Erroneous report of the murder of COOL's Yuri basically sums up the state of the Korean media

The big scandal yesterday was the report of the murder of COOL vocalist Yuri. It supposedly happened in the middle of a dispute at a restaurant.

One tiny problem with that though, she wasn’t actually dead. Also … uh … she wasn’t even at the scene.

Yuri was meeting with ROO’RA member Chaerina. She got into an argument with another guest at a restaurant, got into a violent scuffle and was severely injured. Even though she was immediately transported to a hospital, she died at the hospital. The assaulter ran away from the scene and the police are actively looking for this person.

Later, the source (No Cut News) retracted/deleted the story about Yuri being dead.

A few minutes ago, No Cut News reported that COOL‘s Yuri had been murdered during an accident.

That story has since been deleted from the news organization’s webpage. New reports are flooding in stating that Yuri has not passed away. It is said that although a person was attacked in the restaurant, it was not the celebrity at hand.

Several media outlets are reported to have contacted the agency and have received word that the singer is fine.

Yuri’s agency stated, “The victim did drink with artist C, and we think this rumor spread because her face was very similar to Yuri’s. COOL’s Yuri is currently at her house in Samsung-dong.”

Then Yuri’s agency was forced to respond to the report, providing details of the event from their side of the story.

This morning, one internet media outlet wrote that COOL member Yuri had passed away due to an unfortunate event.

The media outlet reported that Yuri had been at a bar with an acquaintance when she got into a fight with another individual and had gotten seriously injured, and passed away even though she was rushed to a hospital in Seoul Hannam-dong.

After seeing the article, I frantically gave Yuri a call right away. Luckily, she picked up and it was revealed that she had been at her residence during the time of the incident and that she that she had not been present at the scene. She was totally unaware about what was being reported.

I’m pained and upset about how an article about death can be put out without even one phone call to confirm with the agency. If they had given us just one call, it is something that could have been clarified.

Okay, wow. What a mess.

I mean, seriously? It blows my mind that these people get jobs.

Look, I’ve always been critical of the Korean media and their brand of “journalism”, but this screw up just summarizes everything wrong with what they do into one neat package.

—–

No Cut News rushed out a sensational story about the murder of a public figure to the masses at the cost of doing their homework on the reality of the situation. Generally speaking, when the story is about a death, the media is supposed to be cautious with those reports, because it’s obviously an extremely sensitive topic for the people connected to the deceased. Needless to say, this story not only lacked accuracy, but morality and tact as well. Just a horrid job, and one that they deserve to get raked over the coals for.

Besides the morality of what they did though, this has to be the laziest journalism I’ve seen on such an important story. I mean, did they just not think to confirm this information with anybody? Whether or not somebody is DEAD is sort of a factual thing that would have multiple contacts to source information from. Coroner, police, company, relatives, friends, um … her? This was all solved by a phone call from her agency to her, yet the media outlet felt comfortable running the story seemingly without even asking around. At best, it seems like they just went off witness reports at the scene and the fact that they said the deceased looked like COOL’s Yuri. That is just terrible and embarrassing.

I see people around the web comparing the Korean media to TMZ and the likes as a result of this, but that’s rather insulting … to TMZ. Because at least TMZ usually gets their shit right.