Courtesy of Belinda Fewings

A student told me this week that she wanted to be a journalist so she could change the world. I congratulated her for her passion, her drive, and her belief in the power of words. She had a dream, and that was more than most her age. But I couldn't help myself. I asked her, "Isn't that kind of attitude the problem? Isn't that why we're in this mess?" She looked back, puzzled.

Journalists aren't journalists anymore. They are agenda pushers. On both sides. And we, as consumers lap it up. We go where we like the opinions. We read what reinforces our beliefs. When we pick up a newspaper — whether it's The Hankyoreh or Chosun Ilbo — we know what we're getting. Objectivity vanishes. The same applies to TV channels, radio stations, YouTube videos, and even academia. This is the world we've built. A world where journalists and news organizations provide narratives and bias rather than facts.

Politics has become a theater of emotions — fear, glory, victory, and defeat. People celebrate or cry when events unfold. Every news outlet has a slant, and rather than resisting bias, they embrace it. In fact, they thrive on it. It keeps the clicks coming, the outrage flowing, and the revenue streams healthy. Even those in academia, adorned with the titles of "Dr." and "Professor," are often predictable in their ideological leanings. In the field of Korean Studies, I know where most stand. It's not a question of whether bias exists, but how explicitly it is broadcasted. I don't see myself as exempt from this, either.

But consider the world of sports. Watch any football or baseball broadcast, and you will see pundits—many of whom have deep emotional ties to certain teams — engage in objective analysis. Sure, they're not completely free from bias, but they are expected to be fair. They analyze what happened, who deserved to win, who deserved to lose. They look at tactics and mistakes. The expectation is that there will be genuine insight without prejudice. We get sports right, but not politics.

Content creators

I listened to an hour-long discussion promising a deep dive into the current impeachment scandal and an explanation of what happened. A journalist said that they had spent the last three months consumed by the story. So much so, that they couldn't sleep. They woke up in the middle of the night thinking about what was happening. They wanted answers. They needed to know what was going on. "So, how do you explain what we are seeing?" asked the interviewer.

Perhaps foolishly, I expected something akin to a timeline of events. I wanted the sports analysis breakdown. I was waiting to be told about the doctor's strike, the Democratic Party's control of the National Assembly and subsequent blocking of Conservative policies, of the investigations into the president's wife, the sentencing of Cho Guk, and the impending verdict hanging over Lee Jae-myung. I wanted the build-up that we had all seen happening. The growing tension between the Conservatives and Democrats, fueled by language of communism, China and "xiexie"s.

Instead, after 3 months of not being able to sleep and thinking deeply, they said that Yoon's decision to enact military law was because he's an insecure heavy drinker. That was it. He might be, of course. But where was the tactical analysis? Where was the commentary on both teams in the build-up to the moment? It was absent.

So why do we demand objectivity in sports but accept pure subjectivity in politics?

Perhaps it's because politics has become a form of entertainment. We no longer consume news for insight — we consume it for the thrill, the dopamine hit of outrage, the satisfaction of seeing our "side" win the narrative. We also want dramatic things to happen. It gives us purpose and meaning. It pays our bills. It gives us a team to support.

The aspiring Korean journalist told me that the day Yoon Seok-yeol was elected president, she began looking for working holidays in Canada and Australia. She simply couldn't bear the thought of being in the same country as him. That's how emotionally connected she was to politics. And these are some of the people that give us our news. Many are either deeply engrained in an existential battle or pushing gossip for money. The whole while, our sports analysts are expected to "say it as they see it," and no more.

Modernity and money

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes about the "burnout society," a world where we are not oppressed by external forces but by our own insatiable need to consume and perform. In this hypercapitalist age, everything — even our politics — is commodified. We are no longer citizens seeking truth; we are consumers seeking stimulation. Politics is packaged and sold to the highest bidder. We don't engage with it to understand; we engage with it to feel.

Han argues that we live in a society of "transparency," where everything is reduced to what is visible, quantifiable, and consumable. In this world, truth becomes secondary to what sells. Politics, once a space for deliberation and debate, is now a spectacle designed to capture attention. It's no longer about governance or policies — it's about engagement, clicks, and profit.

This is the irony: in sports, where the stakes are relatively low, we demand objectivity. But in politics, where the stakes are existential, we revel in subjectivity. We've turned our world into a stadium, but instead of seeking clarity, we revel in the chaos. We aren't looking for truth. We're looking for a spectacle.

This is the inevitable result of a society that prioritizes consumption over reflection, stimulation over understanding. In his view, the constant barrage of information and the pressure to perform — to pick a side, to have an opinion, to be outraged — leaves us exhausted and disconnected from any deeper sense of meaning.

So where did we go wrong?

We went wrong when we stopped seeing politics as a shared responsibility and started seeing it as a form of entertainment. We went wrong when we allowed our emotions to override our critical thinking. And we went wrong when we turned truth into a commodity, something to be bought, sold, and traded for likes and clicks.

The solution, if there is one, lies in stepping back from the spectacle. It lies in demanding more from ourselves, our media, and our leaders. It lies in remembering that politics is not a game to be won or lost but a collective effort to build a better world.

As for my student who wants to change the world through journalism, I hope she succeeds. But I also hope she remembers that the first step toward changing the world is understanding it — not as a spectacle, but as it truly is. And that, perhaps, is where we begin to set things right.

David A. Tizzard has a doctorate in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social-cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the "Korea Deconstructed" podcast, which can be found online. He can be reached at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.