Yellow journalism! A case study of # mastkd #

In today’s fast-paced digital world, the lines between credible journalism and sensationalized, misleading content are increasingly blurred. Yellow journalism, characterized by its use of eye-catching headlines and exaggerated stories to drive attention, has found a new home online. This form of journalism is more than just sensational; it often ventures into the realm of fake news.

It is perhaps not new to hear about the problem of Fake news. But this will continue until when?

While journalism is supposed to focus on factual information presented objectively, yellow journalism is nothing even true. The war for clicks, views and unknow personal reasons seems to have created an epidemic of sensationalized headlines, without any respect of journalism ethics and without any regret to harass the dignity and identity of others!

Throughout the history and in recent years, there are many notable examples of yellow journalism.

Today, I would like to talk about the online website for taekwondo news named “ Mastkd ” and its related social media pages, which during last Taekwondo Olympic Games, they published wrong informations and fake news in some articles using eye-catching headlines and exaggerated stories to drive attention, influence public perception and to attack the WT hierarchy for unknown personal reasons!

“ Mastkd ” instead of talking about the historical taekwondo Olympics 2024 event done at the iconic grand palais in Paris, focusing on the performance of players , and thanks the WT officials for their efforts to deliver such spectacular event, they focused on publishing different articles by exaggerating one only system mistake which was corrected to accuse the WT official in charge with corruption!!

“ Mastkd ” instead of talking objectively about the system mistake which was well corrected, they focused into giving their own judgments and taking referees roles without any rules backgrounds and harass the dignity and identity of others!

Is this journalism? Where is journalism ethics? Who give mastkd the right to take the positions of referees and give their own opinion and judgments and harass others with ignorance of the WT competition rules!

Based on my knowledge of WT competition rules, the system mistake of showing wrong round winner, in the match of Chile — Korea, was well corrected and round winner result was correctly reversed based on superiority criteria rules. In this sensitive situation, the technical delegate did a great job and showed a lot of professionalism, intelligence and speed of axiom to notice this error. And he did well by assisting to correct the human mistake entered in the system basing on his job and responsibility to ensure the follow of the competition rules in a fair way.

Actually, as this issue was clear system mistake to any taekwondo expert, mastkd confess unintentionally and underlines that the winner result should be reversed by saying in one of their articles that « Under normal circumstances, the round should have gone to Seo», which is the Korean player instead of Chile player. So mastkd agree that result should be reversed but they continue to exaggerate the issue and accuse the technical delegate who assisted to correct the mistake by corruption, in order to create a buzz by fake news!

Not only this, mastkd exceeded the limits of their profession which is based on presenting information objectively, they took the role of referees and give their own judgement by saying in one of their articles that the Korean coach: “behavior should have resulted in a penalty”. They think that Korean player should lose the game.

But based on my knowledge of WT competition rules, this is kind of penalty is the only judgement of the center referee. No one else can interfere! And even if the center referee penalized the behavior of the coach, this penalty will be registered to the third round as according to the rules any misconduct penalty declared past to the 5 second of the round conclusion shall be recorded immediately to the upcoming round. And as I remember the Korean player won the third round with a big score difference, so this potential penalty will not affect the outcome of the match. And the result was totally correct.

At the end, I would like to thank all WT officials for all their hard work to make such a spectacular and historical Taekwondo Olympic Games. WT officials will continue shinning and still have more challenges to do in order to improve our Taekwondo sport despite attempts of yellow press.

                                          Paris 2024 Taekwondo olympic games