|
A district court has found a report by MBC TV's current affairs program "PD Diary" on U.S. beef false and exaggerated about the risk of mad cow disease. The decision follows a similar finding by the Korea Communications Standards Commission.
The Seoul Southern District Court on Thursday ordered MBC to air a correction on the report partly upholding a complaint by the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries over the program, which it aired on April 29 and stoked mass protests against U.S. beef imports.
The court took exception to two parts in the MBC program. In a segment entitled "Is American Beef Safe from BSE?", the program gave the general impression that a downer cow was infected with BSE; and by eating BSE-infected beef, Koreans are three times more likely to contract the human form of mad cow disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), than Britons.
The court ordered MBC to air a correction within 10 days on the same show.
The court also found MBC wrong in reporting that an American woman was likely to have died from vCJD. But considering that MBC reported on two occasions in May and June that the woman did not die of the disease, it decided that the broadcaster had already aired a correction of this part.
The court ordered MBC to air a counter-argument by the Agriculture Ministry, saying that "PD Diary" threw TV viewers into confusion with a vague report saying five parts, including brain and spinal cord, of American beef even from cattle younger than 30 months were risk materials.
But the court ruled the network will not have to air corrections on three issues in the report, considering that they were based on the broadcaster's own judgment or expression of its own views. MBC had alleged that the Korean government conducted talks with the U.S. without sufficient understanding of the American slaughter system, that Korea is unable to respond independently even if vCJD occurs in the U.S. under the terms of the original import agreement, and that there is a danger of American beef being imported without the special risk materials being completely removed.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
|
