By Kim Ki-tae
Staff Reporter


The recent incident of indecent exposure on a live music program on MBC has brought different reactions from newspapers, with conservative dailies heavily criticizing the broadcaster and moderate media remaining cautious on the issue.

The contrasting reports seem to have sensitive political rings to them, regardless of the dispute over the sensationalism itself, as the media circle has been a hotbed of political and ideological confrontation for the last few years.

All the diverging reports came after two musicians suddenly exposed their private parts while performing on MBC’s ``Music Camp’’ on Saturday. The scene was broadcast for four seconds.

The Chosun Ilbo, the biggest conservative daily, made the story one of its top headlines Monday and questioned MBC’s responsibility for the incident. Yesterday, it again criticized terrestrial broadcasters on its front page and all of page 3 with the headline, ``Uncontrolled Broadcasting, Nobody Responsible for It.’’

The daily went further by citing another case of what it views as indecent broadcasting. On Monday, its homepage put up an article criticizing MBC’s radio disc jockey Shin Hae-chul as its second top story. Shin is known to have sarcastically compared ``skewering and cooking a dog’’ to raising a genetically modified canine breed which is small enough to be carried in a cup.

Another conservative daily, the Donga-A Ilbo Daily, was more adamant in lashing out at the broadcaster. With the headline ``Wanting to Turn off Terrestrial Channels’’ on Monday, the daily insisted that the gate-keeping ability of broadcasters KBS and MBC have virtually collapsed. It devoted almost half of the day’s second page to covering the incident of exhibitionism. It also reported a related story the same day on its third page.

The conservative papers’ all-out criticism shows a stark contrast with that of progressives such as The Hankyoreh, which reported the incident on its ninth page in a single article on Monday only. Its title was ``Incident Feared to Distort Image of Independent Music Culture.’’

Meanwhile, the JoongAng Ilbo, one of the three major conservative papers, remained cautious. It reported the incident only on the 10th page on Monday. The daily’s former head, Hong Seok-hyun, now Korean Ambassador to the United States, recently tendered his resignation after MBC reported his alleged illegal involvement in the presidential election in 1997.

Other relatively neutral dailies, the Hankook Ilbo and the Kyunghyang Daily News, raised the issue of sensationalism on televised entertainment programs, but did not target the broadcasters’ gate-keeping processes.

A civic group called Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic Media on Monday issued a statement and suggested that the broadcasters overhaul the reviewing system to prevent recurrence of the undesirable incident. It also warned that a few newspapers should not exaggerate the fault of the broadcaster, calling the papers’ criticism ``mere mudslinging.’’

Shin Tae-seob, a professor of Dong-Eui University, said that the case of indecent exposure is deplorable but has little to do with the gate-keeping procedures of the broadcasters. ``The broadcasting firms need to refine their reviewing system to prevent the recurrence of such incidents. But some newspapers seem to go too far in criticizing the broadcasters,’’ Shin said.

kkt@koreatimes.co.kr