Announcement of the results of the three-month survey… Warning map
In the first half of the year, the scale of field surveys by branch offices was expanded.
If the recommendation is not fulfilled, the use of the association’s certification is discontinued.
In addition, members of the Democratic Party’s Media and Media Win-Win Task Force (TF) are holding a press conference at the National Assembly on the morning of the 11th on the suspicion of inflating newspapers. The committee members announced plans to reform the incidental certification system by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and urged a thorough investigation and collection of unfair receipts such as state subsidies. Joint coverage photo
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Ministry of Culture and Tourism), which investigated the suspicion of’inflating newspapers’, said, “We confirmed a significant difference between the oil price rate announced by the ABC Association of Korea and the actual oil price rate. It was unclear,” he advised the Korea Aviation Association to take full improvement measures by June. The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism said, “If (the association) does not implement the recommendations, it may take additional measures, such as stopping the use of (association’s incidental certification) for government policies (advertising and funding),” and willing to innovate the incidental certification system. Showed off. The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism is also planning to expand the scale of the newspaper bureau’s field investigation and conduct additional field inspections by the first half of the year.
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On the 16th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced the results of the association’s office examination. The association is a non-profit corporation that officially certifies the publication and paid copies of paper newspapers and magazines. In November of last year, an association whistleblower filed a complaint with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the competent authority, “Please investigate the misconduct that occurred during the construction process.” Accordingly, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism conducted office inspections on the contents of the complaint and overall construction work with five experts in the media and media fields for three months from the end of November. Currently, the Government Advertising Act and Regional Newspaper Act stipulate that media that have been certified by the Association must be selected and supported in priority, so the necessity of a clerical inspection has emerged, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, as well as analyzing the data submitted by the association, conducted on-site inspections of 12 newspapers across the country in January and February. This is the first time that the government has conducted an on-site inspection by a branch office. When the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism researched through branch office data and interviews, the number was much lower than the sincerity rate announced by the association (the ratio of the actual paid copies to the paid copies reported by the newspaper). The average sincerity rate of three newspapers in 12 offices surveyed by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism was 55.37%, which was a big difference from the average of 91.90% for the three newspapers announced by the Association in 2020. Since the sincerity rate is used to derive the final number of copies of the newspaper, the rate of oil price (the number of copies of oil price compared to the number of copies issued) also showed a large difference in the estimates according to the association’s announcement and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Regarding the occurrence of such a’poor construction’, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism issued a’warning for the head of the organization’ to the chairman of the association and recommended eight measures to improve the system for the overall incidental work. The recommendations included a comprehensive improvement of the subsidiary construction process, including the method of reporting incidental newspapers, the method of selecting sample offices, the method of distributing construction workers, and the improvement of the bureau’s due diligence method, and improvement of the governance structure related to the election of the association’s president and director. By Kim Hyo-sil, staff reporter [email protected]
ABC Association’s’predicted insolvency’… At least 30% of the newspaper’s average paid copies are likely to bubble
[문체부 사무검사 결과 보니]
Problems detected at each stage of construction of the ABC Association
Separate management of quarterly reports for some newspapers
Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, on-site survey for sample expansion until June
According to the results of the office inspection by the Korea ABC Association released on the 16th by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the’inflating newspapers’ was closely related to the overall process of the association’s poor and opaque incidental work (due due diligence). The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism conducted a clerical inspection on the entire process of’reporting the association of newspapers → selection and notification of the association’s sample offices and assignment of construction workers → construction of the sample offices → recognition of newspaper companies’ correction data and operation of the certification committee’. As a result, problems were discovered at each stage. There are 8 recommendations by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, but they reach 17 items in detail. For example, according to the association’s regulations, all newspapers report the number of monthly copies of all offices to the association by visit or mail in principle, but some newspapers report it by e-mail to the association’s manager and receive separate management. In addition, since the association cannot investigate all of the offices, it selects some offices and conducts due diligence, but there are no records to determine whether the process of selecting sample offices is actually random. The selection and replacement of sample stations were carried out by one employee alone without an observer. The evidence of paid incidental data is only checked by the construction worker at the site of the branch office, and post-verification is difficult because the data are not properly stored in the name of’protecting personal information’. The certification committee, which finalizes the number of copies, was found to have ceased to operate in a formal manner since there was no case of withholding certification or deciding to re-certify once from 2015 to the present. Although it was not properly revealed in this investigation, some of the circumstances of collusion with the association and newspapers were also glimpsed. According to an interview with a branch director of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the newspaper staff directly corrected (changed) and managed the data related to the evidence of paid copies before the association came out to the branch office for construction, and the newspaper staff kept the site on the day of construction. There has also been a case in which the newspaper filed an objection to the result of the incidental construction and accepted the resubmission of the data that was confirmed as’not allowed to accept paid copies’ as paid copies without additional evidence. In addition, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism directly captured the situation of’breaking up’ through on-site inspection. The sincerity rate of branch offices announced by the Association in 2020 was 98.09% for a newspaper company, 94.68% for b newspaper company, and 82.92% for c newspaper company. . Based on this, the oil price rate for the total number of newspapers was only 67.24% for a newspaper company, 58.44% for a newspaper company, and 56.05% for a newspaper company. This means that the number of paid copies of the newspapers published by the association may have been inflated by at least 30%. The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism emphasized that “even if considering the limitations of the office inspection, the results are sufficiently meaningful to estimate the insolvency of the subsidiary construction process and derive system improvements, but due to the limitations of the sample, it is difficult to generalize to the situation of all newspaper offices” Announced an investigation plan. It is said that a joint investigation team will be formed with associations, experts, and other related organizations such as the Korea Press Promotion Foundation to conduct a survey targeting 30 to 50 offices nationwide by June. After the announcement of the results of the survey by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the association issued an opinion statement, saying, “We will do our best to prepare the recommendations of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. You have to get it. Please review carefully.” However, the controversy over the issue of’breaking up’ is expected to continue. The former secretary general of the association, Park Yong-hak, who filed a complaint with the Ministry of Culture in November last year, is expected to sue Lee Seong-jun, chairman of the association and 12 employees for dismissal and obstruction. On the same day, Democratic Party Rep. Kim Seung-won also announced that he plans to prosecute the association and others for violations of the Subsidy Management Act and the Fair Trade Act. By Kim Hyo-sil, staff reporter [email protected]
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced on the 16th that the oil price rate of newspaper publishers was exaggerated as a result of an office inspection by the Korea ABC Association, which is an accrediting agency for newspapers. The Hankyoreh Newspaper, a member of the association, cannot avoid pointing out that it has inflated the number of certified copies of paid copies. We apologize to our readers. The association’s certification standards for paid copies were very loose, such as acknowledging paid copies if more than half of the list price was received. In light of the general standard of paying the full price, the Hankyoreh was not honest. The association’s due diligence procedure was also not rigorous. The Hankyoreh will take the initiative in internal innovation that enhances the transparency of the number of shipments on its own. Since last year, the number of shipments has been drastically reduced to match the number of paid copies of the branch offices, and this year, we will further accelerate measures to restore trust. We will actively cooperate in improving the system to correct the structural problems of the ABC Association’s secondary certification.