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Prosecutors announced the interim results of their investigation into MBC¡¯s "PD Diary" on Tuesday and said its report on mad cow disease deliberately distorted and exaggerated the threat of contracting the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy from U.S. beef in 17 different parts of the program. After investigating the program¡¯s translators, expert sources who were interviewed, as well U.S. data it cited, the judicial organ of the government has officially acknowledged that almost all of the information regarding mad cow disease in the "PD Diary" report were flawed.
Looking at the results of the investigation, it becomes clear that distortions in editing remain uniform throughout the program. The first scene depicted a shocking image of a ¡°downer cow.¡± Even though an official with the group that shot the footage points out mainly pathogenic E.coli, salmonella and other agents, the subtitles in Korean continue to distort the comments. Then the program¡¯s moderator, sitting in front of a poster asking viewers whether they must risk their lives and eat American beef, refers to the downer cow as suffering from mad cow disease. Prosecutors said that even though there were 59 possible causes of the downer cow¡¯s condition, "PD Diary" deliberately changed many parts of translated comments to leave an indelible impression of mad cow disease on the minds of viewers.
Prosecutors said "PD Diary" had deliberately left out a long comment in the original tape of containing the interview with the mother of the American woman who died, where she says her daughter suffered from the side effects of surgery removing a part of her stomach. U.S. media also raised a wide range of possibilities for the woman¡¯s death, from the side effects of stomach surgery, kidney failure, lack of oxygen to the brain and other causes. But "PD Diary" insisted on mentioning only variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or the human form of mad cow disease.
"PD Diary" had been stubbornly insisting that these deliberate distortions were merely the result of mistranslation and mistakes in the words used by the program¡¯s moderator. In other words, "PD Diary" had been saying they were simple mistakes. When the Korea Communications Standards Commission delivered the heavy punishment of ordering "PD Diary" to apologize to the public, it pointed out that somehow all of the ¡°mistranslations¡± had been made to look as if American cows had mad cow disease or that the American woman had died from vCJD. Even then, the official in charge of "PD Diary" said many things just happen accidentally. He probably knew just how ridiculous his comments were.
At a meeting to deal with the controversy surrounding "PD Diary", MBC officials decided neither to acknowledge their mistakes nor issue an apology and to drag their heels for as long as possible. We have yet to see an internal probe take place, while MBC continues to drag its heels. "PD Diary" is refusing to abide by prosecutors¡¯ demands to unveil the original tapes and to appear for questioning. If "PD Diary" has a clean conscience, then there would be no reason for it to hide the facts.
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