hankyoreh

July 24.

The Democratic Party announced the results of a public opinion survey Friday revealing that seven out of ten citizens are against the media bills passed by the Grand National Party (GNP) during July’s extraordinary session of the National Assembly.

A telephone survey of 1,000 adults conducted by the DP’s Institute for Democracy and Policies using auto dialer software shows that some 68.6 percent of respondents hold a negative view of the GNP's railroading of the Press Law and Broadcasting Law revision bills. According to the survey, 11.7 percent believe it was “wrong in general” and 56.9 percent believe it "very wrong." Positive opinions about the media legislation as “good” and “very good” accounts for 25.2 percent of responses. This survey has a sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, with a confidence level of 95 percent.

On the item questioning the respondents’ belief in the validity of the media law revisions, 69.4 percent of respondents chose the answer, “Serious procedural flaws, including implementing a second vote and conducting proxy voting in the balloting process, fundamentally invalidates the bills.” Only 23.3 percent said the passage of the legislation was valid.

When asked to select what they believed was the rationale behind the GNP's decision to pass the media legislation, 62 percent answered “in order to pave the way for the preservation and long-term seizure of power by dominating public opinion and taking control of broadcasting.” In contrast, 25.1 percent answered in accordance with government and ruling party claims that the passage of the bills is meant “to improve media industry competitiveness and create jobs.”

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