Letter to the Editor: Journalism and the North Korean nuclear threat
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I read an oped the other day written by a woman who has been a foreign correspondent and journalist for many, many years. Maybe too many years. And although she wears and proffers her badge of journalistic credibility proudly, she, like many journalists, sometimes look too closely at what they think they know leaving their natural instincts to observe and calculate behind …to get the scoop.
Some, many, use the over-popularized moniker of “journalist” as a pass to what they believe is the truth, as well as to their own career success, fame and fortune. Woodward and Bernstein are their role models and heroes. They dig for the truth, they die for the truth, and we appreciate their effort. They no doubt do important work.
I’m not a current active journalist but I have been, and I’ve been around enough and seen enough to take license to comment on this subject. Plus, I watch ‘Homeland’. I’m probably not smart enough or literate enough as a writer to be a great journalist, but I have good instincts and power of observation. I read a lot and have an interest and a curiosity about people, power and truth. So, I have an opinion for whatever it’s worth.
This particular journalist and columnist was talking about giving “credit where credit is due” regarding president Trump seemingly bringing peace to the Korean peninsula. Although she was fair and honest in her overall assessment of Trump regarding his quirky behavior and dalliances, I think she was missing something regarding Trump’s role in a Korean peace and a denuclearization of North Korea. I may be wrong and her ‘credit where credit is due’ theme may be correct as she sees it, however, I think she’s jumping the gun …missing the boat.
There is a long history of conflict on the Korean peninsula, with worldwide implications that this particular journalist outlined. And although history tends to repeat itself, and people’s true nature seldom changes, a person can’t coast on what they knew, know, think they know, or speculate. But a journalist does …to get the scoop. Dynamics change and there are game changers. Signs. Indications. Nuances to be picked up by perceptive instinct and observation.
Yes, Obama may have been weak on North Korea …and Syria, and Iran, and Islam regarding terrorism. They knew this and took advantage of his indecision. Trump takes a harder stand and doesn’t mince words. He’s a bull in a china shop. Korean shop.
Playing to his audience, Kim Jong-un, these two cartoonish characters (Kim & Trump) smacked each other around in the news media like Abbott and Costello. They called each other names and rattled each other’s sabers.
America believed that North Korea was a legitimate nuclear threat. We saw rockets, missiles, ICBM’s shooting in tandem over the Sea of Japan, toward poor little Guam, and frightfully imagined them heading toward Los Angeles. We saw demonic looking, what were said to be nuclear devices but looked more like Krup coffee makers, seemingly being attached to said-missiles by serious looking oriental men in equally demonic looking long black coats and goggles.
I swear to this, I saw a video once of North Korean technicians making adjustments to a rocket and it looked like the cover they had removed was made of plywood. Just sayin’
The bravado from Kim didn’t stop. Neither did it stop from Trump. It reminded me of a similar nuclear threat by a legitimate super power and nuclear adversary, Russia. In 1956, Russian president Nikita Khrushchev told a group of western ambassadors, “We will burry you!” U.S. president John F. Kennedy called his bluff a few years later during the Cuban missile crisis turning Russian ships back that were carrying missiles to Russian military installations in Cuba.
I’m not sure that Kim Jong-un or his threats should be taken as seriously. Maybe a bad assumption on my part, maybe a better policy to error on the side of caution, but I don’t believe that North Korea is the nuclear threat it wants to appear to be. I think it’s all staging and posturing for headlines, acceptance as a legitimate world power, and appreciation. It’s about love. It’s about Kim’s fascination with the west.
He wanted to meet Dennis Rodman. He just wants to be loved.
Think about how similar Donald Trump is to Dennis Rodman. Kim Jong-un, Dennis Rodman, Donald Trump are all cut from the same cloth. Exhibitionists, showmen, craving power, loving the bright lights of the media and stealing the show. I don’t think Kim ever wanted anything other than to make a showing that he was a legitimate world leader to be reckoned with. He wanted to be in the big boys club. Trump took the bait hook line and sinker and played into Kim’s hand. Trump’s personality dictated that he fire back in an adolescent war of words and we all loved it. “Rocket Man”, big buttons, small buttons, neither one was anywhere close to pushing those buttons, and odds are that Kim’s wouldn’t work, and if it did it would be the last button he ever pushed, and he knew this.
The reality of all this is that we never went to nuclear war with Russia, and we won’t with North Korea, or China, or Iran (Hmmm ..maybe Iran). Cooler heads will prevail recognizing the consequences of nuclear fallout. Kim may be crazy, crazy like a fox, but he’s not insane. Jim Jones was insane. Seoul is just about 100 miles from the North Korean capitol at Pyongyang. Those prevailing Korean winds would blow that nuclear fallout right up Kim Jong-un’s nose, and I’m sure he wouldn’t risk doing something as stupid as bombing Seoul with conventional weapons, it just doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense to swap insults with the President of the United States, be recognized on the world media stage as an equal, and move uptown to play and deal with the big boys.
I had to laugh when I heard Trump Nobel Peace prize buzz. It would make more sense to give it to Kim Jong-un …or Dennis Rodman.
But if you had to bet, bet on that journalist/columnist’s opinion of credit to Trump for bringing peace to Korea. I’ll bet on my instincts that the story is long from over.
Woodward and Bernstein set the standard model for for journalistic intervention. I’d call it ‘integrity’, but that wouldn’t be the correct word. ‘Intervention’ is a better word. Whatever it is they accomplished will be discussed in journalism classes forever.
There’s journalism, there’s editorial and opinion, there’s gossip, and there is oped columns written by people like me. Then there is the elusive, ever-changing truth hiding within …but usually in plain sight.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and USU alumnus, he lives in Logan, Utah.
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