South Korea Ruling Party Nears Passing ‘Fake News’ Bill
South Korea Ruling Party Nears Passing ‘Fake News’ Bill
(Bloomberg) -- South Korea’s ruling party is set to push through a bill stepping up penalties for “fake news,” with international media groups arguing the measure could hamper press freedoms and opposition lawmakers saying it’s intended to silence critics.
President Moon Jae-in’s progressive Democratic Party used its supermajority in parliament Wednesday to move out of committee the bill to revise the Press Arbitration Act, setting it up a full vote in a plenary session as early as this week.
Under the revised bill, news organizations would be required to issue prompt corrections for the “deliberate” or “grossly negligent” dissemination of false news reports. It also calls for up to a five-fold increase in compensation paid as a penalty, if a court acknowledges the publication is false.
For cases that are hard to track the specific damage amount, the bill dictates media organizations to compensate plaintiffs within the range of 50 million won ($43,000) to 100 million won ($85,000).
The bill is meant to combat the dissemination of fake news, according to Democratic Party, which has pointed to what it sees as a rise in news articles -- often without any attribution -- that has moved markets before corrected or deleted. Others have published anonymous allegations posted online that have turned out to be untrue or denied by the accused, it said.
The bill “establishes public trust in the press and expands the value of free speech,” party spokesman Han Jun-ho said.
The main conservative opposition People Power Party called the bill unconstitutional and is planning a filibuster. “The Democratic Party revealed its intention to curb the media that reported unfavorable news to them,” PPP spokeswoman Jun Joo-hyae said Monday.
Press freedom is a sensitive subject in South Korea, where authoritarian leaders who ruled the country until the late 1980s used their power to stamp out dissent and squeezed the media to be in line with the government.
Media watchdogs, including the Vienna-based International Press Institute, have called on Moon’s party to withdraw the legislation. “At a time when authoritarian governments are increasingly adopting so-called ‘fake news’ laws to stifle criticism, it is disappointing to see a democratic country like South Korea follow this negative trend,” IPI Deputy Director Scott Griffen said in a statement last week.
Moon, whose single, five-year term ends in May, and his party have had their battles with the press. Some of the most heated have come around two of Moon’s choices for justice minister who were forced to step down in the face of local media reports of graft and favoritism, which eventually led to investigations by prosecutors and charges being brought.
The media bill comes after Moon’s party put in place a law that took effect in January mandating prison terms for people spreading falsehoods about pro-democracy rallies in Gwangju in the 1980s that were crushed with deadly force, which prompted criticism from historians who saw the measure as an excessive use of authority.
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