hankyoreh

By Yeo Hyeon-ho, senior staff writer

The production team of MBC’s “PD Notebook” program has emerged victorious from all of the seven civil and criminal lawsuits filed against. The suits were filed due to a report the program made about mad cow disease and alleged dangers associated with American beef.

On June 15, the Supreme Court stated that it had upheld an earlier ruling in which New Frontier Party (NFP) lawmaker Shim Jae-chul was unsuccessful in his claim seeking 500 million won (around US$430,000) in damages from PD Diary on the grounds that it distorted comments he made on the safety of US beef. Delivering its verdict, the court said the program’s report “emphasized or expressed rhetorically experts’ belief that cows with BSE are not safe even after specified risk materials have been removed, and that [such cows] were not used for food in other countries, either.”

The ruling brought an end to all of the six civil and one criminal lawsuits triggered by the report. On September 2 last year, the Supreme Court upheld a ruling that had declared producer Cho Neung-hee and four other members of PD Diary‘s production team not guilty after they were indicted on charges of libeling former Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries minister Chung Woon-chun. In its ruling, the court indirectly criticized prosecutors for making unreasonable indictments, saying, “It is necessary to exercise caution when punishing media figures on charges of defaming the character of a public official for his or her policy decisions.”

A lawsuit filed by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MIFAFF) against MBC to demand a correction and the broadcast of material making contrary arguments was sent back to Seoul High Court when the Supreme Court overturned it. On December 1 2011, the case ended in defeat for the MIFAFF. A claim for 2.4 billion won (US$20.6 million) in damages filed by the group “Lawyers for Citizens” on behalf of a coalition of members of the public, had its original ruling of defeat for the plaintiffs upheld on May 10. Three other lawsuits, including one filed by US beef importer A-Meat against PD Notebook and actor Kim Min-seon, were withdrawn in the mean time.

The PD Notebook incident was triggered when the Korean government decided to restart imports of American beef in 2008. Public anger over the risk of mad cow disease brought thousands of citizens out to protest the decision by the then-new Lee Myung-bak administration. The government and pro-government media diverted the focus of the matter to make PD Diary look to be the culprit. An absurd scene developed whereby the government tried to shift responsibility for its decision onto the media.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that although the PD Notebook report did contain some untrue material, such as the case of Aretha Vinson, whose death was found much later on not to have been due to BSE, it was a timely warning of the problems left by the government’s hasty negotiations and the dangers of BSE-infected beef. Its victory in all five lawsuits brought against it to claim a total of 4.3 billion won (US$36.9 million) in damages, not only by Shim but also by beef importers, at once confirms the validity of the report and can be regarded as proof that the government and prosecutors’ claims were unreasonable.

After hearing the ruling on June 15, Cho sent out an emotional tweet, saying, “We’ve won all our cases after four years and two months. Now it’s our turn to file lawsuits. We will hold to account [those guilty of] media manipulation, reports [in some media] that have ignored media codes of conduct, and acts that have demolished constitutional order.”

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