|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Participatory Journalism's Other Side |
| More than a gathering of minds and cultures, June's OMNI forum gave rise to critiques and a lawsuit |
|
Erich Adolfo Moncada Cota (komodo)  |
 Email Article
 Print Article
|
|
|
|
Published 2005-07-27 12:16 (KST) |
|
|
|
Journalist Oh Yeon Ho launched OhmyNews in early 2000. The publication won quick popularity for its innovative motto, "Every citizen is a reporter."
South Korea has much in common with many places in the world, including often inefficient, undemocratic and conservative media. But it is a nation with a dynamic economy and a homogeneous population with an almost futuristic technological development: Nearly three quarters of its 50 million people has Internet access.
In the beginning, OhmyNews operated with a staff of only four schooled journalists and 727 "citizen reporters." Today it has 38,000 citizen reporters inside the country and 700 around the globe. The Web site is credited for overturning the impeachment trial of current president Roh Moo Hyun.
In June the agency held its first annual OhmyNews International Citizen Reporters' Forum, a gathering of reporters -- selected for writing and publishing at least five stories on the OhmyNews Web site -- to discuss the future and evolution of citizen journalism.
On the first day, Friday, June 23, we visited the main information technology sites in Seoul (the Ministry of Information and Communication, Samsung, OhmyNews headquarters, CyWorld and Naver Web portals), on guided tours. We also met the city's mayor and had an opening ceremony in the massive COEX convention center.
On Saturday, the last day, there were presentations by leaders in other participatory media, like Erik Moller (Wikinews, Germany), Jean K. Min (OhmyNews, South Korea), Clyde Bentley (MyMissourian.com, U.S.), Jeremy Iggers (Minneapolis Star Tribune, U.S.), Ken Takeuchi (JanJan, Japan) and Tabata Shintaro (LiveDoor, Japan). The forum ended after the participation of other citizens from Korea, Iran, Vietnam, Brazil and Germany, and a dinner in the traditional restaurant, Korea House.
Critiques
But the development and coordination of the event were not free of criticism from the forum participants. According to James Fontanella, from Italy, it was far from a planned debate of ideas and experiences, but more "our tribute to the sponsors, [in which] we only spoke of how great OhmyNews is and how successful citizen reporting and participatory journalism has been in recent years."
Harsher were the charges from Derek Monroe, an American, regarding the financial support given to the forum by multinational corporations like SK Corporation (involved in an Enron-like scandal), Samsung Electronics (accused of unfair practices) and Hyundai (which allegedly bribed government officials). Monroe wrote in an e-mail sent to all participating citizen reporters:
"The bigger issue is, however, whether a news organization that is supposed to stand against the establishment in presenting the truth should accept sponsorship from companies that are less than perfect."
Monroe believes that OhmyNews should give its reporters a statement of principles to protect the journalistic integrity of its collaborators. He also suggested that "there should be a theoretical and practical divide between editorial and business departments, and after speaking to several people at OMN [I can say] there isn't one."
He also qualified the Seoul conference as "a public relations stunt which sort of backfired" because in such meetings the organizers should ask the participants for some ideas before creating the program, in the style of participatory democracy.
In this case, he argued, "everything was shrewdly organized on the last minute to surprise the people. It's a very old business tactic that works on people who are usually new in the system and it's planned to play on human gratitude (out of being invited to VISIT Seoul), common decency and innocence."
The Poland-born reporter predicted that the Korean newspaper experiment would end up being a peer-to-peer marketing scheme. He probed his point by analyzing a Japanese OhmyNews brochure in which the agency acknowledges having a relationship with Japanese companies to "find out what kind of influence young Internet users and consumers are having on the formation of public opinion."
On another front, he accused CEO Oh of withholding payment for stories, travel expenses and connection flights to Seoul. He criticized withdrawal charges made in the money transfers to pay for the tickets, because allegedly "there were other considerations at play here to not to go against Kookmin bank."
Monroe said he quit the news agency July 6, but before that the company told him unofficially that his payments were suspended on articles already delivered and edited. For those reasons on July 14 he brought a lawsuit in the Nineteenth Judicial District Tribunal of Illinois for the nonpayment of articles and travel expenses, equivalent to $585. The preliminary hearing is scheduled Sept. 13. On the 19th he promises to file criminal charges of fraud against Oh and Jean K. Min, director of the international edition.
The organizers justified the failures in the forum's logistics because of a lack of time. Min, explained in an e-mail, without furthering the issue, how the corporate funding didn't have anything to do with the visits to the IT industries.
"You might have heard about the famous chaebol system of Korean conglomerates. Even if they share brand names such as Samsung and SK, each company under their umbrella brand is a completely different business entity."
Even when such a system works under the principles of state protectionism, the main problem is still the corporate sponsorship of the big corporations. This represents a serious contradiction for Oh. He asked in Feb. 2000, "If newspapers call themselves 'public' organs, why should the 'company' people write all the important articles and the rest of the stories?" If his main purpose was to "change the culture of news production by creatively destroying the traditional format of an article," his decisions are showing the world exactly the opposite.
Regarding Monroe's accusations, Min said that the former citizen reporter proposed to travel to South America and Eastern Europe to OhmyNews several times to write stories, but the company never gave him a travel order or financial support. He further stated that unless the company and the reporter sign a preliminary agreement, it's uncommon to give travel expenses, other than the money paid for the publishing of articles.
Jean K. Min assured:
"Despite multiple requests from OhmyNews since this dispute has started, Mr. Monroe has never come back to us with any written evidence that OhmyNews had promised him to support his unsolicited travels. And we have wired him more than enough amount for his cybercash and travel to the Seoul forum a couple of weeks ago. Accordingly, his argument has no merit or any substance enough to justify this unfortunate lawsuit. We did our best to maintain this issue private and resolve it with courteous manner."
By appearances, the forum was a complete success, but the real issue behind it is that it only created more questions than hopes for the future of participatory journalism. A troubling sign was that the organizers didn't show us, the reporters from different parts of the world, the more traditional side of Seoul, at least until the end of the conference at the Korea House.
Maybe it is a reflection of the nature of South Korean society, deeply immersed in galloping capitalism, which gives more emphasis on informatics and superficial consumerism. Because nobody discussed how an advanced city can barely survive in hellish pollution similar to that of Los Angeles or Mexico City. Or how it became the massive and divided (by a wall, like in Berlin) metropolis it is by having U.S. military bases in its territory. Or the influence on its history of the invasions by Japan and China.
Despite being an oppressed country like Mexico until a relatively short time ago, regarding its young democracy and its freedom of the press, I tend to see more its defects than the bright screens draping the buildings like masks. The ambivalent face of a globalization that has tried to erase our cultural differences was clear in the street markets and the food stands of Namdaemun, and in the bars where we made friends with people of all nationalities. It only made the differences more profound, uniting us under one common cause.
Hopefully, this critical dialogue will be taken as a springboard for improving next year's event if the companies want it that way.
|
|
 |
|
Erich Moncada is a lawyer, a blogger (www.monoxoro.tk), and editor of Leeme Webzine (www.leeme.tk). He writes for independent media in Mexico, Venezuela, United States and South Korea. He is a citizen reporter for OhmyNews.
References:
Ministry Of Information and Communication
http://www.mic.go.kr
CyWorld
http://www.cyworld.com.cn/
WikiNews
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page
MyMissourian.com
http://www.mymissourian.com
JanJan
http://www.janjan.jp
LiveDoor
http://www.livedoor.com
James Fontanella. OhmyNews International Forum: Some Criticisms
Chaebol system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol |
|
|
©2005 OhmyNews
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
How worried are you about the H1N1 influenza virus? |
|
 |
| * Vote to see the result. |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RSS
Del.icio.us
Digg 
reddit
Y! MyWeb
Comments Note: Kindly refrain from personal attacks and profanity.
.jpg)
