Was the report on the investigation of former Justice Minister Cho Kook over last year? Was the verification report of former Minister Cho Kook and Justice Minister Chu Mi-ae justified? The voices of the supporters of the two ministers pointing out “over-investigation by the prosecution and the dictation of reporters” were loud, and the heads of the legal team of major media companies held discussions on this topic.
The discussion held at the Korea Press Center in Seoul on the day of November 3 last year was published in the Winter 2020 issue of Kwanhoon Journal (No. 157). At the time, Lee Ga-young, head of the JoongAng Ilbo social media team 1, had a discussion with Hee-gon Yoo, head of the Kyunghyang Shinmun, head of the Kookmin Ilbo’s legal team, Young-gil Jwa, head of the Herald Economics Legal Team, and Jeong-in Kim, head of the SBS legal team.
From the conclusion of the discussion, it is “rather excessive” to say that there were too many reports of investigation and verification on the two ministers. The report concludes that it was close to the right side. It is said that the interest in the two high-ranking officials was that much.
The reason why the motherland emphasized’fairness’ more than anyone else was special
SBS legal team leader Kim Jong-in emphasized the recognition of former Minister Cho and said, “The attention to Minister Cho Kuk is simply professors, Chief Min Jeong, and since there were so many remarks on social issues apart from such things, the attention was great.” “Becoming the Minister of Justice During the hearing, there was a problem with a part that was never verified. In particular, reporters started to report because there were various circumstances that could question the value of the fairness pursued by the Moon Jae-in administration.”
Team leader Kim analyzed that the problem of Cho’s daughter going to college increased the concentration of reporters. Reporters had to cover not only the National Assembly’s personnel hearings, but also their daughter’s college, and professors and academies had to cover the situation, “there was a lot of coverage.” It is an analysis that there was a peculiarity of’admissions’ in Korean society.
Kim explained that Minister Choo Mi-ae is also a member of high attention considering several factors, such as the fact that he is also a member of the Da-seon, who served as the party’s representative, and that the conflict between the Ministry of Justice and the prosecution is in full swing.
Team leader Kim said, “Minister Chu took the lead in hiring the prosecutor or the investigative officers who are conducting the investigation on him and his son. As a legal reporter, he must be faithful in verifying and reporting this part. I do.” It is an evaluation that it is an issue that cannot be determined simply by the number of reports.
Hee-gon Yoo, head of the Kyunghyang Shinmun, said, “Which was the more pervasive and serious issue that would have affected the volume of coverage,” he said. “The quality of the article is the same, and the volume of coverage cannot be controlled by us. I can’t make it a problem. This means that in a situation where the number of media companies continues to increase, the analysis should focus on quality rather than volume.
“It is difficult to deny that there were a lot of objective reports. “That’s the shame itself,” he said. “Former Minister Cho, who shared the presidential philosophy of state administration, was a candidate for the Minister of Justice who had to be more moral than anyone else. As a person who had spoken as a socially-participating intellectual became a minister of justice, noise erupted one by one and controversy grew, and the amount of verification coverage had to increase.”
Mr. Lee cited a paper and said, “From August 2019 to October, when former Minister Cho Kuk retired, the number of articles collected by keywords related to Cho is 3,3784 in all 24 media companies.” Excluding simple duplicates and too few articles, the number of articles that can be significantly debated is said to be 5,148 articles.” After explaining, “Absolutely, all media reports about former Minister Cho were mostly useless. I have a question. Much of what the media reported as suspicion is currently listed as the subject of prosecution investigation and court judgment in the judicial system.”
In fact, the Seoul Central District Court Criminal Division 25-2 (Presiding Judge Lim Jeong-yeop) sentenced to 4 years in prison and a fine of 500 million won to the spouse of Cho’s former Minister Cho’s spouse, who was handed over to trial on charges related to entrance examinations and private equity in December last year. did. Many of the media’s suspicions were acknowledged as facts.
Team leader Lee said, “If a large part of the social controversy has reached the point of judgment by the court after going through the prosecution’s investigation, the parts that some have criticized the media also need a little more calm reflection.” Next, referring to the case of Gukjeong Nongdan Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil, he said, “If a national tragedy occurred because the monitoring of power was not conducted in time, the media had a reflection that the role of checks and surveillance should be performed more properly than now.” If there is a point where the press attempts to verify a number of high-ranking officials, including many, are considered’unnecessarily many’, this may be related to the reflection of the media during the Gukjeong Nongdan incident three to four years ago.” It is interpreted as meaning that the media became more aware of the need for checks and verification of power after going through the situation of Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil.
“There is no adequate coverage”
Jwa Young-gil, head of the Herald Economics Legal Affairs Team, raised doubts about the’appropriate coverage’. “The amount of press reported is proportional to people’s interest, and it is not something that reporters can control.” “There should be a lot of articles in proportion to the error. This standard is a frame set by people who don’t want the report,” he said. “We don’t have to be bound by this.”
The team leader Zwa said, “The media can write articles even if it is not a crime.” “The representative is the association system. Since Cho’s daughter is the subject of reports, the political world insists,’Would her daughter become a minister? It is a joint system’, but media reports are not punishment. In the past, Woo Byung-woo, former Blue House Chief Min Jeong-suk’s son, received what kind of position and whether it was a preferential treatment or not, regardless of whether a crime was established, but all were reported.”
The left team leader responded to the issue of the first author of the thesis by Cho’s daughter, “It was not criminally a crime. However, it was seriously undermining the value of’fairness’, and it was actually a report of great significance in the government surrounding Minister Cho.”
The second topic of the discussion was’How far is the field of verification of candidates for the minister?’ SBS legal team leader Kim Jong-in said, “In the case of Minister Cho Kook or Chu Mi-ae, the suspicions raised had a strong influence or relevance in their work. He stressed that it is necessary to verify whether he can ideally live in public office without causing any problems,” he said. “The media coverage process is also a verification process that is as good as the hearing of the National Assembly.”
Team leader Kim said, “There may be an unfair aspect to the parties when raising the issue of the two ministers’ children,” he said. “But I think there is an inevitable part in the process of verifying public officials.” However, he suggested that “the press should clearly separate unnecessary coverage or reports about relatives or family members that are not related to public office.”
Hee-gon Yoo, head of the Kyunghyang Shinmun, said, “It is true that the Kyunghyang Shinmun treated the entrance exams honestly and passively at the time of the report by the former Minister Cho.” I thought about it and focused on that part.” “At the time, the company made that judgment, and I agreed, but after that, I had to focus on the entrance exam as well, but I regretted a little later. “Because my daughter has received scholarships for eight consecutive semesters, my son has been in the US and then came to Korea, this fact can be fragmented, but this could be a criminal offense if the candidate’s influence is exercised later.”
“The media should not be lazy to report and raise suspicions, and it should take some camp-logical criticism.”
Jwa Young-gil, head of the Herald Economics Legal Affairs Team, said, “Former Minister Cho and his family were not so common. The main thing is the private equity issue, but most public officials do not do so by selling it and investing in the private equity fund if they have stocks. I said. “But the former Minister Cho’s family left the sale to their relatives by investing in a private equity fund,” said the team leader. “It is true that the relative embezzled 7.2 billion won of money to destroy one of the KOSDAQ listed companies. What if there have been such high-ranking officials? There was not.”
The team leader Zwa said, “I thought it would be necessary to do this until I saw the material for the personnel hearing of former Minister Cho,” he said. “But looking at the data, the question of biting the tail on the tail continued, and the candidate could not answer the question properly. If Cho himself was the chief civil servant of the Blue House, he had to monitor whether high-ranking officials were properly organizing their surroundings due to the nature of the work. Rather, he had no choice but to expand the report to family issues in terms of not properly organizing the surroundings.”
Regarding the issue of Minister Chu and his son, Mr. Zwa said, “There have been continued suspicions that Minister Chu himself lied in the process of questioning the government and personnel verification. In the course of the conflict between the Ministry of Justice and the prosecution, the words of Minister Chu were also very strong. In that respect, although it was a complex problem, it would be difficult to say that the subject matter was limited to military service (son), and that the scope of verification was extended too far to the family.”
“Based on facts, we use the same standards everywhere”
Lee Ga-young, head of the JoongAng Ilbo social media team 1, said, “There is a part that I think the investigation into former Minister Cho and his family was a bit tricky. It was too urgent,” he said, “I think there is a part where the prosecution made a mistake and that is why the prosecution is experiencing difficulties now. It wasn’t because I was driven by time, but the more I did, the better I had to investigate. Of course, I thought that former Minister Cho should quit before proceeding to the investigation.”
SBS legal team leader Kim Jong-in said, “As the prosecution questioned whether the person being investigated was illegal or if there was a similar problem, a similar direction may arise from the perspective of legal reporters. However, the media should pay a lot of attention to how the prosecution’s investigation is going on, as well as the coverage of the subject of the investigation in the future. Even after this, we have to keep weighing whether the investigation was done properly without any influence.”
In other words, “regardless of which camp, left or right, progressive or conservative, and where the political party is, it is necessary for the legal reporters to constantly report with our standards while holding the same day of criticism based on facts.”
Yu Hee-gon, head of the Kyunghyang Shinmun, explained that there were no suspects who received human rights advocacy like former Minister Cho during the prosecution investigation.
“Compared to the days of former President Park Geun-hye, (Former Minister Cho) was promoted in a direction that no photos were taken, no pictures were taken, no children’s faces were disclosed, and public complaints were abolished in the process. In this process, even in the process of receiving a court warrant and executing a seizure and search warrant, fake news was intentionally created, and in this process, was there little criticism and surveillance by the media about the prosecution’s investigation? I honestly don’t see it.”
“Of course, it is a hundred and a thousand times to judge whether the prosecution is conducting a coercive investigation or whether there is a problem, but when I think about whether it is lacking in the motherland crisis, I think it is not.” “The virtue of a legal reporter is to investigate whether it is illegal or not. Whatever it is, I think it is the discovery and reporting of criminal activity. However, I think that a criminal act is possible if the facts are accumulated, rather than being determined and covered from the beginning. I believe that the facts are checked and this is piled up one by one so that the media can make legal, political, moral, and ethical judgments on this.”
“The media should avoid excessive speculation, but if the truth is 100%, the press can report at least 60-70%, and even conservatively, 80-90%,” said Yu. “We are not an investigative agency. This is because there is no such compulsory power of investigation, whether it is pursuit, call history inquiry or seizure search. 30~40% If this is a little too much, I think I need to bear the possibility of 10~20% over.”
Lee Kyung-won, head of the Kookmin Daily’s legal team, said, “If the time comes to take specific responsibility in the matter of how the media will be responsible, there will be no reporter trying to avoid him.” “Everyone is working with that determination, and then I think I am faithful to my duty. Many reporters have already suffered directly or indirectly about the verification reports of high-ranking officials, which is the topic of the day. First of all, I think that I am taking responsibility in that way.”
Jwa Young-gil, the head of the Herald Economics Legal Affairs Team, cited the following article by former Minister Cho on the responsibility and apology of the media. “In a democratic society, public figures are always subject to criticism and verification. It is impossible for the average citizen to have complete information about the public person.” “If legal sanctions are imposed on the citizen for partially false facts in the process of criticism, freedom of expression will be severely reduced.”
“The question of how far we will raise suspicions and how far we will be criticized is a question to be contemplated in our relationship with the readers, the subject of media coverage, and whether those people will step forward and take responsibility according to the standards they have set? There is no need to worry.”
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