Student journalism is dying a slow, painful death. Turning to fast and readily available news on sites like Everytime and Koreapas, students have walked past The Granite Tower (GT) magazine without so much of a blink of an eye. Gathering dust, the magazines for which the reporters have put their blood, sweat, and tears often goes unread and unrecognized to all but themselves. This is something that GT reporters are well aware of - which thus begs the question, "Why keep writing?" GT reporters write to share their unique and distinctive perspective as universityu students, committed to conveying objective, quality news much like journalists in the outside world. Examining journalism as an industry itself, this article focuses on the historical trajectory and issues facing the industry before delving into the microcosm of student journalism, demonstrating the resilience of the occupation both inside and outside the campus.

Journalism as a Means to Spread Mass Information

According to the American Press Institute, journalism is “the product and collection of activities such as gathering, creating, and presenting both news and information.” However, journalism today can be said to suffer polarization, or factionalism. According to AllSides Media Bias Chart, news outlets often fit into five categories: leans left, center, leans right, and right. Moreover, according to Lazer D. M. J. et al., due to the faster spread of news in the Internet era, media outlets often tend to publish misinformation, leading to the spread of “fake news,” or fabricated information that is purposely spread to deceive or change people’s opinions. This can destroy the credibility of a news outlet and even create a negative reputation for journalism as a whole.

The Granite Tower (GT) has asked Professor Lee Jayeon (Department of Media and Communication, Hanyang University) for her opinion on the role of political polarization, social media, and bias in the reporting of the news.

GT: Does political polarization exist within media companies? If so, why do companies favor a political side or ideology when publishing news or sharing information?

Professor Lee: Yes, we can observe political polarization in the media landscape. Political polarization can be defined in several different ways, but in general, it indicates a wide or widening gap between different political or social groups’ positions on major issues. Even in the past five years, we have seen so-called conservative and liberal media put forth drastically different viewpoints on the same issue. It is hard to pinpoint a single reason behind the phenomena because there are many political, social, and economic factors influencing these complex media dynamics. Simply put, news media represent their readers’ or viewers’ viewpoints to some degree. The fact that major news organizations are so polarized over various issues indicates that our society – its political parties and citizens – has severe gaps. These are not exactly conservative versus liberal ideology gaps. Rather, they are more like pro-government versus anti-government gaps these days.

Some are strong supporters of the current government while some are very critical of it, and news organizations’ contrasting viewpoints may represent this existing partisan gap. Although there are many people in between who have much less extreme and more modest viewpoints, their voices are much less heard or represented by the media than those of strong partisans. There are financial reasons behind this: it is usually the partisans who consume, support, or criticize the media the most. Partisans have louder voices now as the number of regular news subscribers is rapidly decreasing. A news organization may try to satisfy its loyal supporters and advertisers by representing their perspectives for its own survival. Also, there are some news media companies that have historically upheld more conservative or liberal values. They are likely to keep their traditional viewpoint when they have to choose a side.

GT: Should media companies report news in a non-biased, neutral manner? Will that help viewers and readers make better decisions about certain topics?

Professor Lee: Journalism should pursue truth. News media and journalists should do their best to keep this as their number one principle. They should not pretend they speak for everyone when they are actually representing the best interests of a particular group of people, particularly those with power. Journalists should be criticized if they distort the truth or frame important stories to influence people unfairly. Readers and viewers of the media can become biased toward or against the government or its policies as a result.

However, it is neither desirable nor possible for all the news media to hold the same political stance or take a neutral position on every issue. A single issue or a person has many different attributes, and in that sense, there may be no single truth about an issue or a person. It is inevitable that society will have different media outlets that pay attention to different issues and deliver different ideas and opinions. While we hope that news organizations will provide multiple viewpoints and varying arguments for both sides in a balanced way, it is hard to expect a media environment to completely satisfy everyone anyway.

The Historical Trajectory of Journalism in Korea

When it comes to the freedom of the press, South Korea has a rather low score for a developed nation. The 2020 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders ranked the Korean press 42nd out of 180 countries in terms of freedom of the press due to media bias, especially in politics and economics.

With its history of colonialism and military dictators, Korea has democratized rather late in the day. This delay led to prolonged oppression and censoring of the Korean press, which only partially developed after the 1990s. Currently, with the exception of the 1948 National Security Act, which limits certain press actions such as praising North Korea and the communist ideology, the Korean press legally enjoys freedom. However, other limits exist. For instance, International Studies Quarterly Journal mentions that large companies and the government often attempt to impose their ideas on the press indirectly through lobbying, leading to the press featuring articles that criticize certain political ideas.

Not only has credibility been an issue, but the country has also experienced the international trend towards more consumption of digital news, which requires news outlets to utilize social media platforms such as YouTube, Daum, and Naver. Relying on traditional journalism is no longer viable for news outlets as more people turn to social media for information. Physical magazines are being read less frequently, so journalists have no other option but to turn to online avenues to spread their information.

The Influence of COVID-19 on Journalism

Having experienced the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2015, Korea took away many lessons, particularly how to ensure public trust in the media. According to a 2019 study by Un-Yang et al., the MERS outbreak in Korea caused mass distrust among the public, who believed that information-sharing systems were highly unreliable. Reports of new cases were slow and not transparent, which caused the rampant circulation of unfounded rumors about the dangers of the disease.

These rumors, in turn, sparked mass fear and concern, with fake news flourishing. Due to this, the nation adopted a decisive and aggressive approach to the virus with immediate and live reports of cases. Journalistic giants like The Korea Herald published more transparent information regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), recognizing the uncertainty over the disease's exact symptoms and effects. as well as reporting on the emergence of new strains. Consequently, such transparency restored the public trust in journalistic outlets, which increased by over 10 percent nationwide, according to the Reuters Institute.

Regrettably, the growing trust in and reliance on journalistic outlets has been accompanied by financial struggles. With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the global economy hard, the creative industries were the first to suffer. Indeed, according to the Reuters Institute, advertisement spending for media companies has been estimated to have declined by 12 percent this year, with companies significantly reducing the number of pages in their newspaper. The reduction in pages also leads to a reduction in staff.

Moreover, with the world slowly lifting COVID-19 regulations and lockdowns, individuals worldwide no longer seem to turn to the news. As briefly mentioned before, social media corporations are competing with journalistic outlets as a news source and seem to be winning. The Pew Research Institute reports that one-in-five adults in the U.S. receive their news via social media. Unfortunately, as the pandemic has proven, social media outlets are rather unreliable, throwing the nation into panic and upheaval, as demonstrated by the drastic spread of fake news during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyes, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) remarked at the start of the pandemic, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic.” With not much known about the virus during the early stages of its spread, many individuals took to social media to air their concerns and, at times, their unfounded beliefs. Indeed, according to Seoul National University (SNU)’s FactCheck Center, 136 cases of misinformation related to the COVID-19 were reported in 2021, and more than 80 percent of those cases were found false, illustrating the rampant spread of misinformation about the new virus.

Student Journalism and Its Role

This trend of looking to social media instead of reliable news sources has arrived on campus as well, with many students turning to social media sites and student discussion boards like Koreapass or Everytime to receive news rapidly. With trending topics displayed on the sites’ pages and news relayed in a short, easy-to-understand manner, students have little incentive to visit the pages of Korea University (KU)’s student newspapers. As Lee Wonho, the editor of The Korea University Weekly (KWU), remarked in the previous issue of GT, “Regarding the future of our newspaper and newspapers in general, it is falling behind. With social media sites like Everytime, few students ever look to KWU [or other newspapers] first.”

More problematic than that, however, is the lack of freedom of the press on university campuses. While perhaps surprising, this is not unique to university student reporters. In fact, according to The Atlantic, the majority of student newspapers are funded by their higher education institutions, which allows college administrators to use this as leverage to lay down the hammer on what type of content is acceptable. In 2016, the American Association of University Professors found that even the most reputable undergraduate universities for fostering young journalists, such as the University of Missouri and the University of Kansas, encroached on the freedom of the press for the students. In Korea, for example, many universities have faculty members review the articles before they are published so as to ensure that articles are favorable, if not at least neutral, towards their respective institutions. 

One student reporter attending a prestigious university in Seoul - who has been anonymized for privacy reasons - faced censorship attempts from their school regarding their article. Despite attempts to block the final publishing of the article, however, the student has gone forward with the publishing of the article. They explained that they "felt like it was a long-standing situation that was an antithesis of the school's vision that is incessantly imposed onto students the second they enter the institution. Aside from the school vision itself, it was an issue that harmed a marginalized community that should be receiving more assistance and acommodations. Ultimately, it was an important issue that more members of the school community ought to stay informed about but woefully is not receiving enough mainstream media coverage." The student expressed that they believe "it is the role of student journalism to keep a close eye on issues unfolding on campus, both positive and negative."

Not the first time being censored, the student felt that it was time to publish their work, feeling "comeplled to make this story work." These censorship attempts backfired as it encouraged the student to further research on the issue by spending numerous hours fact-checking and interviewing, taking their obligations much farther than what is required of the normal student reporter on campus.

When asked why the student proceeded with the publishing of the article despite teh school's evident disapproval, they frankly acknowledged that "it is very difficult for a college student press to obtain the readership tantamount to that of top media companies, such as SBS, KBS, and MBC." They added, "this is my passion and I believe that it is student journalists' job and unique obligation to keep a close eye on their school, cover key events, and report both situations of victory and injustice. If I wanted to produce content exclusively and unconditionally celebrating the school, I would have signed up to be a cheerleader or a student ambassador. However, I am a student journalist, and I believe that I went forth with article publication because it was my job to do so."

The consequences of this student's reporting seem to have well paid off, with the issue gaining much recognition and prompting discourse within the school's student community, which has in turn inspired the journalist to commit to their ethics of writing what they must write regardless of the institutional challenges that face them. Thus, as this student very well proves, student journalism is not a minor league's program that attempts to emulate big name news outlets but seeks to uphold justice in its reporting of campus wide issues, focusing on issues that hit home for university students.

Fighting for the Importance of Journalism

The future of journalism, both student and professional, involves the use of the internet and social media to rapidly disseminate news. Initially, the internet was a threat to all media companies, so they adapted to include digital content during the 2010s, including more personalized news feeds, which helps users to overcome information overload and find information more easily. For example, internet sites such as Yahoo, Google, and YouTube use algorithms to provide personalized content.

Furthermore, mobile technology, media, and online technology have become more intertwined, and Pew Research Center reports that 40 percent of the global population relies on social media for news. In addition, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have been harnessed in an attempt to give users a real-life experience and psychological connections to an event. This immersion and faster searching have been employed by various organizations around the world, including the United Nations (UN). In 2015, the UN used VR to inform people about refugee camps in Syria, providing an immersible experience of the harsh conditions for people surviving the war-torn country.

Professor Ryoo Woongjae (Department of Media and Communication, Hanyang University) explains that the “internet has changed the traditional methods of journalism by considering the macro and micro context of the changes in media environments, from the newspaper to the Internet. Modern society has a complex relationship with mass media, platforms, portals, and today's media systems, practices, and markets, which were considered faithful to the public sphere and the political theory of deliberative democracy. These have now become both chaotic and competitive and have also changed the relationship between media companies and portals. Large corporations control the media, information, and other types of content; thus, this content is uniformized. And a lot of this content is not fact-checked with processes such as gatekeeping.”

Because of social media, fake news can spread easily, so both individuals and media companies must be careful when reporting the news. In fact, Professor Ryoo mentions that “even when technology, social systems, and peoples' daily lives change rapidly, there are still some things that do not change or should not change at all. In journalism, the fact-based provision of quality, proven, and reliable information and the formation of relationships between people and political, economic, and foreign policies exist. Thomas Jefferson once said that he would ‘choose newspapers without government rather than government without newspapers.’ Today's media is reliant on false information and fake news because of the influence that it has on the general public. In addition, the 'CNN Effect' is a phenomenon that describes the huge impact of the media on the political agenda and dissemination of public information/opinions.

Journalism might be subject to technological changes, but it cannot disappear because it serves as a watchdog to monitor social absurdities, contradictions, and public power. In particular, because the world is connected through the internet, especially via social media, the harmful effects of fake news are becoming a significant shadow on this information society. In this post-truth era, many media consumers see only what they want to see and hear only what they want to hear by embracing the fake news found in online media. It is time for social deliberation and institutional and cultural alternatives to prevent the spread of fake news.”

Being a journalist is also a powerful job that speaks for the voices of many people around the world. A lot of stories are being covered through both physical and digital media outlets, with rising trends on digitalism. However, these trends, including social media, have changed the traditional aspects of journalism: it has reached a new extreme that has adapted to the 21st century’s call for news, expanding to all types of directions and roles. It also has a direction of empowering the informed, and social media and the internet have been playing a major role on the foremost survivability of spreading news. With such information, citizens can make the best possible decisions about their lives, governments, and communities, meaning that journalism will continue to survive because of the power that it holds.