Critical Eye: Soompi Adding Speculation To News Items Misleads Readers

Sasaeng fans have been a hot topic in the K-pop world recently (even though they’ve been around forever), and because of their infamous reputations, they’re also a big draw for news sites.

It seems Soompi has figured that out, as they are continuously running stories on them. Now I think that’s fine (smart, actually), as it’s a good wake-up call for the people who weren’t familiar with them prior to the JYJ incident (even though one of their news items was nothing more than speculation).

Unfortunately though, with a recent TEEN TOP story, the sasaeng trend has gone from informing their readers about the JYJ and sasaeng fan situation to just fabricating shit.

Recently, Teen Top visited Taiwan for their first international fan meeting. As we reported earlier, the title of the fan meeting was “2012 Teen Top Crazy Fan Meeting” and was held on March 11. Before the official fan meeting Teen Top held a mini press conference at the airport.

However, what we did not know is that Teen Top’s arrival caused several car accidents! According to Teen Top’s agency, while the group was heading towards their fan meeting, nearly 20 taxis followed them. Some of these cars ran into each other because of the rain.

Teen Top’s agency stated, “Luckily, the accidents were not serious and did not cause any injuries. Teen Top made sure that the fans were safe before heading to the fan meeting.

The fan meeting overall was a success with 2,000 fans attending the event. Currently, Teen Top is considering fan meetings in other Asian countries and possibly European ones as well.

The Question Is: Were These Accidents Caused By Sasaeng Fans?

I’ve said this before, but one of the biggest problems I have with Soompi as a source of news is that they don’t cite their source. As such, there’s no way to check if they just added random shit or what the source wrote and what they wrote or if anything is accurate at all.

Now I’m pretty sure this is their source, because it’s basically word for word the same article, but there’s no mention of sasaeng fans in there that I can see, so it appears the addition of the term at Soompi to both the title and article is nothing more than ploy to play up a trendy topic that elicits emotional reaction.

Unfortunately, this is something Soompi has trended towards more and more of late, seemingly becoming part of the news department philosophy.

Now besides the ethics and credibility issues, the final problem is that no matter what they write, whether it’s an actual translation or not, their readers just believe it.

Oh joy.

Just what we need, misinformed K-pop stans.

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Update
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Yeo Jin Goo got approached by a tourist in Italy, which apparently is grounds to label the person a sasaeng fan.

Good to know.