South Korea's broadcasting regulator has cut three months off the approval terms of two news channels, and it says their largest shareholders are the reason the law is not being followed
Two news channels were told in May to fix this by 31 July. Neither did, and on Friday both lost three months.
South Korea's Broadcasting, Media and Communications Commission met for the thirty first plenary session of its year and imposed a three month reduction in the approval validity period of YTN and Yonhap News TV. Both were ordered to correct breaches of article 20, paragraphs 3 and 4 of the Broadcasting Act by 10 October. The provision requires the head of a news channel to be appointed on the recommendation of a president recommendation committee. Neither company has one.
The amended Act took effect in August last year. The release describes about a year of continuous non-compliance since.
The two failures are not the same failure
At YTN, the commission says labour and management could not agree on how to constitute the committee, and the negotiation ran long without producing one.
At Yonhap News TV the process went further and then stopped. Labour and management reached agreement and the board passed an amendment to the articles of incorporation. The amendment was then voted down at the shareholders meeting by the largest shareholder and others.
The commission named the shareholders
Before voting on the sanction it heard the labour side, the management side and representatives of the largest shareholder of each company, in open session.
It then said in its own release that the largest shareholders bear the principal cause of and responsibility for the breach: Yujin ENT at YTN, where the negotiation stalled, and Yonhap News Agency at Yonhap News TV, where the amendment was rejected. It directed both to take an active and forward looking approach and to put the position right within the deadline.
That is an attribution of cause rather than a finding of wrongdoing, and no penalty was imposed on either shareholder.
Kim Jong-chul, who chairs the commission, said the Act had been amended and brought into force to improve the governance of news channels and so secure the publicness and fairness of broadcasting, and that in the field the legislation had in practice been rendered a shell. Strict enforcement against broadcasters that do not meet their legal obligations, he said, would establish what the legislation was for.
