`Mad Cow Disease Program Should`ve Respected Facts`

“The best strategy is to respect facts.”

Jeong Ji-min, a former translator for the MBC TV news magazine “Producer’s Notebook,” was asked yesterday on how she feels about her new book exposing the program’s intentional distortion of facts in a program on mad cow disease.

“Like the Producer Notebook’s program, arguments not based on facts might temporarily draw attention but will never last long,” she said.

“The biggest problem is that the show’s staff and self-claimed experts on mad cow disease did not differentiate objective facts from subjective truth. They also sugarcoated what they wanted to believe as truth and preferred their beliefs over clear and provable facts. That’s why the title of my book is ‘Note – I Respect Facts.’”

Since June last year, Jeong has sought to expose the program’s distortion of facts and has postponed her plan to study in the U.S. to do so. She will begin attending an Ivy League school later this year, however.

On how she suffered while trying to expose a news distortion by a major broadcast network, she said, “When they had chances to explain their stance, the program’s staff behaved exactly the way I expected. It was like playing chess with an unskillful player. This was because I knew what and how much Producer’s Notebook covered and what parts it either omitted or distorted.”

She blamed Korea’s lack of humanity for the scandal, saying, “When a serious event occurs in Korea, I’ve never seen signs that cold reasoning is involved. Those who could have used their influence to present the facts failed to play their roles. Only those who wanted to justify their ways and means for political purposes survived.”

suhchoi@donga.com