ABC to Air Sawyer on North Korea Friday Night; She Touted 'Happiest Children in World'

Newsbusters ^ | December 8, 2006 | Brent Baker

[Jet Jaguar]

At 9pm EST/PST (8pm CST/MST) on Friday night (Dec. 8), ABC will air a special edition of Primetime, “North Korea: Inside the Shadows” which will feature Diane Sawyer recounting what she found in that communist nation during a trip there back in October. If her hour-long program matches what aired in October, be prepared for a lot of North Korea officials bashing President Bush and for Sawyer to trumpet “happy” kids.

On the October 19 World News, Sawyer proved little more than a conveyor belt for the repressive communist regime's propaganda. Talking to a North Korean Army General, she relayed how “he said to us, 'make it clear to everyone in the United States, if there is another nuclear test, the person responsible is George Bush,' because he said, 'the Bush administration is backing North Korea into a corner with its pressures and its sanctions.'" In a second segment, Sawyer was taken to a school which she favorably described as “a world away from the unruly individualism of any American school." She gushed: “Ask them about their country, and they can't say enough." A teenage girl declared, in English: “We are the happiest children in the world.” Sawyer ended her piece with video of her and the class singing "Do-Re-Mi" from the Sound of Music. Far from being embarrassed by Sawyer's obsequious approach, anchor Charles Gibson proposed: "A fascinating glimpse of North Korea."

Video clip of Sawyer's segment with the school children (1:09): Real (1.9 MB) or Windows Media (2.7 MB), plus MP3 audio (340 KB)

My October 20 NewsBusters item, “Sawyer Relays NK Propaganda Blaming Bush & Touting 'Happiest Children in the World,'” provided a full transcripts of Sawyer's pieces with the General and the kids and noted how Sawyer's sycophantic segments were reminiscent of Bob Woodruff's reports from North Korea back in June of 2005 as documented in the June 10, 2005 MRC CyberAlert article, “ABC: North Koreans Hate Americans, Offer Great Music/Art for Kids.”

[CedarDave]

I like that new term being used to characterize the liberal MSM: Enemedia

[dfwgator]

She is a graduate of the "Walter Duranty School of Journalism."

[sporkgoddess]

I actually didn't think it was that bad. Some of her questions were really stupid, and it annoyed me how she only went 20 miles out of Pyong Ying and assumed that everyone was living the same lifestyle in North Korea, but she didn't go "They are superior to us in every way!" Plus I learned a lot of interesting things.

[george76]

'Happiest Children in World'

[VeniVidiVici]

Far from being embarrassed by Sawyer's obsequious approach, anchor Charles Gibson proposed: "A fascinating glimpse of North Korea."

LOL! Maybe we should petition Fox to show Team AmericaOf course we wouldn't be able to hear any of it.

[chit*chat]

The media is only too happy to report on the Potemkin Village set up for them instead of looking behind the set up for the truth. Blissfully ignorant is the term, I believe.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Why not? Right before we invaded Iraq she went there and filmed Saddam's birthday celebrations... the children just LOVED it!

[AmericanInTokyo]

Quite frankly, the American People are being denied the truth.

That is, from their own national news media--when it comes to North Korea.

Here in Japan we have had EXCELLENT documentaries on the REAL state of North Korea, running for almost 15 years now. And I mean REALLY excellent documentaries. On Fuji-TV. On Asahi-TV. On NNN-TV. Even NHK-TV at times. Some of the more provocative were risky, underground hidden video/camera films taken nowhere near the staged, Diane Sawyer-type North Korean Workers Party Office Potemkin City Hollywood Set tours--carefully designed and executed to fool the foreigners.

Japanese TV on the other hand, without any illusions nor in my opinion liberal slant, shows the REAL North Korea--there is at least one good story a week, sometimes even more.

As a result, nearly 120 million Japanese from all walks of life are quite informed on what this country, North Korea, is REALLY about and how they treat children in reality, not just in selected "sets" in privileged and closed Pyongyang.

The American people, in contrast, are pathetically fed this ABS-CBS-NBC-CNN crap which is full of lies. As a result, vast vast segments of 250 million American People are ignorant and stupid when it comes to what evil North Korea and Kim Jong il is truly all about.

I cannot say this any clearer. If there are any representatives of the US National Mass Media (TV/Wire Services/Magazines) reading this on FR, and you subscribe to the philosophy of truth in journalism, and you in any way have anything to do with this masking of the truth about the DPRK in the United States, you should be fully ashamed of yourselves. You are below my abject contempt.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #68

Shallow and vain snob and liberalism are the recipe for "the banality of evil."

[omega4179]

Hitler youth where happy too. I suggest Diane move permanently to North Korea and eat bark soup.

[mware]

If they are the happiest children in the world, they are the ones that Mentally Ill, picked to be his little props for the people like Sawyer to film.

[mware]

Famine-struck N Koreans 'eating children'
By Mark Nicol
Last Updated: 11:29pm BST 07/06/2003



Cannibalism is increasing in North Korea following another poor harvest and a big cut in international food aid, according to refugees who have fled the stricken country.

Aid agencies are alarmed by refugees' reports that children have been killed and corpses cut up by people desperate for food. Requests by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to be allowed access to "farmers' markets", where human meat is said to be traded, have been turned down by Pyongyang, citing "security reasons".

Anyone caught selling human meat faces execution, but in a report compiled by the North Korean Refugees Assistance Fund (NKRAF), one refugee said: "Pieces of 'special' meat are displayed on straw mats for sale. People know where they came from, but they don't talk about it."

[Malone LaVeigh]

'" In a second segment, Sawyer was taken to a school which she favorably described as “a world away from the unruly individualism of any American school."

That's because the kids are probably too weak from hunger to get unruly.

[popdonnelly]

That this program was shown is, in fact, an outrage.

[Contra]

The USA and Japan have now warned North Korea of dire consequences if they have another atomic test. I wonder what those consequences might be? It's like that old comedy routine "I dare you to step over this line" and after about 15 meaningless "threats" the guy falls off a cliff behind him because he has retreated so far.

[silverleaf]

OH MY GOD megabarf.

Diane Sawyer fell for this? And her network abandoned their common human decency and journalistic integrity (an anachronism, I know) by broadcasting it?

What next- a visit to the "Happy Little Campers" nursery school in Darfur?

Since we took out Saddam Hussein, there now is no more horrible regime in the world than that of North Korea.

http://www.hrnk.org/TheHiddenGulag-press.pdf

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2483708,00.html

http://www.wright-house.com/right/north-korean-gulag.html

http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2004/october/28.39.html

[Mmmike]

That's a telling picture, like the traffic cops directing imaginary traffic in Pyongyang.

Google Maps is another good way to see just how empty the roads are in North Korea.