Why TV news is dangerous: CBC on North Korea
Or, CBC reports on the North Korean nuclear test. This batch of reports was dangerously misleading.
First, the experts. A British-sounding intellectual in a library who could barely get his point across; merely working at an organization with "institute for" or "center of" or "strategic studies" in its name does not qualify one for a discussion of highly specific regional security issues.
And the Green Peace guy? He was worried some countries might consider military options. What? Pardon? Invade North Korea, eh? Thanks for your insight Mr. Peace, but the United States - last time I checked - invaded Iraq instead of North Korea because they already decided 10,000 burning embers with spines lighting up the Demilitarized Zone is bad for reelection. Oh, and for the people of Seoul - who would most certainly be (instantly) liquified or vaporized or gassed or melted.
No one is talking of a military response. No one sane, or in other words, no one who should be listened to or quoted in the national news.
Mr. Peace has pleaded for diplomatic negotiations. We should all thank him. For he had advocated the policy of the entire world, for time immemorial. We should also thank the CBC (icily, and with language dripping disdain) who gave him airtime.
We should also thank the CBC for including the Korean community in their report; this was almost as awkward as their constant attempts to appeal to younger viewers with good looking boys. They interviewed people for whom English is obviously a second language, and instead of providing voiceovers for obviously concerned individuals, they quoted them in English. South Koreans, when they want to hear South Koreans be intelligent, go to South Korean news websites in Korean. If they care about what South Korean-Canadians have to say, they would probably want to hear it in Korean. No one, especially South Koreans, want to hear or see Koreans struggling with a second language.
Also, and possibly finally: Everyone knows North Korea has nuclear weapons. This was a test of something - something we most certainly knew they already had. Let us get past the shock value of its "hard newsness" and get to the proper debate - a debate the mainstream media should already have been engaged in: What do we do? And please, can we not hear from Green Peace on this one?
Perhaps the CBC should join - or give voice to, perhaps - the individuals who have been having an informed discussion on North Korea for the past couple of decades. Robert D. Kaplan wrote a good cover story for October's The Atlantic Monthly on North Korea. Go to the SOAS at the University of London (CBC does have a London bureau). Interview Jasper Becker, a longtime China correspondent and author of a book on North Korea.
Instead, Canadians get inarticulate non-experts, un-voice'd over South Korean immigrants, and bad journalism from uninformed journalists, such as an inane monologue from Adrienne Arsenault, and an intensely bored Patrick Brown of CBC's Beijing bureau, who, of all the things he could say or be scripted to be asked to say, ends up telling us that North Korea is, quote, "isolated."
Thanks, CBC. I'm not joking with this next statement. I saw a better report on this from the A-channel.
First, the experts. A British-sounding intellectual in a library who could barely get his point across; merely working at an organization with "institute for" or "center of" or "strategic studies" in its name does not qualify one for a discussion of highly specific regional security issues.
And the Green Peace guy? He was worried some countries might consider military options. What? Pardon? Invade North Korea, eh? Thanks for your insight Mr. Peace, but the United States - last time I checked - invaded Iraq instead of North Korea because they already decided 10,000 burning embers with spines lighting up the Demilitarized Zone is bad for reelection. Oh, and for the people of Seoul - who would most certainly be (instantly) liquified or vaporized or gassed or melted.
No one is talking of a military response. No one sane, or in other words, no one who should be listened to or quoted in the national news.
Mr. Peace has pleaded for diplomatic negotiations. We should all thank him. For he had advocated the policy of the entire world, for time immemorial. We should also thank the CBC (icily, and with language dripping disdain) who gave him airtime.
We should also thank the CBC for including the Korean community in their report; this was almost as awkward as their constant attempts to appeal to younger viewers with good looking boys. They interviewed people for whom English is obviously a second language, and instead of providing voiceovers for obviously concerned individuals, they quoted them in English. South Koreans, when they want to hear South Koreans be intelligent, go to South Korean news websites in Korean. If they care about what South Korean-Canadians have to say, they would probably want to hear it in Korean. No one, especially South Koreans, want to hear or see Koreans struggling with a second language.
Also, and possibly finally: Everyone knows North Korea has nuclear weapons. This was a test of something - something we most certainly knew they already had. Let us get past the shock value of its "hard newsness" and get to the proper debate - a debate the mainstream media should already have been engaged in: What do we do? And please, can we not hear from Green Peace on this one?
Perhaps the CBC should join - or give voice to, perhaps - the individuals who have been having an informed discussion on North Korea for the past couple of decades. Robert D. Kaplan wrote a good cover story for October's The Atlantic Monthly on North Korea. Go to the SOAS at the University of London (CBC does have a London bureau). Interview Jasper Becker, a longtime China correspondent and author of a book on North Korea.
Instead, Canadians get inarticulate non-experts, un-voice'd over South Korean immigrants, and bad journalism from uninformed journalists, such as an inane monologue from Adrienne Arsenault, and an intensely bored Patrick Brown of CBC's Beijing bureau, who, of all the things he could say or be scripted to be asked to say, ends up telling us that North Korea is, quote, "isolated."
Thanks, CBC. I'm not joking with this next statement. I saw a better report on this from the A-channel.
posted by iain.e.marlow at 10:29 AM
2 Comments:
When I heard people talking about North Korea these days, I sometimes wanted to yell at them: just go and read Robert Kaplan's article in the Atlantic! haha...I loved that one.
People think North Korea is crazy. Their leader may, himself, be bizarre and unpredictable, but there are some 42,000,000 odd people there. People forget that.
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