http://patterico.com/2005/03/07/more-on-demick-and-the-north-korean-puff-piece-demick-responds-to-hugh-hewitt-but-ducks-an-appearance-on-his-radio-show/ Harangues that just make sense Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:20:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 http://patterico.com/2005/03/07/more-on-demick-and-the-north-korean-puff-piece-demick-responds-to-hugh-hewitt-but-ducks-an-appearance-on-his-radio-show/#comment-156953 OneFreeKorea » al-Yahoo Watch: News Consumers Need Warning Labels, Too Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:07:38 +0000 /?p=2728#comment-156953 [...] And given how little trust many of give journalists whose records we don’t know anything about, might this not be a way to rebuild the esteem of the profession?  The professionals do not deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the hacks among them, but that’s happening.  You want an example?  I would cite the ferocious attack by some conservative bloggers on the L.A. Times’s Barbara Demick.  Perhaps Demick too easily presumed that he readers would understand what she does:  that the subject of her story was a North Korean government agent.  In the context I cite here, I can understand why Hugh Hewitt attacked one piece of her work.  Plenty of other journalists – Dafna Lizner, Glenn Kessler, and Barbara Slavin — consistently downplay North Korea’s misdeeds.  Demick, however, is actually one of the most professional and diligent journalists who covers Korea, along with Jasper Becker, Donald MacIntyre, Bradley Martin, Don Kirk, Choe Sang-Hun, David Sanger, and the Joongang Ilbo’s Brian Lee (I’d add that you have the whole ideological range in that list).  Hewitt didn’t see the story in the broader context of Demick’s sincere efforts to tell the story of what is going on in North Korea, one of the most important stories in the world today, and one of the hardest to cover.  If there was a Barbara Demick page linked at the bottom of her story, that misunderstanding might not have happened. [...] [...] And given how little trust many of give journalists whose records we don’t know anything about, might this not be a way to rebuild the esteem of the profession?  The professionals do not deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the hacks among them, but that’s happening.  You want an example?  I would cite the ferocious attack by some conservative bloggers on the L.A. Times’s Barbara Demick.  Perhaps Demick too easily presumed that he readers would understand what she does:  that the subject of her story was a North Korean government agent.  In the context I cite here, I can understand why Hugh Hewitt attacked one piece of her work.  Plenty of other journalists – Dafna Lizner, Glenn Kessler, and Barbara Slavin — consistently downplay North Korea’s misdeeds.  Demick, however, is actually one of the most professional and diligent journalists who covers Korea, along with Jasper Becker, Donald MacIntyre, Bradley Martin, Don Kirk, Choe Sang-Hun, David Sanger, and the Joongang Ilbo’s Brian Lee (I’d add that you have the whole ideological range in that list).  Hewitt didn’t see the story in the broader context of Demick’s sincere efforts to tell the story of what is going on in North Korea, one of the most important stories in the world today, and one of the hardest to cover.  If there was a Barbara Demick page linked at the bottom of her story, that misunderstanding might not have happened. [...]

]]> http://patterico.com/2005/03/07/more-on-demick-and-the-north-korean-puff-piece-demick-responds-to-hugh-hewitt-but-ducks-an-appearance-on-his-radio-show/#comment-9406 Paul Wed, 09 Mar 2005 00:45:27 +0000 /?p=2728#comment-9406 The L.A. Times: Champion of the Other Side The L.A. Times: Champion of the Other Side

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