Public Broadcasting Is Not Much Different: Public and Commercial Broadcasters’ Coverage of Minimum Wage in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This article provides a framing analysis of media coverage of minimum wage between public and commercial broadcasters in South Korea. To do this, the current study content analyzed 1505 news reports about “minimum wage” aired by two public television broadcasters and two commercial television broadcasters in 2018. The analysis finds that both public and commercial broadcasters directed citizens’ attention to the new policy’s collective harms framed as “increasing unemployment” and “harms to the economy,” while deemphasizing the particularistic benefits of the minimum wage increase and the resulting reduction of inequality gap between the rich and the poor. Further, all the broadcasters have not provided citizens with enough information necessary for a balanced assessment of the pros and cons of the minimum wage increase.

KEYWORDS:

• Minimum wage
• public broadcasting
• commercial broadcasting
• framing
• income inequality
• political agenda

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).