Why Is Current Taking No Heat Over Euna Lee And Laura Ling?

I suspected this to be the case.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 4 -- One woman approached China's border with North Korea as a seasoned foreign correspondent, the other as a sharp editor who was on her first trip abroad in her new role as a producer.

I knew Euna Lee as an editor. Her first producing assignment was to go to... North Korea? And the only possible reason for that is that she spoke Korean and grew up in Seoul.

This is not to say that she's not a smart person, or that she is overly aggressive. And yes, someone fluent in Korean would be helpful in chronicling the story. But in the field, the producer makes the decisions. The "seasoned foreign correspondent" does not. And so Current TV sent a first-time producer to perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth. They played on her ambition and figured just anyone who spoke Korean and who they could pay cheaply would do. And when things went catastrophically wrong, they shut their traps about it and censored material on their website. Now that they've been released, it's a Laura Ling film festival on Current.

(That whole "seasoned foreign correspondent" thing about Laura Ling, by the way? I've seen a couple segments. One has her walking through a 7-11 shop in China picking out different snacks. The story they were sent to do in the border region was about human trafficking. That's several orders of magnitude different.)

The "citizen journalist" model is great and all, but air-dropping unseasoned people into war zones and giving them none of the resources to succeed produces outcomes like this. And it's completely unfair to the two women, who were brave in their ordeal. You have to blame the management decision to send them there. They treat their staff like spare parts, giving them no training or resources, and send them abroad to essentially poke a bear with a sharp stick.

This is not an uninformed armchair opinion, by the way. I know people at Current. OSHA should step in.

...All that said, John Bolton should have offered to serve a substitute sentence of 12 years hard labor in a prison camp if he wants to keep his country's manly neocon manliness intact. I'm sure nobody would miss him.

How obvious was it that Fred Hiatt would ring up Bolton to write an op-ed about this?

Not So Current

The vigil last night in Los Angeles for Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two journalists detained in North Korea and put on trial today, brought over 500 people to a neighborhood restaurant in Santa Monica, featuring the Lee and Ling families, Tia Carrere, soon to be Congresswoman Judy Chu, and a number of spoken word and musical artists. CNN carried a live interview on Anderson Cooper 360 with Lisa Ling and the husbands of the two detainees, where the families asked for dialogue and diplomacy and not to conflate this situation with the nuclear standoff between the North Koreans and the West. Even Roxana Saberi, the US journalist detained and then released in Iran, sent a letter of support.

You know who hasn't said a peep? Their employer.

While the story gets widespread international attention, Current TV has been absolutely silent on it—going so far as to pull user-submitted stories on the case from its own site. A search of Current.com this morning turns up only one single user-submitted Yahoo news article on the case, which had been posted less than 30 minutes ago. This, even while the story was simultaneously on the front page of NYTimes.com, and while Ling's celebrity sister is desperately trying to get publicity for her case.

Why the hell is Current so quiet about the fate of its own reporters? We emailed and asked them earlier this week, but they haven't responded to us. But a tipster tells us that Current's top management made the conscious decision to "silence" the issue, and that Current employees have been instructed not to discuss it.

I'll tell you why they're so silent. They're RESPONSIBLE. They put these young journalists in dangerous situations without any concern, clearly, for their well-being, and when it blows up in their face they would rather ignore the issue that admit fault. It's been a consistent pattern of airlifting young journalists into war zones and basically giving them a sharp stick and telling them to poke a bear.

I'm sure the State Department has told them to keep quiet. But I'm sure they told the family to keep quiet too, and they didn't. It's a really disgusting display, or lack thereof, by Current, and Al Gore should be ashamed of himself.

Paging Bill Richardson

First I heard that my acquaintance Euna Lee was captured at the border by North Korea. Then I heard she was headed to Pyongyang. And now I hear that they are putting her on trial.

SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea is preparing to indict two detained US journalists after it accused them of illegally entering the communist country, state media said early Tuesday.

"The illegal entry of US reporters into the DPRK and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by evidence and their statements," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

The report said "a competent organ of the DPRK (North Korea)" had investigated the pair.

"The organ is carrying on its investigation and, at the same time, making a preparation for indicting them at a trial on the basis of the already confirmed suspicions," the report said.

The pair, Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, who work for Current TV in California, would be allowed consular access and would be treated according to international law, it added.

This could not have come at a better time for the North Koreans, just when they are forcing a confrontation over what they term a satellite launch but which the international community considers a missile test. Obviously they are using Lee and Ling as bait so they can continue their launch without American interference.

There is really only one man for this job.

Pyongyang has in the past freed Americans it has detained.

In 1996, former US congressman Bill Richardson negotiated the release of US citizen Evan Hunziker, who had been detained for three months on suspicion of spying after swimming the Yalu river.

Richardson, who is now the governor of New Mexico, at the time described Hunziker as a confused young man who had engaged in an "adventuresome frolic apparently under the influence of alcohol."

In 1994, Richardson helped negotiate the release of a US military helicopter pilot shot down after straying into North Korea.

Dear Bill Richardson,

You are wanted in Pyongyang.

Best,
D-Day

The Detainees In North Korea

Just a quick word on this: it is exceedingly weird to me to know the subject of a major news story, and even weirder to know the subject of an international incident. Euna Lee is an editor I knew briefly when I lived in San Francisco, as we worked at the same place. She moved on to Current TV and was sent to China to film around the Tumen River border area with North Korea. North Korean authorities picked up her and her fellow journalist Laura Ling and have detained them for several days now, claiming that they entered DPRK territory. The latest reports put the two in Pyongyang, and the State Department has opened talks for their release.

It is completely irresponsible of Current to send these two young women alone to a dangerous border region, particularly at a time when the North Korean government wants to test their limits with a new Administration. Current's whole "citizen journalist" model doesn't mean you airdrop citizens into difficult circumstances and essentially ask them to poke a bear with a stick. But at this point, we have to hope the State Department can extract their release. Give them a second of your thoughts if you can. I don't really know what else can be done, but if you have ideas, throw them in the comments.