pressure advertisers is not crushing the press, it is a “press revival campaign” of sorts, one that seeks to remind people of the public functions of the media.

Instead of defending their short-term interests as far as the Chosun, DongA, and JoongAng are concerned, the country’s business organizations and the GNP should encourage these papers to follow the etiquette of the media. It would be in the best interest of all three parties.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]