According to the "Digital News Report 2020," the reliability of Korea's news was the lowest among the 40 countries that participated in the survey. Only 21% of the 2304 Koreans who participated responded that "I can trust most news most of the time". This is a 1% drop from last year. It is noteworthy that compared to the low credibility of news, the percentage of respondents who answered "I prefer news from my perspective" (44%) is significantly higher than the average of other countries (28%).
News trusted by the public must be accurate, objective, fair, and balanced. We are not sure that "news with my perspective" is necessarily reliable. This is because subjective requirements, such as personal beliefs, attitudes, and opinions, must be reflected regardless of the quality of the news.
The problem with low credibility in news is seen as the false and manipulation of information. 'YouTube' was seen as the most likely platform to contain false or misleading information and yet YouTube continues to increase.
Trust is the basic foundation for the smooth operation of society as well as the development of relationships between individuals. Trust in the news and public opinion are essentially related. The low credibility of the news causes difficulties in providing information for the public and fulfilling their role as watchdogs.
To restore the credibility of the news and the media, self-reflection, and self-correction must take precedence over everything else. Reporting based on the interests of the media, such as specific political factions or commercial interests needs to be avoided, faithful to the verified facts treated from multiple perspectives.
We need to be concerned with the role of the media, but equally concerned with our usage of the media. News users need to pay attention to the "hostile media effect", this occurs when supporters or opponents of an issue perceive identical, balanced news coverage of that issue to be biased unfavorable to them.
User biased information processing occurs in accessing and interpreting news when public opinion is clearly divided, and also in people who have a strong tendency to use factional news.
The tendency to perceive that media coverage is biased in a direction favorable to individuals or groups with a liberal tendency is called a liberal bias, and the tendency tilted in the direction of supporting conservative opinions is a conservative bias. This biased use of information is more likely to appear more frequently in those who tend to use their political orientation as an important criterion for determining social reality than those who do not.
Citizens need to look beyond the preference for a specific political party or politician but see rather the present reality, values, and world view. The polarized use of news and credibility of the news is a social issue that limits political tolerance, the core value of democracy. The news must be trustworthy and the citizens must be able to discern the truth, this is why both the media, the news, and citizen have to have this as their goal.
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