Korean American Journalists and Their News Media
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Copyright by Sang Y. Bai 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Sang Y. Bai Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: MAKING KOREAN AMERICAN NEWS: KOREAN AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND THEIR NEWS MEDIA Committee: Maxwell McCombs, Supervisor Joseph Straubhaar Dominic L. Lasorsa America Rodriguez Renita Coleman MAKING KOREAN AMERICAN NEWS: KOREAN AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND THEIR NEWS MEDIA by Sang Y. Bai, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2010 Dedication To my heavenly father and my parents. Acknowledgements First and most of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Professor Maxwell McCombs for his invaluable support, advice, and guidance throughout the years at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. McCombs has enlightened me with his wisdom and expertise and has been an inspiration to me. I would like to acknowledge that the travel and research grants provided by Dr. McCombs have been essential to completing this dissertation. I would like to thank my committee members for their valuable comments and suggestions. I am especially grateful to Dr. Joseph Straubhaar, who is a leading scholar on global media, for the intellectual encounters and discussions, which have guided and inspired me through the years. I would also like to thank Dr. America Rodriguez for her encouragement to pursue my research interests. Her expertise in ethnic media has provided me with insightful perspectives on this dissertation. I am thankful to Dr. Dominic Lasorsa and Dr. Renita Coleman for their support and thoughtful comments throughout the years. While working as a teaching assistant in their classes, I witnessed their devotion and commitment to students and learned effective pedagogy from them. I owe thanks to Professor Jean Retzinger at the University of California, Berkeley, who guided and inspired me when I was an undergraduate student. A number of acquaintances and friends offered me unconditional support and encouragement. I v especially thank Joanne Click, Seungho Song, Jongmyung Chae, Hyunjung Kim, Dr. Morris Hurley, Matthew Stahl, Kathy Yoon, Evelyn Kim, Nikie Han, Sunyoung Lee, Na Zhang, Yue Hou, Kisoo Han, and Wooseok Choi. Many Korean colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have helped me in different ways at different stages, some with technical assistance in my dissertation manuscript preparation and others with unconditional support and encouragement. Especially, I would like to single out the following colleagues: Kideuk Hyun, Soo Jung Moon, Nakwon Jung, Namsu Park, and Joon Yea Lee. A special thanks goes to Kanghui Baek, Jaekwan Jeong, Yonghwan Kim and Jang Ho Moon, who have oftentimes stayed up late to provide me with technical assistance and code the material for my dissertation, I am indebted to the Korean diaspora-oriented media professionals who participated in my 2008 survey for my dissertation. Even though they were burdened with heavy workloads, they were willing to cooperate in the survey and in-depth interviews for my dissertation. This dissertation would have been impossible without their full cooperation. Especially, I would like to personally thank the following journalists in particular: Kyehong Ko, Jonghoon Lee, Seunghyun Yang, Byunghee Jang, and Nicole Jang for their valuable support, information, and ideas about Korean diasporic media. I thank my parents for their unconditional love, support, understanding, and patience. My parents, Songkeun Bai and Keumsoon Kim, to whom this dissertation is dedicated, have sacrificed very much for me. I am very grateful for their financial support as well as heartfelt encouragement during all my years in the United States. No acknowledgement would be complete without tribute to my other family members. Especially, I wish to express my warmest appreciation to my wife, Hyunjong Rhee, and my son, Alex, whose smile and love always make me the happiest man in the world. vi MAKING KOREAN AMERICAN NEWS: KOREAN AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND THEIR NEWS MEDIA Publication No._____________ Sang Y. Bai, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisor: Maxwell McCombs One of the main purposes of this dissertation is to examine who Korean American diaspora-oriented journalists are and how they make news, taking into account several forces on the individual, organizational, extramedia, and social system levels that influence the gatekeeping processes and news content. In addition, this dissertation investigates what interests Korean American diaspora-oriented journalists mainly serve. The author surveyed journalists working for major Korean diaspora-oriented media in Los Angeles and conducted in-depth interviews with experienced personnel involved in the Korean diasporic journalism industry. In addition, two major Korean diasporic dailies were content-analyzed. The basic characteristics of the majority of Korean American-oriented journalists in 2008 are depicted as follows: male Korean Americans, 30 to 40 years old, born in Korea, with a bachelor’s degree, in the United States and working as journalists for less than 15 years, politically liberal, Protestant religious backgrounds, with previous journalism experience at another media organization. Korean diaspora-oriented vii journalists place emphasis on three major news topics: immigration, business/economy, and education. Cultural proximity rather than geographical proximity significantly influence the degree of newsworthiness of a news story. Newsworthiness is highest when an event/issue has both high cultural proximity and geographical proximity. When geographical proximity is low and cultural proximity is high, newsworthiness in Korean American-oriented journalism is moderately high. If the degree of cultural proximity is low, however, it does not matter whether the news story occurred in Los Angeles or other states or countries in determining the degree of newsworthiness. The Korean American journalists value the interracial harmonizer function most, followed by the disseminator, ethnic consolidator, and interpreter functions. The finding suggests that Korean diaspora-oriented journalists keep in mind that their foremost responsibility is to help Korean immigrants settle smoothly in their new host country and to live in harmony with other racial groups. The longer a Korean journalist has lived in the U.S., the more he or she tends to embrace the interracial harmonizer and ethnic consolidator functions. In other words, the longer Korean American journalists stay in the U.S., the more sensitive they become both to racial issues and to their own ethnic identities. viii Table of Contents List of Tables ......................................................................................................... xi List of Figures ........................................................................................................xv Chapter 1: Introduction ...........................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Literature Review ................................................................................14 History and Overview of Korean American News Media ............................14 Preconditions for the Prosperity of Diasporic Media ...................................20 Gatekeeping Theory ......................................................................................30 Functions of Diasporic News Media.............................................................68 Research Questions .......................................................................................87 Chapter 3: Methodology ......................................................................................90 Research Procedure .......................................................................................90 Data Analysis ................................................................................................98 Chapter 4: Korean American Journalists ............................................................107 Basic Characteristics of Korean American-Oriented Journalists ................107 News: Values, Topics, and Sources ............................................................112 Korean American Journalists’ Role Perceptions ........................................117 Most Important Problems ...........................................................................138 Korean American Journalists’ Perceptions of Racial/Ethnic Groups .........145 Chapter 5: The Content of Korean American News Media ................................156 Content Analysis One (Newsworthiness) ...................................................156 Content Analysis Two (News Mix) ............................................................165 Chapter 6: An In-Depth Look at Korean American Journalists .........................170 Media Functions..........................................................................................170 News Coverage of Racial Groups ...............................................................176 Important Problems of Korean American-Oriented News Media ..............178 The Future of Korean American-Oriented Media ......................................181 ix Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusion ...............................................................185 General Background/ Demographic Characteristics ...................................185