Aww it's very cool to be in my hometown paper this morning. My "first dinner/second dinner" habits are exposed. Thx also @evanasmith for refraining from all the fast food jokes FOR ONCE https://t.co/tgLJQZZNjg
What a waste of time if these CNN journalists thought their “man-on-the-street” interviews in Pyongyang were going to reveal anything different than the Kim regime’s propaganda talking points:
Ri Won Gil, an editor, told CNN Trump “knows nothing” about life in North Korea.
US President Donald Trump had already flown to China by the time ordinary North Koreans heard he’d addressed South Korea’s National Assembly.
In a damning speech on Wednesday, Trump called the isolated communist country “a hell that no person deserves.” The rebuttal from North Koreans was equally harsh.
One woman CNN spoke to on the streets of Pyongyang called Trump’s assertion “foolish,” “absurd” and another word CNN cannot print. “The reality here is very different. We’re leading a happy life,” Ri Yong Hui, a house wife in Pyongyang, told CNN.
North Korean state media reported that Trump had spoken on Thursday, but did not include concrete details of his speech, in which the President slammed Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.
The North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun characterized Trump’s words as “garbage spewing like gunpowder out of Trump’s snout like garbage that reeks of gun powder to ignite war.”
Coverage on state television and in newspapers focused on a small number of protesters outside the National Assembly, despite the fact that they were outnumbered by those rallying in support of the US President.
CNN’s government minders allowed us to reveal the actual contents of what Trump said to citizens on the streets of Pyongyang, agreeing to take us down to a busy street corner and interview citizens.
We approached several people. Most were unwilling to speak to us, but not Ri.
“Trump has no right to talk about human rights,” Ri said, as the government minders translated for her. “He’s a simple war maniac.” [CNN]
You can read the rest at the link, but everyone interviewed said the same thing. It is pretty clear the only people talking to the journalists were those cleared by the Kim regime to speak to CNN to push the government’s anti-Trump talking points. If these CNN journalists thought anyone in Pyongyang was going to tell a bunch of foreigners surrounded by government minders and say anything negative about North Korea they are absolute fools. If they are not fools that means they knew full well they would receive government propaganda and they went ahead and published it any way likely because it was anti-Trump.
Everyone remember this incident at the US Air Force Academy back in September that drew national headlines and forced the school’s superintendent to make a strong speech against racism?:
After racial slurs were scrawled outside black students’ doors at the U.S. Air Force Academy’s preparatory school, Superintendent Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria gathered all 4,000 cadets in a hall Thursday so they could hear one message: Treat people with dignity and respect — or get out.
“That kind of behavior has no place at the prep school, it has no place at USAFA, and it has no place in the United States Air Force,” Silveria said, in a speech that has found an enthusiastic reception after it was recorded and published online. “You should be outraged not only as an airman, but as a human being.” [NPR]
I was dubious of this story when it happened because it seems every time a racism incident like this happens it later comes out that it was fake news. Well now it has been determined that yes this was in fact fake news:
One of the cadet candidates at the Air Force Academy Preparatory School allegedly targeted by racist remarks has been found responsible for the act.
Academy officials announced the cadet candidate is no longer at the school on Tuesday. The investigation started when the words, written on whiteboards outside their dorm rooms, read, “Go home,” followed by the N-word were found in September. The hateful messages were discovered Sept. 25. The words were found on the outside of five African American cadet candidates’ rooms.
The academy says the individual admitted responsibility and this was confirmed by the investigation. [KKTV]
The original reporting made national headlines and now the fact that this has been proven to be fake news is making few headlines. This fake news just continues to feed the narrative there are white supremacist racists around every street corner to include in the US Air Force Academy which is not true. However, the media has no interest in reporting responsibly, but instead finding click bait articles which these racism articles seem to be for them.
The media has hit its latest low now blasting headlines about how President Trump disrespected his Japanese hosts and threaten to kill precious Japanese koi by dumping his box of fish food into the pond at Akasaka Palace:
It was a story that seemed to reinforce stereotypes of President Donald Trump: On a visit to Japan, he was handed a box of food for a ritual feeding of carp, and after doling out a few spoons’ worth, he got impatient and dumped the rest of the box all at once.
Initial reports of the food dump — like this early video from CNN — suggested that Trump acted on his own. This pushed the late-night Twitterverse and blogosphere into a tizzy. The website Jezebel posted a story headlined, “Big Stupid Baby Dumps Load Of Fish Food On Japanese Koi Pond.”
One problem: Trump didn’t just decide to dump his food on his own. Video shows he was following the lead of his host at the koi pond event, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. [Politifact]
You can read more at the link, but it is reports like this that just validate everything the Trump administration says about the media. So we can now add Koi-gate to the endless list of examples of fake news.
Here is another example of the equivalency many journalists try to make between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump:
People watch President Trump on TV at a railway station in Seoul on Wednesday.
I think if I really think about it, I’m a little concerned. But it’s also in the sense that I’m concerned about how easily accessible nuclear weapons are increasingly in this world. And it’s not just North Korea. It’s the United States, it’s Russia, it’s all these different countries.
There’s another layer of hypocrisy in the way we report about North Korea. Like, the United States owns nuclear weapons, but why is North Korea in the axis of evil that doesn’t get to because it’s supposed to be the less rational one? I’m just generally afraid of nuclear weapons in general. I’m just as afraid of Trump owning nuclear weapons as Kim Jong Un owning one. [VOX]
You can read more of the interview at the link, but does this South Korean journalist believe Japan should get nuclear weapons because everyone should have the right to pursue them? That is the obvious logic being advocated for here.
Plus in my opinion anyone who thinks President Trump is just going to wake up one day and authorize a nuclear weapons strike should not be taken seriously. The same can be said for anyone who thinks Kim Jong-un is just going to wake up one day and launch a nuclear weapons strike as well.
I don’t think long time Korea watcher are surprised by this kind of media collusion with Samsung:
“Dear respected Mr. Chang Choong-ki! …. I have finally mustered the courage to send you this text message, after hesitating again and again. My son XXX applied to the XXX department of Samsung Electronics…. His application number is 1XXXXXXX, and he graduated from XXX University with a degree in electrical engineering….”
The sender of the text is an anonymous journalist from CBS, a major Christian broadcaster in South Korea. He is essentially asking one of the most powerful men in Samsung Group to help his son get a job.
“I am always grateful to you,” the journalist wrote.
Chang Choong-ki is the former vice head of Samsung Group’s now-defunct Future Strategy Office, a central but opaque organ in the Samsung machine that sponsored media, dealt with government relations, and oversaw key business decisions across the conglomerate’s 70+ affiliates. Chang is also one of the key figures in the country’s biggest political scandal in recent memory, the so-called “Park Geun-hye/Choi Soon-sil Gate.”
The CBS journalist’s text message is one of many recovered from Chang Choong-ki’s phone by SisaIN, a South Korean magazine. This week, SisaIN released an exclusive by Joo Jin-woo, an investigative reporter well-known for tackling sensitive topics (even taboo, in some outlets) like Samsung and heads of state.
According to Joo, Chang had corresponded with a wide network of authorities in different sectors: officials in the presidential Blue House, the National Intelligence Service (South Korea’s spy agency), prosecutors, journalists, and more.
In one text, Im Chae-jin, a former head of South Korea’s Prosecution Service, mentioned his son-in-law, an employee at a Samsung factory in Suwon: “Can you help my [son-in-law] XXX be dispatched to India?” Im emphasized that his daughter also wanted the transfer.
In another, an anonymous journalist from major daily Munhwa Ilbo asked Chang to increase the amount of sponsorship for the newspaper. “We’ll reward you with good articles,” the anonymous reporter wrote. [Korea Expose]
I recommend reading the whole thing at the link, but media collusion with not only industry, but political parties is something that is not only a problem in South Korea, but as the last election cycle showed, in the United States as well.
ROK Drop favorite Andrew Salmon has an article in the Korea Times about the upcoming release of a documentary about the dog meat industry in Korea:
On Saturday evening, I attended a film screening at a coffee shop arranged by the Seoul branch of the Asian-American Journalists’ Association. The location was comfortable and the company convivial, but the film was not your typical Saturday night bubble-gum viewing. In fact, it was harrowing.
The film was a documentary covering Korea’s dog-meat trade from all angles. Dog farmers – whose demeanors ranged from coolly professional to savagely inhumane – showed their facilities, activities and doomed charges. A pusillanimous National Assembly adviser prattled about the threat to the “national image” if the trade were legalized. An impotent local official accompanied animal rights activists on an inspection visit to a dog farm, where he was turned away at the gate and ended up apologizing to the farmer. Consumers and chefs discussed canine cuisine.
Most traumatically, the documentary captured footage of diseased, wounded dogs in cages; dead puppies being hurled into the trash; livestock slaughtered with blunt instrument strikes to the skull; and packs of dogs crammed into tiny cages for transport from Jeju to mainland markets.
These sequences are benchmarks for under-cover filmmaking. If we accept Sir Max Hastings’ definition of a journalist’s role (“Cause trouble!”), this was fine journalism. It is a challenging film that deserves to be widely viewed and debated. It wrought behavioral change in me: I have eaten dog meat in the past, but after watching this film, won’t again. (Though, having watched it, I reached the opposite conclusion of the animal-rights activists who helped make the film: I am convinced that the sector needs to be fully legalized, so related slaughter and butchery can be properly regulated.) [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the major point Mr. Salmon makes in his article is that this documentary was not funded by any major news network, but instead crowd sourcing. I don’t know if crowd sourcing is the answer to better journalism in this era of fake news?
I think this high school student probably just scored himself an A in his journalism class after landing an interview with Defense Secretary Mattis:
A US high school student has scored an exclusive interview with Pentagon chief Jim Mattis after an aide of President Donald Trump inadvertently exposed the defense secretary’s cell phone number.
The Washington Post in May ran a photo of Trump and his bodyguard Keith Schiller walking outside the White House, with Schiller clutching a bunch of papers.
Sharp-eyed readers noticed that atop the papers was a yellow sticky note that said “Jim, Mad Dog, Mattis” along with a phone number.
Retired four-star Marine general Mattis has been nicknamed “Mad Dog” by some in the media and by troops that served under him.
The newspaper quickly took the photo down but not before Teddy Fischer, a sophomore (about 16 years old) from Mercer Island High School saw the number and called Mattis with an interview request.
“I called it to see if it was him, because I was pretty curious if this is actually his number or is it kind of a joke,” Fischer told the King 5 local news channel in his home state of Washington.
He didn’t leave a message but went on to text an interview request.
To his surprise, Mattis called back and agreed to schedule an interview, which ultimately would last for about 45 minutes. [AFP]
For those that think war with North Korea is imminent I think this passage from Secretary Mattis during the interview is quite telling:
“The most important thing is, if you have to go to war, then do everything you can not to go to war if at all possible,” the defense secretary added. “Then you’ve got to get the political end state right or you’ll never figure out how to end it successfully.”
Mattis cited the 1991 Desert Storm campaign against Iraq as an exception to the US’s half-century pattern of entering conflicts without a planned political end state. In that conflict, Mattis says, President George H.W. Bush formed a coalition and pushed Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, stopping short of invading Iraq, despite calls to do so.
“We went in with more troops than we needed and we ended it quickly, because he had the political end state right,” Mattis said. [Business Insider]
I don’t think anyone can make the case yet that all options to deal with the North Korean threat have been exhausted. Based on Secretary Mattis’ statement I don’t think he is going to be an advocate of launching any strike on North Korea until all options are exhausted.
The full interview with Mattis can be read at the high school newspaper’s website. The student I thought did a really good job because the interview was actually quite interesting and worth taking the time to read.
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