Wednesday 16 December 2009

Setting The Record Straight

ht: The Artist Formerly Known As Korea Beat

Setting the Record Straight Part II: We Demand To Be Taken Seriously
(read part 1)

By Oh Young-jin
City Editor

Despite our best Jedi Mind Trick of telling our readers that we're a good paper, because we say we're a good paper, certain "misunderstandings" about The Korea Times persist, regarding our coverage of news in general, and English teachers and celebrities in particular.

Rather than nitpick over the contents of articles seem to be the basis for expat criticism, rather than defend point-by-point the stories we have found compelling and vital to report, for example pictures of Tiger Woods' pornstar girlfriends, and to-the-minute coverage on which western and Korean stars will have onscreen kisses or pose nude, we would like to share with our readers some principles this newspaper operates by.

Above all, we believe that a newspaper is a marketplace. In other words, to get more hits and increase our advertising revenue, we must try to publish hard-hitting news that random googlers and Koreaphiles might want to read. We emphasize the word, "try," because it is hard these days to steal trashy hits from Perez Hilton, or classy hits from The New York Times. The objectivity in news coverage can be a matter of subjectivity from the perspective of the parties directly involved in a given perspective, and subjective perspectives of objective subjects can be uncoverable in objective coverage, subjectively. After all, journalists are only human.

Our journalists believe the size of Keira Knightley's breasts is an important issuer for many of our readers, and the possibility Keira posing nude is important for Korean culture, even though he does not have the large breasts Koreans traditionally expect in foreign men. It is important that this is the first time he will appear nude other than in Domino, Edge of Love, The Hole, and Silk, and the cover of Vanity Fair Similarly, our audiences want to know what Sharon Stone looks like without makeup, even if some "bloggers" think this is just filler. What will they think when we publish next month's Before and After Plastic Surgery photo series?

More to the point, something happens, and it seems like a good story, and we received it by e-mail from another source which has its own webpage, our extensive vetting process has been completed, and if it seems like it will attract readers, it is our duty as a news organization to publish it. We fail to see how readers cannot understand that. Mark our words: in two weeks, when the whole world is buzzing about the 500-Year-Old Alien Graveyard found in Rwanda, The Korea Times will be on everyone's lips, as the first legitimate source to break the story after the Weekly World' News's in depth feature (stay tuned for a weekly column about Korea from Bat Boy). It is our duty, as a socially responsible paper, to attempt to turn the tide against out-of-control feminism in Korea: 115th in the Gender Empowerment Measure is twentieth from the bottom of the list, but we believe Korea is capable of beating out ALL other countries in the race to be number one. Screw you, Burkina-Faso!

Some have also criticized The Korea Times for its proofreading and editing; however, Bonzo the chimp wishes you to know that he works tirelessly to present articles that are flawless, in his mind. We know how to spell salaciuss as well as the next guy.

We believe that we must respond to allegations that our quality has been sliding lately, now that our advertising sponsors have contacted us. It is time to reassert our credibility as a news agency, by telling you that we are credible, and to reassert our professionalism by telling you that we are proffesioanll. Now we can send a copy of this article to our advertisers, to reassure them. After all, if it's in a newspaper, it must be right.

If you can find another news source that is more reigorus in fact checking and proofreading than we are, that is more eager to print corrections (of our readers) when they are found to be in error, we would like to hear about them: after phoning the head of Anti-English Spectrum, and sending unanswered text messages to Korean immigrants living in the towns that are headquarters to the world's most prestigious news sources, we have not heard report of one paper that is more rigorous or pfrofsesionar than we are. In fact, we appear to be in the top one percentile in a random survey of Korea Times staff members.

We have made extra effort to endure that our agendas are not hidden. How can you accuse us of having hidden agendas? We have foreign employees who check all our articles for integrity, authenticity, and verifiability. It's hard for Emma, whose father works for the British Embassy, to get all that work done after school, but she is well compensated for it, and if you cannot see the fruit of her work, you are not looking hard enough: we looked bloody hard to find cops who would say 90% of English teachers used marijuana; you could at least do us the courtesy of looking equally hard for fairness and correctness in our reporting.

Importantly, The Korea Times keeps its doors open to any suggestion, believing that the newspaper business is a two-way street; our role is not just the provider of news but the recipient of reactions. This is why we have opened up our pages to free content feedback from readers numerous times, though of course we sometimes cannot print your letters, if they are not positive. Sometimes instead we must write an editorial like this to correct your wrong perception of us. Please understand our situation.

We have tried to help you, poor foreigners. We know you are lonely and frustrated because you're basically retard-babies stumbling around Korea like assholes. We have reached out to you as kindly as we can, and we have tried to put you in our shoes, but stop being so sensitive, just because our articles have been enabling anti-foreign bias in English-reading Koreans... who really cares about that anyway: the real racists are the ones who can't read or speak English at all, so why don't you chill out, and if you don't want to take us seriously, you can go home.

Finally, you must understand that, with a recent bill proposing to increase funding for English language papers in Korea, we feel that we could best serve the English language community in Korea by definitively proving the NEED for such increased funding, by presenting the crappiest, least credible "window for the world to Korea" we can, in order to get more funding, and be able to offer better coverage.

If you have problems with this, or any other article at The Korea Times, you can write any of the editoral staff at our e-mail addresses, as below:

foolsdie@koreatimes.co.kr
hotforteacher@koreatimes.co.kr
hugethrobbingrooster@koreatimes.co.kr
pornstarontheprowl@koreatimes.co.kr

6 comments:

Flint said...

That is hilarious!!!!!!

DSW said...

Haha. Those e-mail addresses crack me up.

Ajay said...

hotforteacher, pornstarontheprowl?? OMG. Too good. I can't stop laughing.

"In fact, we appear to be in the top one percentile in a random survey of Korea Times staff members."

So true. Good work.

pitchfest said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lee Farrand said...

Nice post.

May I remind you however, that not all of their articles are non-newsworthy. For example, look at this fine example of cutting-edge journalism: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/08/123_50459.html

Dokdo Is Ours said...

Thanks for that one, lee.