How is that the netizen Minerva gets arrested but the people from PD Diary who broadcasted a report filled with lies that led directly to a national panic over mad cow disease are not punished?  Well it appears that the Lee Myung-bak administration is trying to rectify that fact:

The prosecution issued summons to six program directors and staff of MBC’s investigative program “PD Notebook,” requiring them to present themselves for questioning next week. Prosecutors will question them on whether they intentionally misinterpreted content regarding U.S. beef to undermine the government’s decision to resume imports last June.

It requested the staff to bring the original interview recordings used in the program. They are required to appear at the prosecutor’s office between March 24 and 25. This is the first time the prosecution has looked into the PD Notebook case, since prosecutor Lim Soo-bin resigned in January saying that he found the program’s “manipulation” was tolerable.

Jeon Hyun-jun has now taken over the case and summoned executive director Cho Neung-hee and three other directors as well as two writers for questioning.

However, the staff said they will refuse to cooperate with Jeon in order to uphold the “independence of journalism.”

The investigation is said to be crucial for the judiciary as well as the Lee Myung-bak administration since it played a major role in triggering massive candlelit rallies against the resumption of U.S. beef imports that dragged down support for the President to below 10 percent last year.

The program aired on April 28, 2008 reported the risk of mad cow disease in the United States and said the death of Aretha Vinson was due to vCJD, or the human form of mad cow disease. The U.S. Center for Disease Control rejected this allegation.

The government maintains that PD Notebook deliberately mistranslated some of the statements made by Vinson’s bereaved family members.

The program also claimed that the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was the cause of “downer” cattle and that Koreans were more susceptible to BSE than other ethnic groups. As a whole, the program deliberately misled people to believe that U.S. beef could cause mad cow disease and stirred public insecurity, prosecutors said.

Earlier this year, the Seoul Southern District Court rejected a collective lawsuit filed by around 2,500 people seeking compensation from MBC, as the resultant demonstrations hampered their business. The court said the mistranslation was tolerable enough for the whole content to be aired, and had not triggered the protests.  [Korea Times]