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Public Understanding of Science
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What's this?

The Korean press and Hwang’s fraud

Jaeyung Park

School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Korea University, South Korea, jaeyungp{at}korea.ac.kr

Hyoungjoon Jeon

Dankook Center for Dispute Resolution, Dankook University, South Korea

Robert A. Logan

US National Library of Medicine

This case study explores why South Korean journalists overlooked allegations of scientific misconduct against South Korean scientist Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and even indirectly defended him in 2005—6. Nineteen journalists, who covered Hwang’s story for five of South Korea’s leading daily newspapers, were interviewed. The interviewees added insights about the news coverage of the Hwang scandal not identified in previous literature, such as the difficulties among journalists to suspend their personal disbelief about the criticisms and evidence against Hwang. The findings suggest the news judgments that occurred in Korean newsrooms during the Hwang scandal reflected a socially constructed process of negotiation among news media professionals and between journalists and scientists. The findings also suggest it may be best to consider journalistic mores within a multidimensional framework that includes journalistic perceptions of socio-cultural norms, internal newsroom standards for evidence, newsroom competence and training, normative journalism ethics, news gathering techniques, perceived dissonance and professed risk avoidance.

Key Words: Woo Suk Hwang • news judgment • public understanding of science • science journalism • scientific fraud • South Korea

This version was published on November 1, 2009

Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 18, No. 6, 653-669 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0963662508096779
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