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How Media Partisanship Aggravates Conflicts between Human Rights and Social Justice: A Study on News Objectivity of Capital Punishment

The sharp increase in heinous crime in recent decades in Korea has caused controversy over the issue of abolition of capital punishment. While a significant portion of the public consents to the idea of social justice reinforced by executing the death penalty, its opponents argue for the right to life of criminals. This study examines how the mass media in South Korea cover the issue of the death penalty in light of their fulfillment of news objectivity. Content analyses demonstrate that newspapers have tendency to pursue ostensible balance, compared with television news showing higher levels of factuality and neutrality. Liberal newspapers were found to be more proactive in advocating their perspectives than conservative ones. The study concludes that the media’s fulfillment of ostensible balance does not always lead to reducing social conflicts, and more attention needs to be paid to ‘how’ objectivity should be pursued in covering controversial social issues.