Current TV is Broken

On March 17th, two journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, working for Al Gore's citizen generated content site - Current TV, were seized by North Korea while they were filming on the Chinese- North Korean border, but if you go to the site, it's as thought the story doesn't exist.

Current TV is the all user-generated web and TV channel started a couple of years ago by Al Gore.  Now you'd think that of all the types of media organizations out there, a social media site would be all over this story - the community up in arms, leaving thousands of comments etc. And they might be, but you'll never know.  Instead, Current TV has removed all user-created/posted content about their plight from their site, and they themselves make no mention of them.  

It's weird, kind of like the old hard core Christian Scientists that never mentioned anyone dying - on Current TV it's all happy land.  They didn't really get captured; they just aren't there anymore.  

The two are to be tried by the North Korean government for illegal entry and will stand trial in court, for "hostile acts" which is a crime punishable by years in a labor camp.  According to North Korea state-run media outlet KCNA, authorities were "making a preparation for indicting them at a trial on the basis of the already-confirmed suspicions."

These are no small charges.

To make matters worse, they just happened to get caught around the time North Korea chose to give the world the finger, by launching a three-stage missile against nearly every nation's condemnation of the act.

What story the reporters were working on is still a bit up in the air.  Most reports have them doing a piece about North Korean refugees fleeing the poverty of the country - various stories say that they were acting on their "journalistic urge for a scoop" and crossed the frozen Tumen River, which is the border between the two countries, to get some interviews.  Since this area is a popular area for refugees to flee the country, this makes some sense.

But, Reporters Without Borders has a story that says that one of them sent an email saying that they had wanted to investigate the networks organizing the smuggling of women out of North Korea and their sale in China

North Korea is notoriously difficult on journalists.  In the rare event that journalists are allowed they are closely watched by the authorities and are prevented from interviewing anyone from the public.  The government routinely grabs anyone who speaks against the state and chucks them in jail -  some estimate that at least 200,000 people are currently detained in North Korea's concentration and ‘reeducation' camps.

In either case the two are currently ‘detained', and are looking at 5 to 10 years in prison.

But, back to Current TV.  You won't find one single story about the journalists on the site.  Not a mention, not a simple statement about ‘We all share the concern of the community..."  Nope, nothing.

Right from the day the two were detained, Current TV hasn't said a word.   Even coverage by major news organizations has been thin, leaving it up to independent sources and groups to continue to report the story, today, for example, the International Women's Media Foundation and Reporters Without Borders announced that they were jointly launching a petition for their immediate release.

I don't think this is a good idea (not the petition, Current TV's censorship).  Even assuming that there are diplomatic efforts being made, and here our Ambassador Susan Rice isn't saying much, accept that the two are safe "to the best of our knowledge", shutting the conversation down says at least two things:

1.  That the North Korean's know what Current TV is, that they would actually see comments left on Current TV, get them translated, then pass them along to Kim Joing-il, who would then take great offense that someone named ‘fuzzycorners' has left a comment that decried the detention of the journalists, and because of this Kim would throw Laura and Euna in prison and throw away the key, and

2.  That this whole ‘user's control the media' is true right up to the point it isn't.
The first is just silly, the second is sad.  

Fyi: 32-year-old, Laura Ling is a native of San Francisco Bay and sister of the former co-hostess of The View, Lisa Ling.