Barbara Demmick: Unbalanced

Barbara Demmick, who scribed the "North Korea: Without the Rancor" front page LAT piece that lit up the blogosphere, has described herself as a balanced reporter who's told both sides of the North Korea story. Not according to Nexis.

In the last six months, the hard-working Demmick has written about a dozen stories, evenly split between tsunami coverage and NoKo watching. Nowhere in any of the NoKo stories is there anything remotely approaching an objective, definitive presentation of the excesses and failures of the Kim Il Jong dictatorship.

But before we go to the stories, back to Demming's self-defense. What exactly what is the other side of the North Korea story? On the one hand its the story of a repressive despot who condones tearing babies out of pregnant prisoners and on-the-street executions of those who criticise him, who starves his nation in order to build himself a bomb, who kidnaps and enslaves, who reportedly manufactures heroin and methamphetimine to boost foreign trade, and who has one of the world's largest collections of pornography. Now, on the other hand ... what??

So, to Nexis. I have not posted links, which Nexis does not provide, but you can go to the LAT Web site and bring each of these stories up if you're interested. For skimmers, go right to the December 29 story. It is the best, most egregious example of Demming's failure to report objectively.

Feb. 27: Allies Ask N. Korea to Return to Talks.

No criticism of regime or presentation of its human rights or economic record. The strongest comment is:

Analysts say North Korea is playing hard to get in order to win economic aid from the international community.

"At the end of the day, I think North Korea will return to the negotiating table, but only when they have milked everything and gotten as many bribes and concessions for showing up," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu.

Feb. 22: N. Korea Hints It Could Return to Nuclear Talks

No mention of torture or starvation. Demmick covers Kim Il Jong as if he is capable of saying something believable and mentions nothing of previous lying and backtracking:

Today's announcement was, like most North Korean dispatches, couched in enough conditional rhetoric to make it difficult to decipher. But at least in principle, North Korea's leader gave lip service to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Jan. 3: Americans Find a Door to N. Korea -- A Chinese city is filled with people from the U.S. who want to reach out to the impoverished, forbidden country across the river.

The story of Korean-Americans who live in Tumen, China, as close as you can get to North Korea. There is a hinting undertone of bad stuff in North Korea, but nothing is explained, no details are given. Sample undertones:

• "Those trees you see are just for show," he says, pointing at a tidy village on the North Korean side. "When you get further away from the river, there are no trees, barely any crops. The soil is too depleted for any of that.
• After retirement, he wanted to do something to help North Korea, but because it would be practically impossible to move to the hermetic and impoverished country, he set himself up in Tumen instead.
• For instance, North Korean authorities have assigned mostly older workers to his factory. Though eager, they often are in poor physical shape. "By 10 a.m.," he said, "they are so hungry, they can hardly walk."

Demmick has made it clear there's poverty there, but that's it. No mention of human rights violations of any kind is shared with her readers.

December 29, 2004: Talk Swirling of North Korean Regime Collapse -- Since Kim ordered his portraits removed from buildings in the capital, activists flooded the Net with unsubstantiated rumors of instability.

Must reading for any student of LAT's pandering to this evil regime. Demmick should be fired on the spot for this 1,311 words that prove either her obliviousness to reality or her acceptance of North Korea as an acceptable state.

As the headline says, the article covers rumors of the imminent collapse of the country, but dismisses them out of hand, because previous predictions did not come to pass. Why would North Korea be on the verge of collapse? Glad you asked. Here's what Demmick thinks might be the cause:

• It "may have less to do with political forces inside North Korea than outside." This is a the theme; that if NoKo were to fail, it would be because Bush had put enough pressure on it, out of his "axis of evil" fanaticism, that it finally collapsed. No thought is given to the theory that there might be a humanitarian reason to bring about the collapse, or that the evil regime might collapse from within.
• Bush's re-election, Demmick says, has "emboldened critics of the North Korean regime," made up "largely of Christian missionaries," who have flooded the internet "with unsubstantiated rumors about instability inside North Korea." It's those confusing, extreme moral people up to their tricks, isn't it, Demmick? This is so bogus. As if critics of evil incarnate were mulling about, looking for something to embolden them, and only finding it in a US election, not in the reality of what goes on under Kim Jong Il.
• She finds a US Assistant Secretary of State, James A. Kelly, who calls Kim "rational." That does not jibe with the State Department's own report, which basically calls him demented and demonic, but Demmick doesn't share that report with her readers.
• She says that a "crack down on the use of cell phones also might indicate a feeling of insecurity on the part of the government." A crack down on cell phones? What about the crack downs on "social activists" -- 150,000 to 200,000 of whom are imprisoned in conditions described in the State Department report in appalling detail. But not a word of that from Demmick.
• The article mentions a famine in 1996, but says nothing about conditions today, as if the famine weren't continuing. In fact, she says the NoKo economy is stronger today than at any point since the fall of the Soviet Empire -- but she never explains what she means by "stronger." Stronger than what? So they've moved from starvation in the freezing cold to being very hungry in the freezing cold?
  

Dec. 9, 2004: Kim Ousts Key Relative, a Potential Rival, From N. Korean Government -- Purge of brother-in-law Chang Sung Taek, who is said to be favored by South Korea and the U.S., is seen as an effort to reinforce power.

Again, not a peep about conditions in North Korea. No mention of poverty, hunger, the female sex trade, the gulags. Just politics within the dynasty, that's all. The only hint that something might be amiss:

The purge is one of several measures Kim has taken this year to consolidate his hold over what is in effect a dynastic rule. Among other important changes, North Korea has reportedly adopted a new criminal code that increases penalties for people who express criticism of the government or bring in banned books, videos or music from the outside.

No mention is made of what those increased penalties are; i.e., that people can be picked up off the street, tortured, disappeared, murdered, just for saying Beloved Leader isn't really all that Beloved.

Coupled with today's sole letter to the editor, covered in the post above, it is clear that the LAT is defiantly, blindly pro-Kim Jung Il and anti-Bush. Put another way, pro-Communist despotism, anti-American Democratic freedom. Apply that thinking to Iraq or Cuba and you see just how high a stench is coming out of The Tribune Company's West Cost mothership.