방송심의의 행정소송법상 쟁점과 신뢰성 제고 방안: 공정성 심의를 중심으로

Abstract

Because of the trend toward internet news and media, some may say the influence of broadcasting is becoming weaker than it used to be; however, the social responsibility of broadcasting to provide a forum for public discussion for the sake of the democratic decision-making process is still important. Recently, legal litigations concerning the Fairness Deliberation of Broadcasting have been gradually increasing, and these conflicts contain numerous legal issues regarding the Administrative Litigation Act. However, there seem to be many research findings on the Administrative Litigation Act with regard to the Fairness Deliberation issues. Therefore, this article aims to propose solutions for some problems of the current Fairness Deliberation system with regard to the Administrative Litigation Act and to review ways to enhance the credibility of the Fairness Deliberation of broadcasting. There are several issues of the Administrative Litigation Act in regard to the Fairness Deliberation process. Some of the questions that have arisen are listed here. Is the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), which has a deliberation authority, an administrative regulatory agency? Is the KCSC’s re-deliberation of precedent deliberation dispositions regarded as special administrative appeals? Is judicial review of amorphous concepts such as Fairness possible? Is the obligation of broadcasting the full text of matters decided by the KCSC recognized as the disposition? Related to those issues, the current Fairness Deliberation system has been criticized in that the deliberation agency (KCSC) is organized without guarantees of political independence from the imbalance of member composition, and citizen acceptability about the deliberations is low because current Fairness standards are too vague. In order to resolve these problems, this article proposes improvement measures on three points of view: organizing the deliberation agency’s members proportionately, considering change of the Fairness deliberation regulation system to a self-regulation system, and analyzing the administrative court judgments concerning the Fairness deliberation cases. First, to guarantee political independence of the KCSC, the KCSC’s legal status as an administrative regulatory agency must be clarified. Also, for political neutrality and impartiality, it is important to grant the administrative branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch equal rights of recommendation of KCSC members. Second, to settle the problems caused by vagueness of the Fairness standards as amorphous concepts, it is necessary to abolish the Fairness deliberation provisions of the current Broadcasting Act and reorganize the regulatory system as a self-regulation system. The self-regulation system can achieve more effective and efficient outcomes than a government-regulation system because it can facilitate audience participation by a precautionary measuring system. Third, it is important to enhance the social acceptability of fair broadcasting by analyzing and specifying recent administrative court rulings concerning Fairness deliberation cases. Such an examination will help establish reasonable Fairness deliberation standards. This study is expected to motivate more advanced studies about enhancement measures of the validity and acceptability of the Broadcasting Deliberation system, by analyzing court judgements that involve legal issues of the Administrative Litigation Act and by establishing specific legal standards.