Category: Journalism

MBC Reporters Banned from Flying on Presidential Plane

It looks like the Yoon administration has decided to get back at MBC after they reported that President Yoon used an expletive against President Joe Biden. The Yoon administration claimed the expletive was directed towards the Korean National Assembly. The sound quality of the clip was poor and not definitive, but MBC captioned it anyway to say Joe Biden. This led to an entire news cycle of negative headlines for Yoon:

President Yoon Suk-yeol walks away from reporters after answering questions on his way to the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap

President Yoon Suk-yeol said Thursday that important national interests are at stake during presidential overseas trips, after his office decided to ban local TV station MBC’s reporters from boarding Air Force One to cover his upcoming trip to Southeast Asia.

The presidential office informed MBC of the decision Wednesday, two days before Yoon departs for his tour of Cambodia and Indonesia, citing the broadcaster’s repeated “distorted” coverage.

“The president goes on overseas trips using taxpayer money because important national interests are at stake,” Yoon told reporters as he arrived for work Thursday. “We’ve been providing a service to help with coverage of foreign policy and security issues, and I’d like you to accept it in those terms.”

The presidential office did not specify which reports were distorted, but MBC has been at the center of controversy after it broadcast a video of Yoon walking out of an event in New York in September and telling his aides in vulgar language that it would be embarrassing if the National Assembly did not approve of something unspecified.

MBC subtitled the video to make it appear that Yoon was referring to U.S. President Joe Biden, but the presidential office denied there was any mention of Biden and claimed the word he used was in reference to the National Assembly. Yoon’s remarks caught on a hot mic were difficult to hear because of background noise.

“The boarding of the presidential jet has been a service provided to help with coverage of foreign policy and security issues, and in consideration of MBC’s repeated distorted and biased coverage of foreign policy issues recently, we have decided not to provide the service,” the presidential office said in a notice to the company.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but MBC was taken over by the Korean left years ago with the threat of violence from labor unions and legal attacks. Even further back MBC was well known for the fake news they put out about U.S. beef causing mad cow disease that led to massive anti-US and anti-government riots in South Korea.

Why is the Media Highlighting the Internet Conspiracy that the Chinese Have Invaded Canada?

The media should stop publishing every wacky claim on the Internet. Who besides wack jobs would believe the Chinese military is massing on the Maine border?:

No, there are no Chinese troops on the border with Maine. This photo, originally taken in October 2020, shows refurbished howitzers being moved in Maine. (Screengrab via Twitter)

It may seem like an updated version of the 1966 comedy “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” but there is nothing funny about conspiratorial ravings from the Twitterverse that Chinese troops massed along the border with Maine were schwacked in an airstrike.

Recent posts from a QAnon-backing Twitter handle with nearly 50,000 followers claimed that tens of thousands of Chinese troops had amassed along Maine’s border with Canada and that an F-16 fighter that crashed last week in Michigan was actually shot down — presumably by the Chinese.

Military Times

I know ROK Heads are smart enough to know this is a bunch of rubbish. However, the media continues to have their fascination with the QAnon site and amplifies all their wild claims by publishing them. Before the Internet, newspapers did not amplify the rantings of every village idiot and that is basically what anyone that believes the Chinese Army is massing in Canada is.

It seems the media highlights the rantings of our modern day village idiots as an act of sensationalism to get page clicks. That is why I did not put the link to this article on this posting. I think the rantings of QAnon says more about the state of the modern American media than it does them.