The floor leaders of the five parliamentary parties held talks on Wednesday and agreed that government¡¯s new press controls infringe on the public¡¯s right to know. The United New Democratic Party, Grand National Party, Democratic Party, Democratic Labor Party and People First Party urged the government immediately to scrap the rules, which restrict media access to officials and merge newsrooms into handful of centralized briefing rooms. The national assembly is expected to take action against the controls when its regular session starts next month.
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At 5 p.m on Tuesday the Foreign Ministry announced in its centralized briefing room that three hostages in Afghanistan had been released. However most reporters didn't get the news there, but waited for another briefing in other press rooms and briefing rooms.
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The floor leaders agreed to take action but delayed announcing a detailed agreement due to different views about the schedule in the next session. But they announced three principles reflecting the National Assembly¡¯s views on the government media policy. The five parties ¡°express regret at the government¡¯s ¡®measures for developing an advanced media support system¡¯ since they infringe on the public¡¯s right to know¡±; they call on the government immediately to scrap measures to merge the newsrooms; and they denounce the measures as destroying ¡°the very foundation of democracy.¡±¡°The government must normalize press access to officials through dialogue between government and journalists,¡± they added.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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