This month, users on Twitter and writers at various outlets have slammed journalists covering the Olympics for shamelessly promoting North Korean propaganda while covering the opening weekend.
And rightfully so. Saturday and Sunday saw reporters file nearly hagiographic stories about DPRK head propagandist Kim Yo Jong’s “star turn” at the Winter Games, lavishing her with praise for seemingly upstaging the Vice President of the U.S. and declaring that North Korea won “diplomatic gold.”
All this comes only weeks after NBC’s Lester Holt was duped into giving a glowing report from a staged North Korean “luxury ski resort,” where skiers just happen to wear identical outfits and, curiously, only go skiing when cameras are present.
But it’s not necessarily shocking that some media outlets fell prey to North Korea’s propaganda, or were otherwise willing to help the regime airbrush its brutality in exchange for the chance to slight Vice President Mike Pence. After all, the mainstream media gets big stories wrong all the time and has a demonstrated affinity for stories that paint Republicans in a negative light. What was genuinely shocking, however, was just how many reporters ran with this garbage.
We’re not talking about a few rogue blogs trying to drive up clicks by posting deliberately inflammatory clickbait headlines; we’re talking about the vast majority of mainstream media outlets producing and standing by their glowing coverage. And we’re not just talking about stories that merely “normalized” the most brutal regime on earth; we’re talking an onslaught of downright slobbering puff pieces.
Reuters, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Telegraph, and other mainstream outlets all ran stories that didn’t merely flatter Kim Yo Jong at the Olympic games; they draped the emissary of the evil North Korean regime in glory. “Stealing the show;” “diplomacy gold;” “All swagger and smiles.” When was the last time the media swooned this hard over anything, let alone the head propagandist for the most oppressive and wicked regime on the planet?
Even for the most skeptical media observers, the spectacle was particularly jaw dropping. How could so many professional reporters fall for such flagrant propaganda? How could the coverage be so unbelievably tone-deaf, so soon after the murder of Otto Warmbier? Why hasn’t there been a wave of redactions, rationalizations, and apologies?
Reporters’ collective susceptibility to thinly veiled propaganda points to issues much more deeply seated than liberal biases or out-of-touch reporting. The fact that so many outlets were willing and able to publish such slobbering reviews of the “charm offensive” undertaken by the sister of a murderous dictator – and then defend those very editorial choices – raises questions that suggest America’s mainstream media outlets have problems that go much deeper than mere liberal bias.
This shameful display raises questions of morality and judgement, and those questions are deeply, deeply troubling. At a minimum, media outlets across the country owe their audiences an explanation for the shocking tone of their coverage, and a guarantee that such easily avoidable editorial oversights will not happen again.
Dylan Gallimore is the Content Manager at the Republican consulting firm Jamestown Associates.
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