Hugh Hewitt - The Los Angeles Times: Day 2 of Faithful Reporting of the "North Korean Point of View."
Despite the flood of e-mails and commentary on yesterday's front page paean to Kim Jong Il, "North Korea, Without the Rancor," the Los Angeles Times prints none of the letters and makes no comments on its decision to afford the most brutal dictator on the globe a propaganda boon. Courage, that, and so old media --ignore critics and subscription cancellations, and pretend that it doesn't matter that the contempt in which your paper is held is so deep and widespread across the political spectrum.
Instead the paper offers a page 3 article, again by Barbara Demick-Duranty, "North Korea Lists Conditions for Negotiations." Though free of yesterday's direct quotes of a North Korean intelligence agent praising Kim Jong Il, this piece is another exercise in telling us how North Korea sees the world, and contains within it many of the same errors as yesterday's blatant Kim-boosting:
latimes.com
* "Kim was said to be particularly miffed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent characterization of North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny" and was demanding an explanation and apology."
* "In a statement Thursday, North Korea also said that because of the U.S. attitude, it no longer felt bound by a 1999 moratorium on missile testing."
* "The North Koreans say they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves against a preemptive strike by the United States. President Bush has said repeatedly that the U.S. has no intention of invading or attacking North Korea, but he has declined to use the broader phrase 'no hostile intent.'"
* A Berkeley-based think tank "expert" adds: "I don't think the North Koreans are so deluded to think that the Bush administration will be friendly...but I think they want to see less hostile rhetoric."
* "Relations with the United States have been in a downward spiral since Bush described North Korea as part of an 'axis of evil,' along with Iraq and Iran, in his 2002 State of the Union speech. Although Bush has tempered his words in recent months, Kim reportedly demanded an apology for Rice's comment, which she made during her Senate confirmation hearings in January."
The last paragraph in the story adds the perfunctory note on North Korea's internal conditions:
* "The State Department, in its annual report on human rights released Monday, said that North Korea held between 150,000 and 200,000 people, including children, in prison camps and that its human rights record was "extremely poor."
To discover just how "poor" that record is, spend ten minutes with this report.
The Times' "media relations" director, David Garcia, sent my producer an e-mail yesterday explaining that the Times' "has published as well the perspectives on the history, the living conditions, the point of view of the U.S. government and general Western view of North Korea." We can only conclude that today's piece is another from the North Koreans' "point of view," with a little "America" point of view added on at the end.
The trouble is, the "North Korean point of view" is really the "point of view" of a ruthless despot and deserves no more traction in a free press than Hitler's did in 1938. This is "moral equivalence" of the highest order, and a failure of imagination. Demick-Duranty evidently cannot find the time or the courage to report on the chilling conditions within the vast prison camp that is North Korea, but instead doubles down with a another article that will no doubt be well received in Pyongyang as an excellent example of "fair reporting." |
