Hugh Hewitt emailed a bunch of questions to Barbara Demick - the reporter who wrote the article that I gave this fisking to - and got an emailed response. Reading most of the responses makes me wonder why she wrote the first piece the way she did. She admits for example that N Korea has kidnapped many Japanese and Koreans and lied about their whereabouts, that its regime were resonsiblefor the death of 2 million North Koreans in the 1990s famine and so on. Yet despite all of this, despite even acknowledging that the "businessman" she interviewed was:
...a government official -- or agent, as it were. He spoke in ways that other people would get imprisoned for, which means, not necessarily that he was a spook, but definitely that he is elite with some kind of tie to the top that is his source of protection.
she wrote the piece she did with hardly a murmur of criticism. Surely one would think that it would be possible to put some balance into the story, something stating that this North Korean "agent" was mouthing a party line which is contrary to the facts observed blah blah blah. But no, apparently this was not possible.
I could imagine that, if she were writing for a specialst Asian affairs journal perhaps, she could justify this omission by the fact that the readership would be aware of it, but I'm doubtful that the LA Times readership counts as being sufficiently well informed. If they are it isn't thanks to the LA Times itself, as a search on the site for N Korea illustrates. Sure there are critical articles but not many and certainly none that seem to spell out in detail the deeds of the tyrannical N Korean regime. Demick's other recent article, "N. Korea Lists Conditions for Negotiations," is a case in point as it reads as if N Korea's demands are due to American intransigence without explaining why America thinks it should be resolute - this despite her respone to Hugh's on the 1994 agreement::
Do you believe Kim Jong Il and his government breached the 1994 Agreement with the United States by secretly pursuing nuclear weapons via uranium enrichment? - technically, no, but in spirit, yes. The original agreement had several loopholes, which is why the administration now is insisting on CVID (Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Dismantlement)
I suspect that Captain's Quarters is correct that the key is the way that Demick refuses to categorically state that Kim Jong Il is evil - just stating "One can judge from there" after listing one example of his behaviour. This is exactly the same sort of coverage we see about Darfur or about Honour Killings or Slavery in Islamic societies. Apparently it is not acceptable to call people evil in modern journalism even when they do despicable things. I'm guessing that this is for much the same reason as why the UN skipped calling Darfur "genocide", if you name something as evil then you imply that action should be taken against it. The excuse American journalists trot out is the one about balance and impartiality which is much the same line spouted by the BBC. Compare that to the healthy UK newpaper scene where journalists are happy to admit to being partial.
I have no doubt this is why many journalists don't like President Bush. Bush is willing to actually call a spade a spade and journalists hate being forced to actually repeat such direct and simple terms. This is, in my opinion, precisley the difference between Bush and Kerry and (for that matter) between Blair and Chirac. If something is bad it should be called bad not given some nuanced culturally sensitive excuse. Uncouth simple voters seem to prefer the former approach, but the intellectual elite seems to consider such directness to be a sin in itself.