The Korean government has come under fire for its recent selection of new TV channel operators. Critics say it will cause excessive competition in a saturated market and aggravate large conservative newspapers' dominance of public opinion. Experts are also voicing doubt about the selection committee's fairness and correctness in assessing applicants, according to the Korea Herald.
The Korea Communications Commission announced last Friday that it picked the country's four largest conservative newspapers - the Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, Dong-a Ilbo and the Maeil Business - as operators of new channels for general programming. It also decided to give the government-funded Yonhap news agency a license to run a news-only network.
Politicians, scholars and various groups are expressing concerns that it will result in enhancing the influence of conservative media and harm the diversity of public opinion. They also said the selection only intensifies the rivalry to an unsustainable degree and may contribute to producing programs of lower quality. They also claimed that the selecting the country's four most conservative media groups as the new channel operators will further deepen the dominant print media's influence on the market and public opinion.
