On March 17, American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were arrested for allegedly crossing the border from China into North Korea while reporting for Al Gore’s user-generated news organization Current TV. In doing so, they became unwitting players in Kim Jong-Il’s ongoing political theatrics, aimed at the U.S. in particular. This drama came to a head today when they were sentenced to 12 years hard labor by North Korea’s highest court for committing “grave crimes” against the country.

For the past month and a half, Gore and Current TV have been mum on the situation, causing SF Gate blogger Phil Bronstein to question what’s going on with our former Vice President:

“Where is Mr. Gore, Nobel winner and formerly the second most powerful person in the world in all this? How about anything from SF-based Current TV, say maybe even just a public expression of concern? At the moment I wrote this, the big story on their web site is, ‘Top 10 Sexting Acronyms For Adults.’” (as of this writing, one of the top stories is “James Cameron Joins Heavy Metal” but alas, no mention of Lee and Ling)

One hopes that Gore’s silence has been out of concern for his reporters’ safety, given the situation’s potential volatility. Indeed, Fox News reports that the State Department “did not rule out” the possibility of Gore’s involvement in negotiations but refused to comment further.

Most journalists and North Korea watchers believe that Lee and Ling will eventually be released. Jason Zengerle over at The New Republic echoes the prevailing sentiment that Pyongyang will use the journalists as a bargaining chip for bilateral talks with the U.S.: “American diplomats will jump through whatever hoops the North Koreans set up for them; and that will be that.” And, Yonhap News predicts that Pyongyang will try to get the U.S. and UN to soften any political and financial sanctions in response to North Korea’s recent nuclear missile tests. 

Regardless of the outcome, both Bronstein and LaToya Peterson at Racialicious view this as a defining moment for Current TV’s user-generated, “democratic” mode of journalism.

Bronstein writes: “Is this what happens when information becomes more democratic? No one’s willing to step up? If you work for a viewer-supplied TV cable network, does that mean no one has your back? This does not help the argument that the value of large news organizations is dwindling to nothing in favor of small entrepreneurs. There’s no encouragement for 2.0 reporting when its practitioners can disappear into the gulag with no one to fight for them.”

Peterson writes: “As we enter a world where corporate interests often trump stories that impact every day people, Current TV’s work developing user generated content and training citizens to become journalists is rapidly emerging as a model to follow to keep citizens engaged in their communities.

But, it is like the old truism: Nothing in life comes for free. In the process of fighting for truth, we have to dig deeper and go to places we never thought we’d go, often at the risk of running afoul of authorities who would rather this information was not released.”

Sources: New York Times, SF Gate, Fox News, The New Republic, Yonhap News, Racialicious

Over at Nerve, Steve Almond parses his desire for uberconservative pundit Sean Hannity, the “angry, engorged and totally hot” object of his affection. Almond acknowledges the flaws in Hannity's character—"I find you, as a moral actor, repulsive," he writes—but a few years after appearing on Hannity's Fox News show, he just can't shake his lingering fascination with the man. "[W]hile I find your demeanor shrill and brutish," he writes, "I also find it strangely . . . alluring." 

[W]hen I appeared on your show I couldn't see you. But I could hear you—loud and clear. And that's what really captured me. The liberal in me was appalled by your hectoring. But the insecure male in me felt, I don't know. . . ravaged is probably the best word. Within ten seconds, you were interrogating me. Within twenty, you were insulting me. Within thirty, you were disgusted. There was something so raw and personal about it all.

Check out the rest of the letter here, or revisit Almond's treatises on candy bars, writing about candy bars, and how to write a sex scene.  

(Thanks, Bookforum.)

Image by bobgo29, licensed under Creative Commons.

At the beginning of 2007, news concerning the war in Iraq made up 10 percent of Fox News’ total air time. News and opinions on Anna Nicole Smith’s death occupied almost the exact same amount of time.

How can the passing of a TrimSpa spokeswoman/graverobber wife make as much noise as fallen soldiers? Well, death has frequently been called the great equalizer, and it proves that stars are just like us after all: mortal. In the Fall 2008 edition of The Antioch Review, writer Daniel Harris offers up "Celebrity Deaths," a brilliantly bitter essay investigating the cult of tabloid-style mourning (excerpt only).

The author theorizes that celebrities are like the monarchs of Europe and ancient Egypt; they have a physical body, subject to pain and disease and bad hair days, and a symbolic body, the one the public sees during premiers and TV interviews. It is rare that the public gets a glimpse of a celebrity’s private self, but when it happens, we latch on tight.

A celebrity dying seem to bring normal people to their knees. The outpouring of love started with Rudolph Valentino’s death in 1926 and continues to this day (minus the suicides). But that grief genuine? Not at all, concludes Harris. The flood of sorrow following any famous fatality is part of what he calls “recreational grief,” where loss is turned into an entertaining spectacle every time. “Because Internet mourners grieve for the fun of it, they eulogize stars indiscriminately, the virgin as well as the whore, the saint as well as the sinner, Princess Diana as well as Anna Nicole Smith.”

A star’s death gives the public the opportunity to connect with them on an intimate level, for once and for all. “Our contact with celebrities is so limited that we view them as mirages until the one event that restores to them their real physical presence, their deaths, the moment of our greatest intimacy with them”

And even the act of death is heightened: How many times have we read that a star didn’t just fall ill, they “collapsed”?

Despite all the attention we pay to these events, our celebrity worship (both in life and in death) goes against our better judgment. Somehow famous people “retain their hypnotic sway over their followers even if they set a deplorable example of ostentation and promiscuity.” Diamond-studded phones and “sex addiction,” anyone?

But these demigods don’t exist in a vacuum. We, as spectators and consumers of culture, are complicit in the breakneck lifestyle of celebrities. Our adoration smothers them and our expectations for their talent force them to produce or get shoved out of the spotlight for someone who can.

Harris wraps up his essay by exploring the notion that stars drink and snort themselves to death in order to numb the pain of being famous. But what if, instead of partying to death out of misery, they’re just having fun? What if they’re celebrating instead of self-medicating?

“There is no link in popular culture between creativity, unhappiness, and death. The link is between happiness, death, and the money to purchase the pills, coke, and intravenous drugs necessary for a glorious if inadvertent exit out of the gossip columns and into the obits.”

Image courtesy of Bob Jagendorf, licensed under Creative Commons.

Why do cable news shows exist? They don’t break news, but once they find a story they like—the Reverend Wright kerfuffle or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for example—the talking heads will bang on the controversy like a child with a saucepan and a metal spoon. And the problems with cable news don’t stay quarantined inside of Fox News or CNN. A recent article for the American Journalism Review (AJR) scrutinizes the "cable news effect" on the rest of the mainstream media. Most journalists understandably recoil at the notion of the 24-hour news networks influencing editorial decisions, but cable news’ ability to keep a story on the media agenda is undeniable.

Cable news viewership is eclipsed by that of network news, according to research by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), but its influence is not to be underestimated. One reason, according to AJR, is that most mainstream newsrooms have at least one television constantly tuned to a 24 hour news network. Some editors have spoken of an “osmosis” effect, where the cable news ideas tend to seep into the minds of the rest of the media.

It must be difficult for cable news programmers to fill some 18 hours of programming each day. But instead of focusing on important issues, PEJ research shows that, “tabloid-tinged crime and celebrity” stories and bombastic pundits tend to dominate the airwaves. The repetitive, formulaic coverage offered by the 24-hour news networks doesn’t always serve to elevate public discourse, but it gets the point across.

The problem is that the cable news formula has been working. The AJR reports that cable news has been gaining in  popularity and prestige over recent years, and so far there’s no reason to think that trend won’t continue. So long as cable news continue to influence the rest of the media, those talking heads won’t go away any time soon.

It’s been an eventful week for the hip-hop artist Nas. Wednesday afternoon, he joined ColorofChange.org and MoveOn.org outside of Fox News Channel’s New York City headquarters to protest the network's coverage of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign—treatment that he and the groups allege is racist. (SOHH and Racewire have photos of the demonstration.)

The rapper then proceeded to an appearance on the Colbert Report with a 620,127-signature petition demanding that network president Roger Ailes "find a solution to address racial stereotyping and hate-mongering before it hits the airwaves." He also performed the anti-Fox track “Sly Fox” from his new album, which debuted at #1 on Tuesday after months of controversy over its title. Nas originally planned to call the LP Nigger, but abandoned the idea amid qualms from music retailers and his label. Ultimately, he released the album eponymously.

Nas' Fox-slamming and Billboard chart–topping comes at a time of heightened racial tensions in the media: not just criticism of Fox’s Obama coverage, but last week’s New Yorker cover brouhaha and ongoing questions about the role that race plays in Obama’s campaign. This week, the Root explores younger generations’ relationship to race, with a series of essays about Generation Y’s post-racist ambitions, its use of the n-word, and its supposed colorblindness. 

Image by kokuziu, licensed under Creative Commons.

For more head-clutchingly inane evidence of what apparently passes for political analysis at Fox News, I’d like to thank Daily Kos for alerting us to the network’s fair and balanced examination of Barack and Michelle Obama’s now-famous fist-bump last week—or “pound,” as those crazy kids are calling it these days—courtesy of aspiring semiotician E.D. Hill, who introduces the segment by suggesting that the gesture might be a “terrorist fist jab.” She then consults a “body language expert” to shed some light on the meaning behind the bump/thump/pound/jab/terrorist-call-to-arms. Hill’s side of the conversation can be best summarized thusly: “Golly! Who knows the mysterious significance of these bizarre rituals committed by popular culture, with which I am so laughably out of touch!”

Image by  Chad Davis , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Forget championing fair and balanced reporting. Fox News has other problems on its hands. The New York Times reports that Fox News’ Manhattan newsroom is infested with bedbugs:

In an interview on Monday, Warren Vandeveer, senior vice president for operations and engineering at Fox News, said the cable channel had realized it had a problem a few weeks ago, when an employee “caught a bug and showed it to us.” An exterminator determined that the incursion was limited to a “very small area in the newsroom.”

As Media Bistro’s TV Newser reported back in November, the broadcaster has battled the bugs before.

—Hannah Lobel 

So-called crime analyst Rod Wheeler appeared in June on the O’Reilly Factor to sound the alarm: There was, he claimed, an “epidemic” of violent lesbian gangs sweeping the United States.

The O’Reilly website’s synopsis of the interview quotes Wheeler as saying, “There’s a national underground of women who are actually recruiting kids as young as 10 years old to be members of their organizations. Some of the kids have reported that they were forced into performing sex acts. Some of these groups carry pink pistols and they cause a lot of hurt to a lot of people.”

Susy Buchanan and David Holthouse followed up a month later with a report posted on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website and recently published in the Fall issue of the organization’s magazine Intelligence Report. Their investigation found that Wheeler’s “national underground” network was a fantasy constructed by piecing together and exaggerating a handful of otherwise unrelated incidents.

In the O’Reilly segment, Wheeler, a former Metropolitan D.C. police officer, cited D.C.-area incidents to support his claims. But Detective Patrick Word, president of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, told Intelligence Report that his 400-member group “reports only one lesbian gang” in the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia area. Most of the other details Wheeler cited were based on sensationalized or falsified media reports; some, like the pink pistols, were made up entirely.

Buchanan and Holthouse’s investigation helped drag hasty qualifications and retractions out of both Wheeler and O’Reilly. Unfortunately, once such a sensational story circulates, the damage has largely been done.

Rashad Robinson, the senior director of media programs for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) told Intelligence Report, “This type of reporting creates a climate of homophobia and fear and perpetuates dangerous stereotypes of gay people and definitely helps feed into a climate of anti-gay discrimination and violence, which is a true national epidemic, but not one you’re likely to see reported with such zeal by Bill O’Reilly.”

—Jason Ericson

Actually, Bjorn Lomborg never really went away. Armed with his labyrinthine economic models, the Danish statistician is a frequent go-to commentator for media outlets seeking some “balance” in their global warming coverage. He gladly obliges them by trash-talking the Kyoto Protocol, pointing out that polar bears will be just fine when the ice caps melt, and serving up other mathematically derived opinions that cut against conventional environmental wisdom. Lomborg has written a new book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, that’s landed him choice coverage in sympathetic outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Lest anyone else be too inclined to take him seriously, it’s worth remembering that Lomborg’s sketchy science has been pretty soundly thrashed by Scientific American, Grist, and famed biologist E.O. Wilson, who called his first book “a sordid mess.” —Keith Goetzman.