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A group of Korean immigrants in the U.S. are planning to run a full-page ad in the New York Times condemning South Korean President Park Geun-hye and members of her government for their handling of a ferry tragedy that made global headlines in April, reports the Korean-language news website, Newsis.com. The sinking of the passenger ship claimed the lives of some 300 mostly high school youth.

Under the headline, Sewol Ferry Has Sunk, So Has the Park Administration, the advertisement slated for the New York Times depicts a drawing of the doomed ferry, slipping underwater off South Koreas coast. Overlaid on the image are numbers relating to the death toll, the average age of those who perished, and the number of days that lapsed before rescue efforts were undertaken.

Efforts to raise money for the ad began in April when the user of a popular online forum for immigrant Korean women in the United States, called Missy USA, posted the following: Lets place an ad in the New York Times to press charges against the South Korean government for its incompetence and media control.

A campaign was launched soon after on the popular crowd-funding site Indiegogo.com. Visitors to the campaign page are greeted with the message: Bungled rescue efforts. Fabricated mainstream news coverage. Loss of 300 innocent lives. SK Government MUST take full responsibility of their man-made disaster!

Within days, some 400 people had come forward with offers to donate. That number has since grown to nearly 3,000, with donations totaling $135,000 as of this writing. The campaign runs through May 29, with the ad expected to run soon thereafter.

The organizers say their aim is to increase scrutiny of the South Korean government over its alleged mishandling of the rescue effort, and for limiting news medias ability to report about the tragedy and its aftermath.

The campaigns home page states: While this event has raised specific concerns about the Park Administrations disaster control efforts, it has also ignited outrage over a larger issue in South Korea; government censorship and the suppression of free speech.

As an example, the campaign website notes that mainstream South Korean media reported the government had launched a massive rescue operation, including around 600 divers, 70 rescue vessels, and 29 airplanes shortly after the sinking. Family members of the victims challenged those figures, however, saying they saw no such operation until days after it had been reported.

The campaign also alleges many of the surviving family members were told by South Korean officials that their social media postings would be monitored for any comments critical of the government. These allegations have not been verified, though another incident involving a Korean reporter in Germany shows South Korean officials there demanding she retract statements in a German publication painting the Park administration in a bad light.

These people (the South Korean government) are most afraid of international media, not their own citizens, wrote one member of the L.A. group on the campaign site.

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Ad Campaign Blasts Seoul for Media Censorship in Wake of Ferry Tragedy

AROUND this years World Press Freedom Day (May 3) the Pakistani media received considerable attention at home and abroad, and it must calmly address some of the issues raised concerning its rights and responsibilities, and the challenges it is facing.

The Amnesty International report on attacks on journalists in Pakistan released last week offered a precise summing up of the national medias tribulations. Recalling that at least 34 journalists had been killed during the post-Musharraf period and the culprits were at large except in one case, Amnesty concluded that Pakistans media community is effectively under siege.

The effect the killing of the journalists and the threats to many others had on the peoples right to be adequately informed of events and trends that affect them was thus described: Journalists, in particular those covering national security issues or human rights, are targeted from all sides in a disturbing pattern of abuses carried out to silence their reporting. Covering almost any sensitive story leaves journalists at risk from one side or another militants, intelligence agencies or political parties putting them in an impossible position.

The Amnesty report derived its title A bullet has been chosen for you, from a warning the head of one of the two Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists factions had received. It underlined one of the major causes of the journalists misfortune a most regrettable split in their union that must be healed at the earliest.

A similar question was put to Pakistan by a US assistant secretary of state while releasing a press freedom report: How can you be free when some of your best journalists are targeted and killed? The US report put Pakistan at number 141 in a list of 197 countries, ahead of Afghanistan and Somalia but trailing the largest Saarc neighbours India and Bangladesh.

At the same time, the International Federation of Journalists called upon the Pakistani government to end impunity for perpetrators of violence against journalists. EU missions in Islamabad also expressed concern over the steadily deteriorating environment for the media in Pakistan.

It is clear that attacks on the media are harming Pakistan as a whole. Lack of reliable information will create insurmountable problems for both the rulers and the ruled. The government, political parties and the security agencies must ensure an environment free from coercion and threats, not as a favour to journalists but to save themselves from the terrible consequences of ignorance.

Concern over security matters was not the only issue in reports about the media last week. During the ongoing confrontation between the security agencies and a section of the media, journalists were being targeted by some politicians, public figures, clerics, militants and ordinary citizens. While some of this criticism is apparently inspired by ulterior motives, media leaders would do themselves and the people wrong if they failed to analyse citizens complaints against them. They must ponder over the attacks on their right to freedom of expression.

The questions being asked now usually arise when people feel that the media is using its freedom to report half the truth and not the whole of it. Are the people unhappy about the degree of power to control their minds the monopoly houses enjoy or are trying to secure?

The people also get angry when they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the media is using its freedom and privileges to further its own interests and not paying due attention to the plight of ordinary citizens. The media is perhaps in need of redefining the parameters of its freedoms and responsibilities and removing any cause of the citizens alienation. The media needs public support and respect not only to win the battles its calling will always force it into but also to remain true to its ideals.

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Media: the threat of co-option - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

With news media the No. 1 way in which the public learns about whats going on at city hall, the citys elected officials want to see it best used to their advantage.

On the table at Mondays executive committee meeting was a recommendation for city council and administration to take one-day media relations training sessions.

Dealing with media is a lost cause, Coun. Mark Tweidt countered, arguing that the $8,355 price tag for the media relations training sessions would be better spent on their own media.

I dont know why we would ever go after the media to try -- and this is no disrespect -- to try and get them to tell our messages, he said.

I dont think its going to happen. I think news across the world is negative, and thats what sells -- thats the way it is.

During a lengthy debate centred on their interpretation of the merits and pitfalls of news organizations, Mayor Greg Dionne argued for greater control over who is allowed to speak with reporters.

Maybe what we should be doing is have a policy on who speaks on our behalf, he said.

Sometimes the media goes around us because they know what our answers going to be, and sometimes, even seven months after we do something theyre still bringing it up and theyre speaking to third party agencies on why this happened or why that happened.

It doesnt matter what we do, it seems that negative sells -- that theres always got to be a twist or an underlying story instead of just a good news story. So, if thats our goal I dont support it because were never going to reach that goal.

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City council debates the merits of media

A U-2 spy plane may have triggered a computer problem at an air traffic control center that disrupted flights last week across the southwestern United States, US media reported Monday.

The Cold War-era plane, which is still part of the US fleet, somehow overloaded a computer system that displays data for air traffic controllers in the Los Angeles area, after its flight plan was incorrectly translated into computer code, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal said.

The glitch sparked a chain reaction and led the Federal Aviation Administration to halt flights into airspace Wednesday managed by the Palmdale air control center. The country-wide "ground stop" lasted for about an hour and affected hundreds of flights and thousands of passengers.

At Los Angeles International Airport, one of the country's busiest airports, there were 27 cancellations of arriving flights, as well as numerous delays and diversions to other airports. Flights also were delayed at several other airports in southern California.

A Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Steven Warren, said Monday: "I can tell you that there was a U-2 operating in this area in accordance with all FAA regulations.

"The U-2 filed all the prepared flight plan paper work and was conducting its operations in accordance with those filings."

The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating the incident, he said.

The computer problem raised fresh questions about the reliability of an expensive, new air traffic control network, known as ERAM, or En Route Automation Modernization. The system has already suffered budget setbacks and technical problems.

In last week's incident, both the primary and back-up systems were affected.

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U-2 spy plane linked to US air traffic meltdown

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RAW VISION: David Gyngell gives a brief response to media questioning after his punch up with James Packer.

James Packer and David Gyngell are the bearers of a singular tradition in Sydneys media battleground: real blokes settle things with their fists, assuming a bullwhip or a revolver isnt handy.

The kerbside stoush between the two former friends reminds those with a sense of history that Sydneys media barons and bosses have long caused some of the citys most fabulous front-page stories through their propensity to go the biff.

James Packers father Kerry, along with Kerrys brother Clyde, were involved in a marvellous late-night brawl in 1960 with a gang of thugs hired by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch was determined to evict the Packers from the premises of the Anglican Press, which owned a printing plant that held the key to control of Sydneys newspapers.

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The Daily Mirror subsequently published, beneath the screaming headline Knights Son in City Brawl, a picture of Clyde Packer tossing a one-legged clergyman into the street. The Packers lost the stoush. Kerry, a former schoolboy heavyweight boxing champion, was clouted with a six-by-four timber post and Clyde reportedly suffered a wound from a dart to the buttocks. Murdoch is supposed to have orchestrated events via two-way radio from the safety of a nearby park.

Kerry and Clydes father, Sir Frank Packer, had previously found himself in a celebrated dispute involving fisticuffs with the colourful media tycoon Ezra Norton. Packer, owner of the Daily Telegraph, and Norton, who ran Truth, had been trading verbal and newspaper-article blows before meeting at Randwick Racecourse on Derby Day in 1939.

Not afraid to go the biff: James and Kerry Packer. Photo: Reuters

Norton was infuriated that the Daily Telegraph had been publishing unflattering photographs of him. He hauled off and thumped Packer when they came across each other in the racecourse bar, and a ding-dong ensued. Norton was forced to apologise to the Australian Jockey Club committee because he had thrown the first punch.

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Wild men of the Australian media