Democratic Party official blames media for sliding approval ratings

Choi Min-hee, a Supreme Council member of the Democratic Party of Korea, said Monday that the recent slide in approval ratings for both President Lee Jae Myung and the party was "due to one-sided media attacks and divisive reporting since the party convention ended."

Speaking at the Democratic Party's Supreme Council meeting that day, Choi said the ratings decline was puzzling given the effort being put in at the top. "The president is working incredibly hard, and the new party leader has been at it from dawn to midnight — yet the Democratic Party's approval rating is falling," she said.

She went on to say the party would press ahead with media reform to address what she described as distorted coverage. "We will continue pursuing press reform so that we can take firm action against baseless, one-sided smears — reporting that twists the facts to attack the Democratic Party or the president, or that buries the government's achievements rather than publicizing them," she said.

A Realmeter survey conducted for the Energy Economy Newspaper from Tuesday to Friday among 2,026 eligible voters aged 18 and older nationwide, released Monday, showed the Democratic Party's approval rating had fallen 6.0 percentage points from the previous survey to 41.9 percent. Support for the People Power Party rose 4.5 percentage points to 37.6 percent.

President Lee's job approval rating also dropped 2.8 percentage points from the previous week to 40.2 percent, marking the sixth consecutive week of decline.

The survey used an automated response system with random wireless-only sampling. The margin of error for the presidential job approval survey was plus or minus 2.2 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level; for the party approval survey, it was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at the same confidence level. Further details are available on the website of the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission.

Before entering the National Assembly, Choi worked as a reporter for the monthly current-affairs magazine Mal and later served as head of the civic group Citizens' Coalition for Democratic Media and as vice chairwoman of the Korea Broadcasting Commission. Last October, while serving as chair of the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, she drew controversy after expelling the head of MBC's news division from a closed-door national audit briefing, citing what she called biased coverage of herself.