Journalism’s Rotten Fringe

It astonished many of us how a journalist, even one published in a septic little rag like OhMyNews, could visit North Korea and return with nothing but praise for its fine golf courses, telling us–apparently without intentional irony–that “[f]or the average person, life is a day-to-day affair as is the case in any developing or for that matter modern society . . . , [f]or those who have the means, life on the whole is much easier and more enjoyable.” How exactly does one gloss over the starvation of two million people in a command economy that somehow finds the cash to build golf courses and bowling alleys for “those who have the means?” Our question was partially answered when a sharp NKZone reader figured out that the author had participated in a visit to Pyongyang with the Korean Friendship Association.

You remember the Korean Friendship Association, right? They’re the North Korean government’s foreign propaganda and tourism arm, led by the accidental comic and petty burglar Alejandro Cao de Benos, who struts around in a black Mao suit and writes love poems to Kim Jong Il. As we have learned, the KFA has certainly redefined “friendship,” in much the same way that NAMBLA has redefined “love.” KFA tour participants get, umm, access to North Korea that journalists who insist on asking tough questions simply won’t get, as both Rebecca MacKinnon and this ABCNews cameraman learned.

The great scandals of the Iraq War were one thing we expected to find but did not, and two things we did not expect to find but did. Of the first, there’s been much discussion already, and heads are rolling at the CIA, as they ought. Of the second, heads will eventually roll at the United Nations, or that organization will continue to fade into irrelevance. The third never attracted attention because that scandal was the cozy relationship between the media and the Iraqi Muhkabarrat, which rewarded favorably slanted news coverage with access to a newsworthy locale that happened to be one of the world’s most tightly controlled dictatorships. Interestingly, New York Times Baghdad correspondent John Burns saw the comparison from the other side of the looking glass:

Terror, totalitarian states, and their ways are nothing new to me, but I felt from the start that this was in a category by itself, with the possible exception in the present world of North Korea.

You can’t get much of a scandal going if the media won’t discuss it, of course. The KFA might well have learned something from this. Any journalist with an ounce of ethics owed it to his readers to disclose the fact that his visit to Pyongyang was under KFA auspices, and presumably, KFA’s editorial pressure. Again, John Burns explains what journos wanting Iraqi visas were expected to understand:

In February I was denied a visa. Then I found there were visas available. I was in Amman. Some of my rivals who had omitted to notice that Iraq was a terror state were busy here sucking up. They were very pleased with themselves. These were people who’d argued that it was essential to be in Iraq for the war. I got a visa of dubious quality; it was a visa which allowed me to come in and cover the peace movement.

A mere oversight, of course, that Nayan Sthankiya failed to mention his KFA associations. I’m sure he would eventually have gotten around to telling us. When he does, I’d also like to know what other “friendship” (besides the rounds of golf) he accepted from the regime. As for the OhMyNews editorial board–are they just too (a) lazy or (b) incompetent to check up on their “citizen reporters,” or (c) didn’t they consider that detail to be worthy of mention?

Frankly, I’m confused, because to be fair, Mr. Sthankiya worked hard to help free journalist Seok Jae-Hyeon from a Chinese prison after Mr. Seok was arrested while assisting escaping NK refugees. So I guess Mr. Sthankiya isn’t exactly a North Korean stooge; he’s just amenable to compromising his journalistic curiosity and his honesty with his readers for access to a tightly controlled dictatorship (shades of CNN and Iraq). That is a conflict of interest that one cannot fail to disclose without being unethical and dishonest in one’s reporting. Mr. Sthankiya owes his readers full disclosure, not to mention answers to some obvious and hard questions. He should begin with why he didn’t ask any of his hosts. Here’s a freebie for Mr. Sthankiya: Just how many hungry North Korean kids could Kim Jong Il have fed for what it cost to build that golf course?

I don’t think I’m asking too much here, even given the nature of the North Korean regime. Rebecca MacKinnon, to her credit, refused to play along. John Burns has the final word for journalists who cover dictatorships:

Editors of great newspapers, and small newspapers . . . should exact from their correspondents the obligation of telling the truth about these places. It’s not impossible to tell the truth. I have a conviction about closed societies, that they’re actually much easier to report on than they seem, because the act of closure is itself revealing. Every lie tells you a truth. If you just leave your eyes and ears open, it’s extremely revealing.

We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. I think people just simply didn’t recognize it. They rationalized it away. I cannot tell you with what fury I listened to people tell me throughout the autumn that I must be on a kamikaze mission. They said it with a great deal of glee, over the years, that this was not a place like the others.

Another day and in another place, I suspect that John Burns will be proven right again. The real story about North Korea, of course, is not what reporters are telling us; it’s really about the big story so many of them–the television media especially–stubbornly refuse to report.