The Hub of Sparkle!

In a story on the ABC News web site, the subject of the English-teaching industry is dealt with, from the discussions of the English education craze, “goose fathers,” and the aspects of life in Korea that attract many of the people coming in here.

Which is why the title “English Teachers Brings Drugs to South Korea” seems a bit strange, in an article that barely actually talks about that subject, doesn’t cite any statistics, and leaves the subject in the article by basically saying that they are pretty much an non-representative exception.

The smaller headline reads “Tourists Gone Wild: Influx of Foriegn-Born English Teachers Contributes to Increased Drug Use in South Korea.” So, people in the States might be led to believe, foreigners are smoking out so much that it has increased OVERALL rates of drug use in Korea?

Come on, now.

It’s almost like writing an article about the social effects of video games, the impact of the new consoles, how they’re changing the way people spend time at home, the innovative new style of play brought by the Wii, how even senior citizens use them now, or how they’re even helping Iraqi veterans deal with PTSD — all various aspects of that topic — and then titling the piece “Video Games Kill Epileptics.”

This journalism is not even as bad as the stuff the Korean media usually trots out — it’s worse. The claims being made are even broader, made to an audience that can’t really know otherwise than to think our citizens really are coming over and influencing all of Korea to smoke out, and the actual focus of the article isn’t really even ABOUT what the title suggests.

A shoddy job, ABC. Almost as bad as the puff piece that the NYT wrote on Korean foreign language high schools being “heaven” for students, but only almost.

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