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Hello. This is another educational article, meant to help fans become better at understanding how the media works and where they can go to in order to get reliable information in order to fact-check or verify reporting on an issue. The goal is to build better news literacy and a more informed fan community. (For the first article in this series, see here.)
Disclaimer:Under normal conditions, this article is not really necessary or relevant to allkpop, as this place is meant to be a fansite to share celebrity news and gossip. Accuracy and fact-checkingin reporting is not really that important for entertainment news(and some would argue that rumours, gossip and exaggeration actually create a more vibrant fandom experience). However, because of the recent criminal cases involving multiple celebrities, situations are arising which need both entertainment industry knowledge as well as in-depth knowledge of legal/political/criminal procedures. Which the allkpop staff writers may not necessarily have the training or experience to deal with. (Sort of like hiring a cheerleader to talk about sports and acrobatic techniques, but then asking them to do lawyer's work. In another language.) In these kinds of legal/criminal/political issues, it becomes important for people to trace the sources of information to get accurate interpretations of news, and so this article is being written specifically to provide people with a good picture of the media in Korea and where they can go to verify information they get from English-language fansites.
1) What's the Korean news environment like?
There are four main sources from which Koreans can get their news: online portals (similar to Yahoo! News), TV channels, traditional print newspapers, or social media. The most popular news source in Korea today are the local online portals like Naver, Daum and nate, which 84% of people in Korea use for news [1]. This is followed by 74% of people using TV for news, 29% for social media, and only 25% of people in S. Korea who use print newspapers for news in 2018 [1].
Online Portals & Translations
The majority of news you get from sites like allkpop and other entertainment blogs are translated from news found on online portals. The top three online news portals are Naver, Daum and nate, with Naver especially holding the largest market share (65%) [1]. Now it's important to recognise that these online portals are actually news aggregators - they don't write or report on news themselves, they just collect news that other people have written / reported, and put it all in one place for people to read/watch. So even though the source website cited in an English article may be Naver, the actual report may be written by a news agency such as Chosun Ilbo, Sports Chosun, Sports Seoul, or some other organization. And Naver then collects those articles and features them on its' newsfeed.
However, not every news agency can publish whatever news they want on these online portals - Naver and Daum formed a committee made up of industry reps and media associations who decide which news agencies are on the 'approved' list to be featured on their platforms, and to filter out 'clickbait' or advertising articles. [1] This in turn has led to some suspicions that the (unelected) committee is deliberately acting more in the interest of the platforms than the actual news publishers, and controlling what stories the public sees [see 2, 3 & 4 for details; not going to cover it here].
Anyway, here are the online news portals for you to check out for yourself:
Newspapers
Online portals like the above mainly draw from newspapers with articles published online. There are over 100 news agencies in Korea, some of whom publish at a national level, others only regionally. Some have daily news, others publish on a weekly or even monthly schedule. In general, however, print newspapers in Korea are struggling to convert successfully to online news, so the websites of the individual news organizations may not be the best [1]. As such, it may be hard to filter them all. I'm not going to post a comprehensive list here [see this if you want], just highlight a few more well-respected and established newspapers so that you'll recognise their names if they appear as cited sources in an article:
TV Broadcasts
Separate from written news is of course TV broadcasts. Similar to newspapers, there are a lot of different TV broadcasting channels and companies in Korea [9]. However, there are only 4 nationwide television networks: one educational network (EBS), and three general ones (KBS, MBC and SBS). Of the three general networks, KBS is the national public broadcast service funded by the government (basically Korea's equivalent of BBC in the U.K.). MBC is funded by advertisements, but owned by a non-profit NGO (The Foundation of Broadcast Culture) that was deliberately set up to separate them from KBS and government influence. SBS is owned by private corporations and funded mainly by advertising commercials. Each of the three national networks has their own news divisions: KBS news, MBC news, SBS news.
There are also a number of cable TV broadcast networks/channels which are owned by news agencies and have news broadcast programs. These include:
Lastly, there is YTN, which is aiming to be Korea's first 24-hr cable news network (similar to CNN, but not as influential).
These are only a selection of the most important and influential news channels. You can see their relative audience reach and influence in the graphs on this page. For other TV networks and news channels, see Wikipedia.
2) How can I fact-check stuff?
Seoul National University's Press Information Institute runs a website called SNU Fact Check, which serves to check and verify facts reported on the news or online posts spreading on social media. They mainly cover political news, but there's an occasional financial/criminal investigation there that involves celebrities (e.g. Who bears financial responsibility if Seungri uses YG's corporate credit card for personal prostitution expenses?)
Concluding Remarks
This brings us to the end of this article. I hope this article gives you a clearer picture of where your news comes from within South Korea, and how it gets from news agencies, to online portals or TV broadcasts, then translators, then English websites like allkpop. Hopefully, by showing the owners / agencies behind the news, you can also see and account for potential bias in the news articles you encounter, and know where they're coming from. At the very least, you should be able to recognise certain important names of companies that are involved in bringing the news to you. As usual, comments and discussions are welcome.
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