I caught a little of Good Morning America to find that Diane Sawyer is in North Korea, where she is breathlessly witnessing staged performances by North Korean intelligence agents dressed in peasant/worker costumes.
For anyone who lived through the 1980s—or the 1930s, if you recall the journalism of Walter Duranty —this type of story follows a predictable plot line. American journalist goes to foreign land, and finds that despite the regrettable actions of both governments, the people there are just like us.
The message being that people are good, but governments screw things up.
I largely agree with that assessment, but I think journalists ought to be wary about it, when dealing with a government as odious as the regime in North Korea. It is a very short distance from where Diane Sawyer is right now to a posture of moral equivalence—if only our government were better, we could get along with these poor people.
There is no moral equivalence between a totalitarian regime like Kim Jong Il’s and the liberal democracies of the west. And if Diane Sawyer thinks she is going to see or hear anything other than exactly what the North Korean government wants her to see and hear, she is sadly mistaken.
This sort of intelligence operation is known as a Potemkin village— and the concept has been with us from the time of the Tsars. You show a person something that purports to be everyday life, which is, instead, a facade of what you want them to think.
If Diane Sawyer wanted to impress me, she’d slip her government handlers and go into the North Korean countryside, like Fitzroy Maclean did in the 1930s in Central Asia.
Otherwise, the only insights she’s going to glean are going to be the occasional papered-over cracks in the facades that she won’t be allowed to linger on by her handlers.
One must remember that the professionals of what is laughingly called journalism judge themselves what is wonderful and good and to be showered with accolades and given awards. That is precisely why repeated appeals to the Pullitzer Committee from the Republic of the Ukraine to revoke Duranty’s New York Times Pullitzer Prize falls on deaf ears. It matters not that Duranty and the Times lied repeated to advance a political agenda and failed to report what they knew – that millions died at the hands of “Uncle Joe” Stalin, mostly starved to death in the Ukraine. Facts? Don’t bother journalists with facts!
The slimy bastards.
If you want to see how much of a Potemkin Village North Korea is, see that chapter in Anthony Daniels, ‘Utopias Elsewhere.’ His trip to the phony department store is memorable—people filing in and out as if they were customers, nobody buying anything, the chaos when he actually tries to make a purchase.
He toured all the workers paradises with a gimlet eye, just before the fall of Communism (in most of them), as part of a tour of true believer political pilgrims.
The whole book is hilarious.
What Byron said, dammit. That was a good book.
A young Russian went on a visit to the DPRK and took some photos Li’l Kim would just as soon people not see. Linky
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On second thought… I can’t find the photos I was looking for at the link provided. ( this->shame() )
I was looking for the site that had the mock-up of life in the DPRK, including the ‘computer’ that was clearly a cardboard box; people peeing in the river… weirdly the link above looked familiar enough.
Oh well. Sorry.
here’s what I was looking for
The above is all captioned in Russia but this link has some translation: link
Unfortunately, you have to understand that most journalists–most people, in fact–have middling intellects. Being a ‘good’ student usually means nothing more than agreeing with the prejudices of whatever professor you encounter.
Plenty of ‘good’ students are in journalism. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re intellectually agressive or even origianl. In fact, someone who’s intellectually agressive is more likely to be thwarted in college. Sawyer is definitely a mediocre intellect–but she looks good in a suit.
That’s a very nice euphemism for “my box of hammers thinks these gonzos are stupid.”