As the journalists Laura Ling (凌志美) and Euna Lee complete their third month of detainment in North Korea, it remains rather astonishing that they were there in the first place to report for a fledgling cable channel. But their path there may explain in part why they remain in custody.
They were working not for a news network or a widely read newspaper, but for Current TV, a channel best known, if it is known at all, for an eclectic mix of short, YouTube-style segments about technology, current events and culture. The two journalists, both American, were reportedly working on a piece about North Korean refugees when they were stopped by border guards. Last week, the women were sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison, prompting diplomatic maneuverings for their release.
Start-up news organizations like Current TV are increasingly sending guerrilla journalists to the world’s hot spots, putting a spotlight on news stories in new ways. It is, experts say, another consequence of the fragmented media landscape and the declines in international news coverage by traditional outlets.
The unconventional assignments are an expression of the generational changes in news coverage, especially in TV, where the jobs of camera operators, sound technicians and producers have, in many cases, been subsumed into one do-it-all position. And being unencumbered by a traditional news outlet has its advantages, as the reporters are sometimes free to take more risks.
“There’s an impetus with any upstart news organization that you have to be bolder and you have to be more aggressive than other news organizations to get attention for your stories,” said Kevin Sites, a freelance journalist who covered conflicts for Yahoo. “That has to be admired, that also has a real inherent risk in it.”
One of the risks of this kind of improvised, headlong journalism is that reporters lack the backing of large established news organizations that might have the experience and leverage to deal with foreign governments. While Ling and Lee, full-time employees of Current, have the backing of former US vice president Al Gore, who is a founder of the network, they lack the support system that their colleagues at CNN and the BBC enjoy.
Current TV purposefully has kept quiet about Ling and Lee, steadfastly declining to comment on their status. Initial news reports about the detainments were swiftly removed from the channel’s Web site in April. The two women’s profiles were scrubbed of any reference to the detainments.
When journalists are detained or otherwise endangered overseas, news organizations often decide not to comment as they work aggressively behind the scenes for the release of their employees. Joel Hyatt, the chief executive of Current, appeared in a jacket with the network’s logo at a vigil for them in San Francisco this month.
“Current will continue to tell the important stories affecting our world that no one else is telling,” Hyatt said by e-mail on Sunday.
The families of Ling and Lee have not criticized the network directly, but they did grant a series of interviews earlier this month after keeping quiet for months.
“Our families have been very quiet because of the extreme sensitivity of the situation, but given the fact that our girls are in the midst of a global nuclear standoff, we cannot wait any longer,” Ling’s older sister, Lisa, also a journalist, told supporters in a message to a Facebook group.
She said the women “just wanted to tell the world a story.”
Current, which caters to an 18- to-34-year-old audience and has posted generally low ratings in its four years, tried to fill what it identified as a void in mainstream news coverage with the creation of “vanguard journalism,” a unit assembled to cover “untold stories around the globe,” as the network put it.
Ling is the vice president of the unit, which has received a number of coveted awards, including the duPont for a 2007 investigation of neo-Nazi violence in Russia. Lee is an editor with about a decade of film and TV experience. The March trip to North Korea was her first overseas assignment.
They traveled together with a cameraman and a Chinese guide, but they were working without the broad safety net that a traditional news organization can provide. The cameraman, Mitch Koss, is a veteran journalist who has returned to the US. He was reportedly questioned by Chinese authorities, and he was unavailable for comment last week.
At a big news outlet or a wire service, “they have resources that they can call upon to come to the aid” of journalists, said Robert Mahoney, the deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
For example, he said, “they have access to the airwaves that is not to be underestimated.”
When Alan Johnston, a reporter for the BBC, was kidnapped in Gaza in 2007, the network held rallies, organized petitions, arranged for a simulcast on competing networks and placed advertisements in newspapers to put pressure on his captors and call for his release. He was released after nearly four months in custody.
Major outlets are also able to call on their existing diplomatic and military contacts for help.
“All that is fairly easy when you have a big organization standing behind you,” Mahoney said. “You have a huge treasure of resources behind you.”
Conversely, smaller outlets may not have as much support. The Committee to Protect Journalists found that last year, at least 56 of the 125 jailed journalists worked for online outlets and that 45 of the total were freelancers.
“These freelancers are not employees of media companies and often do not have the legal resources or political connections that might help them gain their freedom,” the committee reported.
As news divisions hit by the recession make cuts in foreign coverage, freelancers shoulder more of the risks.
“Pretty soon we’re just not going to have any of the types of stories Laura and Euna went to cover,” said Daniel Beckmann, a friend of Ling’s and a former colleague at Current TV.
As journalism moves to the Web, new foreign news models and sources are emerging. The music magazine Vice and its video site VBS.tv produced videos from Iraq in 2006. This year, an ambitious new Web site called GlobalPost began. It relies on freelancers in dozens of countries. And over the weekend, online sources like TehranBureau.com, which combines reporting from Iran with observations from outsiders and accepts donations, had surges of traffic as users sought information about the protests in that country.
News distributors are known to come to the aid of freelancers, as they did this year when Roxana Saberi was charged with espionage in Iran. The BBC, ABC, Fox News and National Public Radio released a joint statement and worked behind the scenes to secure her release. She was freed last month.
Through a spokeswoman, she declined to comment, but she has said in interviews that she wants Ling and Lee to know that “you are not alone.”
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