[The Hankyoreh, March 18 2008] [Column] Hypocritical appointments for the broadcast media

Yun Tae-jin, Professor, Graduate School of Communication and Arts, Yonsei University

The reason children fight is simple. One kid jokingly hits another on the back of the head. The other cusses him out for a while, then sends him a fist when his anger still hasn’t disappeared. The buddy who had started playing around feels he’s been done wrong, since he got verbal abuse, and hit to boot. Now the fight gets bigger. If you really look at it, the friend who did the cursing and hitting is more at fault. If you verbally attack someone for doing something, then do just the same, isn’t that double jeopardy?

Which is why it is annoying to have the country’s so-called leaders acting like children. ...

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Does Lee’s administration have any interest in serving the public interest required of broadcasting, when it nominates a close aide to the president as Broadcasting Commission director and someone with a Ph.D. in management to be the Blue House secretary for broadcasting and communication? If Jung steps down, Lee just might appoint someone who has spent all his life in construction to be the next president of KBS. Things are off to the wrong start. The Broadcasting Commission was, from the start, supposed to be an independent government body. It was not supposed to be something the president got to name the head of. Lee said he wanted to fix problematic laws when the election was over, so I want to propose starting with the broadcasting and communications law. If that is too much to ask for, try appointing someone who makes sense. That would at least be a response that’s a little better than children fighting.