In Which The Bimbo Discusses Yellow Journalism

Heehee!

So over the course of the last 10 days there have been some truely shocking pieces of "Journalism" that have come out in the press with the implication that Foreigners in Korea are a bunch of kiddie fiddling, drugged up recidivist whore mongers who are unqualified to be anywhere near a child and who are "Over sexed and over here" to use one famous phrase.

And of course by "Foreigner" the implication is, the what, 30000(?) predominantly white male English speaking foreigners who have come to teach English in Korea's schools and Hakwon.

(No mention of our long-suffering, glass particle inhaling, flat-screen TV manufacturing, predominantly South Asian brethren in Chonan).

I wonder if these pieces really are Yellow Journalism though. So lets work through it. First a definition for anyone not familiar with Yellow Journalism: (No it has nothing to do with our Asian hosts, rather it comes from a bygone era of moguls and newspaper boys on street corners, early in the 20th Century)

Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that downplays legitimate news in favor of eye-catching headlines that sell more newspapers. It may feature exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists.

Wikipedia

First the Eye-catching headlines:

Unfit, Foul-mouthed, Drunken English Teachers Running Rampant ("자질 시비 원어민 교사 판친다" original here.)

Bills Seek Tighter Screening of Foreign Teachers

Yellow Journalism? Check! (Even if the Korea Times drags out the old "Tighter Screening" headline every five minutes).

What about exaggerations of News events? let's see, from the first article:

With native-speaker English teachers increasing in number doubts about their character remain. There are of course teachers who take a lackadaisical attitude to lessons or end them when they feel like it and others who have forged credentials.

The relationship between ending a class early and forged credentials is a long bow to string that's for sure. But hey, I'm guilt of the occasional lacklustre (lackadaisical? Really?) lesson so what else? How about extrapolating statistics to make shit sound bad?

One elementary school teacher in Seoul said, “last year a native-speaker teacher who was at school for the first time was gone for a month claiming illness. Then for two weeks the teacher worked, then quit saying it was hard. Finally we went a semester with no native-speaker teacher.”

The Ministry says such native-speaker teachers are a minority, but statistics say otherwise.

Ministry statistics show that from January to April of last year 54 native-speaker teachers quit without notice or resigned for reasons including inability to fit in, work, and illness. That was the number for four months, and is equivalent to 160 in a year

It could mean 160 a year.

But it might not.

(Via Brian and Korea Beat)

The second article is far from exempt from the same sort of hyperbole:

E-2 visa holders, once caught for taking drugs or sexually harassing children, were often found to be rehired at another school or hagwon,'' said Yeo Jun-sung, an aide for Rep. Choi. ``The proposed bills are to remove these loopholes from the current immigration law.

Really? Where's the proof? To quote Michael Hurt:

That's funny. According to the government's own statistics, there hasn't been a single case of any foreigner getting caught molesting kids, and you KNOW had there been, the press would have had a field day, Olympiade, and one-month gaming holiday.

Funny indeed - look how it fulfils the requirements of the definition I started with:

Scandal-mongering. Check! This is a scandal, how could we let these vermin teach or kids?

Sensationalism. Check! "Often found" so as to imply that this is happening on a regular basis and all the time

Unprofessional practices by news media. Check! In that the news organ concerned is printing these out right lies spewing from the mouth of Representative Choi's Assistant's mouth.

Michael, The Metropolitician sums up thus

If he's going to propose a bill, I want to see evidence, not racist scaremongering. This sort of stuff hurts Korea, because it's not addressing a problem, only leads to measures that punish good, law-abiding teachers, and makes foreigners despise this place for equating foreigner with being a criminal.

and goes on to ask which is going to do more for you as a country? Your "Dynamic Korea" and "Sparkling Korea" ad campaigns? Or the "raw and unfiltered" as he puts it, views of hundreds if not thousands of English Teachers on blogs and comments boards around the world?

Think about it Korea.

Two things have thus sprung up to start to counter this uninspired yellow journalism. Korean Media Watch, a meta blog, looking for contributors to analyse and critique negative portrayals of foreigners in the Korean media. The other is a letter writing campaign to Yonhap, the Korean news service (something akin to Reuters or AP) that was responsible for the first article.

You can find information on the letter writing campaign at Roboseyo who provides a handy form letter in both Korean and English that should make your point as well as email addresses at both Yonhap and the Yonhap News Ombudsman.

In addition I would encourage you to send an email to Rep. Choi Young-hee at the National Assembly and tell her to either fire her spokesman, and / or get some evidence before making blanket claims about foreign teachers. I would say email her, but she is too much of a pussy but only her website is listed on the National Assembly's list of members (A resource in and of itself that might be useful to some of you.) However, if you'd like to call her, here's her office number: 02-784-2061.

Comments

[Kelsey]

I'm really glad to see someone definitively defining this yellow journalism as such. Because really, it is.

[Shannon]

Do they ever report comparative statistics? I wonder (as a percentage) how the foreign teachers who are scummy (and there are some) compare in numbers to the native korean teachers.

By the way... I love chicken run!