Idiots.
I think you are being harsh. Real journalism, as opposed to the opinion rants and regurgitation of administration fairy tales we get most everywhere else, is a risky business. A lot of the great war photographers of Vietnam died getting those shots. Even more WW2 correspondents died.
Laura Ling's work is featured on a cable TV network "Current". This is a new network and obviously aimed at the Gen X and lower demographic. Lots of web links and hand-held cameras.
This past weekend they played a one hour special that featured Laura Ling as the reporter / camera person and apparently had two others working with her. (3 person production team including the reporter). The subject was the drug wars of Mexico. This is a subject which I am more familiar than most with, as I had a blog dedicated to it this for two years.
It was a truly excellent show. She interviewed police chiefs, newspaper editors, army commanders, farmers, peasants, undertakers, and ordinary mexicans. She went where I've never seen the big guys go: right to the heart of Sinoloa, on patrol with the Border patrol and the Tijuana police. She went so deep into the Mexican heroin and marijuana growing region that her Army escorts refused to go furhter.
It was very well produced piece that really put the problems in Mexico in perspective. I was completely impressed by her reporting. It was four times as thoughtful and in depth as anything one sees on CNN or Fox.
Previously I had thought that Ms. Ling was perhaps a foolish leftist masquarading as a reporter who deserved what she got. Having seen her work she strikes me as among the very best TV journalists that young America has produced, a very brave reporter, who deserves the support of all Americans.
I will certainly be urging the Obama administration to do more to free Ling and her companion reporter.
Appreciate your first hand knowledge and viewpoints.
Unfortunately, we can quite clearly extrapolate that the two of them then did push their luck, in fact, and probably entered North Korean territory--an EXTREMELY inadvisable and illegal act, but where caught when they did not expect it. You would have to be as dumb as paint to do this in a right mind. The sheer terror they must have felt at that moment, with little hope of getting back over the river and into China. As such, sad for them, but they are doing a terrible disservice to the United States and our whole Northeast Asian foreign policy, whilst the security of millions of South Koreans and Japanese are being threatened by North Korea hangs in the balance due to nuclear weapons development and threats to start warlike activity in the next few weeks (following already provocative actions).
Ling and her companion could have been set up, to be used as a bargaining tool -- just as this reporter could have been detained. It's risky business.
I was wondering about this story. Do you think that possibly they saw something they shouldn’t have seen? Everyone seems to be accepting that NKis telling the truth here, and I am wondering if perhaps they didn’t see some ype of military stuff or maybe NK just was afraid they had. I am also not too sure that they had crossed the border into NK.
Jack, your post here about the journalism excellence this gal has displayed in the past is the closest thing in this story to “touching me” with compassion. Thank you for that. However, as “lawless” as that part of Mexico is, it is part of a somewhat “democratic” and law abiding country, and I’m hard pressed to have anything more than “touched” by compassion. I’m far more concerned about the price that will now be exacted by NK whether or not these women are returned, than I am concerned about their safety.
hmm..
Nope... I still got nothing...
Just because someone is “good” at their job or passionate about their beliefs or work does not make their lives worth caring about. That link of “caring” is established through a commonality of beliefs, culture, ideologies, etc.
Honestly, I do NOT have that link with leftists, their physical or mental wellbeing is not something I can devote even the smallest amount of time towards caring about. I simply CANT care, at all, about people who would enslave me and those I love to the collective and or the state.
Maybe shes “brave” but there are always brave people on all sides of a conflict. Im sure there were brave Nazis who were good at their job... There were MANY brave Japanese pilots during WWII... but I certainly would not shed a tear over their graves.
“Current” is just another manifestation of the socialist propaganda mechanism. Anyone who works for it deserves nothing but spite, and will never receive even a brief amount of sympathy from me.
Even if I had the power to press a button and save them, I would not do so. I kinda like the idea of them suffering in what amounts to the culmination of their ideology.
I agree with you.
I am a Christian and pro-life. I don’t like values clarification being practiced by anyone—& basically some are by saying that since the reporters were likely liberal, their lives aren’t worth caring about. I am conservative, pro-life, and I care.
Wow, if one of my kids did something stupid like trespass (and we don’t know for sure that the reporters actually had crossed over the border or they were simply captured by some over-zealous guards), I would want all Americans to care. My kids are libertarian/conservataives & I would want this socialist administration to be working for their release—on many different fronts.
Frankly I think it is because we have a weak WH that this and the other saber rattling by NK has occured. If we do nothing we are reinforcing perception of weakness.
I don’t feel we as humans are allowed to establish the value of another human based on ideology.
I read that these two journalists were reporting on the sex-slave industry between China and North Korea. I commend them for that, and I don’t think that is a Liberal or Conservative issue. The sex slave industry is horrific, it is a criminal enterprize with the worst of motives being perpetrated on innocents & the reporters were exposing it. I don’t care who they work for, good for them!
I leave the value of life up to God and he did not discriminate on ideology. The death camps in North Korea are on a par with Nazi Germany—I have read reports on them. I don’t think anyone deserves to be there—esp. reporters who may have crossed the border doing a report on sex crimes.