Progress and Limitations on the New Media Public Access Movement in Korea
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Progress and Limitations on the New Media Public Access Movement in Korea 1. The "missed opportunity" and the "last opportunity" The Canadian scholar on broadcasting, Raboy, lamented (1990) that Canada's broadcasting reform policy of the transitional period from the 1980s to the early 1990s was a "missed opportunity." Policies on cable TV and other new media institutionalize their commercialization. He was in fact lamenting the fact that the Canadian policy failed the civil society from establishing democratic public broadcasting channels. The lament of the Canadian scholar is by no means a distant bell ringing in a far-away country. In Korea, the revision of the broadcasting law and the birth of the commercial broadcasting company in 1990 were preludes to privatization of the nation's broadcasting system. The result was an acceleration of the audience rate crisis for ground wave broadcasting companies including the government-supported public TV. Shortly thereafter, local private broadcasting channels, cable TV, and satellite broadcasting operators have become commercialized in some cases, and are expected to become so in the other cases (Jung, 1995). The problem is, even if the emergence of commercial broadcasting were to be accepted as a historically inevitable trend, democratic public broadcasting system, i.e. citizen representation in the media, is still necessary to prevent commercial standardization of all media, new and old. A typical case of democratic broadcasting reform was the arrival of Channel 4 in England at the recommendation of the Annan Committee (1977). It was created to fill the diversity gap left by BBC and ITV. In the case of Korea, the first "missed opportunity" of the democratic civil society was the failure in the early 1990s to compensate the arrival of the commercial broadcasting TV with alternative citizen media. The third and possibly the last opportunity for the civil society to secure democratic public broadcasting media is the upcoming licensing of satellite broadcasting operators. For the sake of strengthening the viewer rights, the new Broadcasting Law mandates the cable TV and local and public channels of the satellite-broadcasting operator to carry viewer-produced programs, and financial support for viewer production can be obtained through the Broadcasting Development Fund (BDF). This much has been achieved, thanks to the participation and struggles of the civil society in the process of the policy legislation. However, the definition of "viewer-production" is vague in the new law. Moreover, even if such productions earnestly carried citizen voices, it would not be sufficient to play the role of representing the civil society against the two giant pillars of broadcasting, i.e. the government interest in "public broadcasting" and the private business interests in commercial broadcasting. There is also a possibility that the financial support from the BDF for viewer-production and citizen organization programs will be made on arbitrary standards of the government or government agencies and carried out as mere charity acts. Therefore, the civil society must work wisely in the selection process of satellite broadcasting operators. It is possibly the last opportunity to secure citizen media. The digitalization of ground wave and cable TV programs will begin, and the cost of the transition will be great. The digital channels could very well end up in the hands of the commercial businesses. It will not be an easy task by any means for the civil society to secure its share of channels in the new media. Accordingly, this paper will deal with the establishment of a civil society broadcasting model, the establishment of relationship with the government and the businesses, and concrete strategies to secure citizen channels in the new media. 2. A "flawed meeting" between the government and the civil society The main features of the Kim Dae-jung government's broadcasting policies are the implementation of the policies through a specially appointed committee and the strengthening of viewer rights. The Broadcasting Reform Committee (1999, pp.13-24) provided the foundation for the new broadcasting law that was passed. The first task the Committee set aside for reform measures was for political independence of broadcasting operation. The committee recommended a "separation of the office of the broadcasting regulations agency from that of other government administrative departments." The new law allows the Committee to integrate with the existing cable broadcasting committee. The administration transferred all policy functions to the Committee in all but one area. The Committee is to consult the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for policy on broadcasting and image promotion. Thus the Committee is not completely independent from the administration. Viewer Rights- related articles in the new Broadcasting Law Issue Content (Article 21) 3 of the 9-committee members must be selected on the merits of their expertise and viewer representation (Article 87) Strengthen the Viewer Committee authority and recommendations from the viewer organizations Dealing with Viewer Complaints (Article 35) Set up a new Viewer Complaints Redress Committee (Article 91) Strengthen the right to request counterpoint airtime
(Article 89) General broadcasting and news broadcasting channels must allot over 60 minutes air time per week for access programs Viewer Access Programs/Channels (Article 69) KBS must include in its programming over 100 minutes of programs directly produced by viewers (Article 70) General cable TV operator or satellite broadcasting operators must broadcast viewer-produced programs through local/national channels Financial Source (Article 38) Support Viewer and Citizen organizations
The government's reform efforts have been emphasized not only in its attempt to separate broadcasting policy agency from the government political influence but also in its attempt to strengthen viewer rights. The new broadcasting law provides tools for institutionalizing viewer rights. Representative of such efforts are the legal provisions for citizen recommendations of candidates for the Committee appointment, the support for citizen organization activities, and establishment of viewer access programs/channels. In addition, the new law stipulates establishments of citizen complaints redress committee and strengthened the viewer rights to make counter arguments. KBS must provide over 100 minutes per month of airtime for viewer produced programs. General and news broadcasting channels must provide over 60 minutes per week of airtime in their channels. Also, in order to activate citizen movement, BDF can give funds to viewer produced programs or to viewer organizations. The institutionalization of the new Broadcasting Committee to guarantee broadcasting independence from political influence and to strengthen viewer right reflects the current government's will to save public broadcasting. Also the use of a public domain, such as the Committee, for making broadcasting policy decisions complies with the principle of public control, as opposed to direct government or bureaucratic control. It is also a fact that viewer rights have been strengthened significantly compared to the past. As pointed out by Yoon (1994), under the previous government of Kim Young-sam, the US-style viewer access channels were not secured during the debate on the cable TV channel local distribution policy. The two-way nature of cable TV broadcasting was therefore utilized heavily only by home shopping channels. In contrast, the current government's new media policy provides for at least an entry of the civil society into a public domain. Second, even if the ruling party made no effort to intervene in broadcasting control, the principle of general interest representation system, under which the President and the National Assembly appoint the committee member, cannot adequately meet the pluralistic demands of the civil society in the new media age. Keane points out that public regulations agencies such as the labor union and political parties have lost their representative function. Thus, the government attempt to separate public sphere from the government may result in informal control of such sphere by government power. The suspicion that the committee members had in fact been decided upon by a minister before the formal process was over, the role of the Culture and Tourism Ministry in announcing the Enforcement Act for the new broadcasting law, and the refusal of the Legislation Ministry to review the by-laws of the committee reflect the formal and informal influence of the government power regardless of the legal status of the committee. Thus, despite the government's claim to endorse politically independent broadcasting and viewer rights, such claims smack of nominalism designed to co-opt the civil society. 3. Unfinished Media Reform For media reform consideration, Curran (1991) divided market systems as follows: centrally controlled market economy, mandated market economy, regulated market economy, regulated mixed economy. He argues that a market regulation system based on public interests should follow the Polish model of the transitional period where national, commercial, and citizen media co-existed. In this model regulations on commercial broadcasting are fully lifted but fees are levied for the use of frequency bands. The government then would use this fee to support citizen media. In contrast, the Swedish model of regulated market system would ease the market entry and lower the operational cost of alternative media through a selective media subsidy system (Gustafsson, 1980). The British model of centrally controlled market economy is one in which media pluralism is achieved while maintaining the ground wave monopoly. This model is not suitable for us, since our biggest task is to break away from the ground wave monopoly of the mass media. The Dutch model of mandated market economy is one in which major social groups share broadcasting time. This model is also not suitable for us because no "pillar" groups exist for the mandate. When seen from the perspective of Curran's broadcasting market reform theory, the new broadcasting market reform policy of the government failed to change the monopoly market structure despite the full lifting of regulations on new media market sector. The Broadcasting Reform Committee recommended that KBS 2TV do away with advertisement gradually and privatize MBC step by step. This was in consideration of preventing ground wave broadcasting from being affected too heavily by the deregulation and to strengthen at the same time public interests in broadcasting. In response to the demand from some quarters that the upper limit be lowered on the percentage of company stocks the owner of SBS could own, the government's answer was to limit the amount of programs a local private operator could broadcast from any particular major TV station. Also, during its revision process the Broadcasting Law Enforcement Act stipulated that the earnings of any single broadcasting operator couldn't exceed more than 33% of the total industry revenue. Thus the ordinance briefly put pressure on KBS (38%) and MBC (over 30%) to break up. However, an exclusion clause was added, and the monopoly of ground wave broadcasting remained. In contrast to its policy on ground wave broadcasting, the government policy on new media ownership structure was fully deregulated due to market liberalization influence. The new media news channels are regulated considering its possible influence on public opinions. However, on other limited-programming channels and platform businesses, a maximum of 33% of ownership by a foreign investment, corporation, and a media business up was allowed. The ownership by any of these entities was prevented largely from channels that could monopolize public opinions such as the ground wave broadcasting and general-programming and news channels. In contrast, on cable TV and satellite broadcasting, ownership was deregulated; a combination of more than one and multiple ownership was allowed. There seems to be a general consensus on deregulation of new media industry not only in market but also in public domain. This consensus is in part a result of the past government's promise to open market. But more importantly, it reflects the trend of the changes taking place in the real world such as the technological advancement and the integration theory of globalization, satellite revolution, and the inflow in substance of foreign broadcasting through cable TV and relay broadcasting. Market Regulation Plan of the new Broadcasting Law and the Broadcasting Reform Committee Purpose Evaluation Standard Content
Evaluation Standard Content
Evaluation Standard Content
Purpose Evaluation Standard Content
Evaluation Standard Content
In the end, the new government's policy on broadcasting market brought about deregulation of new media industry, a mandate on prime-time broadcasting of independent production companies, limitation on monopoly of local private broadcasting by certain commercial stations. It achieved pluralism partially in the market structure. However, it failed to deregulate the monopoly of the ground wave broadcasting, an essential requirement for the development of film industry and market structure pluralism. We now have a market structure similar in this area to what we had before. Thus, the most important issue remaining in media reform is essentially the structural reform of the monopoly broadcasting. The new government's focus of market regulation policy is mainly on restricting medium ownership rather than on market entrance and exit. Ownership regulation is important in preventing a private corporation from monopolizing and abusing public means of communication. But there remains a possibility that ownership regulation can still leave ownership to vested interests only (Williams, 1976, pp. 131-134). The break up of the monopoly market, free competition among the commercial operators, and establishment of citizen media require a regulated mixed economy system where national, commercial, and citizen broadcasting co-exist. We also need a public regulations system that would actively regulate the overall media market. The idea of having commercial stations financially support citizen media was first put forth by Smaid in the US in 1960 as a broadcasting reform plan in the US This idea was taken up in the 1970s by Smith in England as a plan for British broadcasting reform (Smith, 1980), which was then adopted by the Annan Committee and realized through the birth of Channel 4. On the other hand in Germany, citizen media channels are realized through the 'open channels' as an extension of universal public broadcasting services. Public broadcasting companies in Germany pay up to 2% of the cable open channels receiving fees. They also support the citizen media through open channel education centers. In other words, the establishment and operation of citizen media in the US and England were achieved as a means to compensate the pollution of broadcasting environment caused by commercial broadcasting, while in Germany they were achieved as an extension of the universal public broadcasting services. 4. Seeking a Broadcasting Model for Participatory Democracy With the commercialization of cable TV and satellite broadcasting, the public broadcasting paradigm collapsed and what citizen media there were went down with it. In the 1960 - 1970's ground wave broadcasting, belonging to the public domain, and even privately owned newspapers embraced the basic notions of pluralism and emphasized the public nature of mass media. The selective media subsidy policy was carried out during this period. Considering the very nature of newspaper, minority media support policy was in principle left to the "invisible hand" of the market; but for the sake of pluralism "visible hands" intervened. In other words, even newspaper industry pursued "democracy in market." Broadcasting Model for Participatory Democracy Political Independence in Broadcasting through Participatory Democracy Publicly Regulated Market
In the age of new media, pluralistic demands of the civil society increases, and no single power, including the government, can adequately respond to the demands of the diverse interest groups. Accordingly, it is necessary to restructure the Broadcasting Committee, which belongs to the public sphere, according to the principles of participatory democracy from that of representative democracy. "Corporatist" public regulations system is a system of regulations through pluralistic participation of special interest groups. They participated in the public sphere of decision-making where important social forces directly participate. There they realize political independence and public interest through mutual check and balance. In particular the government is a powerful entity and cannot realistically be excluded from the process of establishing broadcasting policies. Thus, the aim of the civil society is not to exclude the government but to allow it to participate within its formal parameters of authority. The private sector and the civil society then keep watch over its participation and check government intervention where necessary. There is also a need for a strategy to counteract against the government attempt to co-opt civil society and interest groups. The "double democratization" strategy of Keane (1991) is useful to review here. It is a strategy where the government supports the civil society to grow; the civil society would then democratize an undemocratic government. It is one of the civil society development strategies. Considering the excessive growth of the government power and the market, and the lack of adequate means for civil society to check them, a strong civil society is the only hope for a strong government and economy and checking abnormally huge press power. We should also seek a regulated mixed economy model where ground wave broadcasting will be publicly managed and new media broadcasting privately managed; it should a model where universal services (government domain), majority services (commercial domain), and minority and local services (civil society domain) co-exist. The ground wave broadcasting should be publicly managed, because of the scarcity of the frequency band principle still holds true and its services are still provided largely on no-fee basis. On the other hand, the new media can have many channels and their services are largely on fee bases. It is therefore realistic to privatize their operation. Of course, this dual management system is a suggestion for only a transitional period until the ground wave and the new media technologies converge in full-scale, and until the new media viewer rates overtake that of the ground wave broadcasting. 5. Practical Tasks There are many tasks for the civil society to secure citizen satellite and cable TV channels. First, to the Broadcasting Committee, the civil society should demand that the Enforcement Act guarantee citizen media to become public channels and rightfully demand financial support. Second, to the satellite broadcasting operators, it should demand full support for channel fees and others. Third, internally, it has a lot of work to do before the satellite broadcasting begin next year. It should decide on a channel name, decide on business structure, and prepare a business plan for operation. As for the channel name, there are a number of possibilities: Access Channel, Citizen Channel, and Your Channel. What's important is that the sooner it's decided, the better it is. The civil society should seek to supplement its weaknesses in business planning capacity and program production capability. To do so, it should form a consortium with independent production groups that requested access channels and with the university broadcasting and film centers References Broadcasting Reform Committee, "Direction and Task of Broadcasting Reform," 1999 Broadcasting Policy 2000 Research Committee of the Korea Broadcasting Development Institute, "Changes in Broadcasting Environment in 2000 and Korean Broadcasting Policy: Broadcasting Policy 2000 Research Report" Advanced Broadcasting Policy Advisory Committee, "Report on Advanced Broadcasting Development Policy," 1994 Annan Committee, "Report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting," London:HMSO, 1977 Peqacock Committee, "Report of the Committee on the Financing the BBC," London:HMSO, 1986 Yoon, Young-cheol, "Broadcasting Policy and Crisis of Democracy: Theoretical Framework," in Onnonkwa Sahoe, Vol 6, Winter 1994 Jung, Yong-joon, "Research on the Public Interest Aspects of Korean Broadcasting Structure of the 1990s: The Government, Market, Civil Society, and Their Relation," Ph.D Dissertation, Seoul National University, 1995 _______ "The New Broadcasting Law and the Direction of the Government's New Media Policy," a presentation, 1998, at a seminar "Issues and Tasks of Korean Broadcasting after the Currency Crisis of the 1997," sponsored by Korea Association of Journalism Studies Jung, Yong-joon Digital Satellite Broadcasting and Film Software, Nanam, Seoul, 2000 Choi, Young-mook& Kim, Myung-joon & Suh, Myong-suk, eds., Theory and Practice of Citizen Participation Broadcasting, People's Coalition for Media Reform, 1999 Blumer, J., (1992). Public Broadcasting before the Commercial Deluge, Television and Public Interest, London: Sage Curran, J. (1991). Mass Media and Democracy: A Reappraisal, Curran, J. & M. Gurevitch (eds.) Mass Media and Society, London: Edward Arnold. Keane, J. (1991). The Media and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press Kellner, D. (1990). Television and the Crisis of Democracy, Westview Press. Raboy, M. (1990), Missed Opportunities: The Story of Canada's Broadcasting Poolicy. Jung Yong-jun, Professor of Communication Studies, Chonbuk University |
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