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Former "Vanguard" correspondent Laura Ling will join Cenk Uygur on "The Young Turks" tonight at 7/6c to discuss developments in North Korea and the death of dictator Kim Jong Il.
UPDATE: Journalist Euna Lee will also join the conversation via satellite from New York.
Ling and Lee were detained and held for 140 days in North Korea while reporting for "Vanguard" in 2009 on North Korean defectors.
Ling, who is now the host of "E! Investigates," shared the story of her captivity in a special, 22-minute "Vanguard" interview from 2010. See it here:
(Photo: Getty Images)Former "Vanguard" correspondent Laura Ling will join Cenk Uygur on "The... more
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Journalist Laura Ling provides harrowing details of how she and producer Euna Lee were apprehended and held in North Korea while on assignment covering human trafficking in Asia. Personal accounts, letters and never-before-seen footage from Ling, Lee and producer Mitch Koss reveal the team's experiences at the center of a widely publicized international standoff.Journalist Laura Ling provides harrowing details of how she and producer Euna Lee were... more
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Gunmen kidnapped two American tourists in Yemen. They’ve apparently just been released. But who goes “touring” in Yemen? Did they not hear about this dude named Anwar Al-Awlaki, who is behind many recent Islamic terrorist attacks and attempted attacks on U.S. soil. His call to kill Americans might be a hint: Don’t. Go. To. Yemen. Dummies. These people are idiots. And I bet they’re either Muslims, themselves, or really, really delusional left-wingers who still see world-class armpits like Yemen as “exotic” locales for touring, and still romanticize Islam (while they hate all other religions except Buddhism). “Oh, look, Amber. Check out those charming headscarves. How quaint. Ditto for that ornate beheading knife, which I’m sure is only used on sheep.”
Then, there are Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal–the three faux-journalists stuck in jail in Iran. The three are really pan-Islamist, anti-Israel far-lefties living in Damascus, Syria. One of them, Fattal, is supposedly Jewish. What kind of dumbass Jew from America goes hiking in Iran? Only an imbecile-owitz. Fattal and the other two knew better. If they’re living in the torturistan of the Assads (Syria), they knew full well not to go “hiking” in Iran. But they did anyway. Now, Iran and the mothers of these three Islamo-pandering stooges are pushing a “prisoner exchange deal” with the U.S. The Sarkozy idiots in France just did one, last week, releasing an Iranian arms dealer and refusing to extradite him to the U.S. for his criminal nuclear parts purchases (on behalf of Iran), in exchange for some far left French academic who went to Iran (another “tourist” who should have been left to rot there).
And finally, there are Laura Ling and her sister, Lisa Ling. They’ve written a book about Laura Ling’s imprisonment in North Korea. Who told her to go there? If you go to Kim Jong-Il’s antithesis of Wonka World, you know what to expect. You’re gonna be imprisoned and tortured. She chose to go. But, instead of saying: you went at your own risk and you knew the consequences, so there’s nothing we can do, the U.S. did biz with Kim. Bill Clinton was interrupted from his position as Chief Justice of the Hawaiian Tropic bikini contest to negotiate and rescue these two faux-heroines. Now Laura and Lisa Ling’s book is all the rage on Oprah (for whom Lisa Ling reports regular propaganda), People Magazine, and everywhere else.
My favorite headline is the People Magazine blare: “ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA.” Um, here’s a tip, People: no one escaped. The U.S. State Department and Bill Clinton repeatedly cajoled and posed to get these two spoiled, whiny women out of North Korea.Gunmen kidnapped two American tourists in Yemen. They’ve apparently just been... more
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To Laura and Euna:
Dear Laura, After listening to your interview with Larry King Live, I have been so profoundly moved at your grace, dignity, and courage in not breaking down during the interview, after answering very difficult questions. I know you must have had months of practice being held in such horrible conditions, with no knowledge of your outcome. I did not hear Euna speak of her ordeal, but I can only assume her story is very similar to hers. I am so touched by your courage and continued politeness in describing your ordeal. When you use the words "humanity" and "compassion" with your captors, it describes what courage you have; and is a reflection of the level of your own compassion and humanity.
I personally think I have difficult decisions to make in my life, and have always relented making them in the face of fear of how I would handle the results of my decisions. I chose to stay helpless for fear of not knowing the outcome. But you showed today that courage will take you everywhere, when having to face the unknown. Now all I have to do is think of you and Euna, and your dignity and courage, and this will always be a beacon of strength for me in my life, whenever faced with having to make difficult decisions when doing nothing seems so much safer.
Thank you for sharing your story. I hope and pray for you and Euna to recover fully from this, and to continue to touch people in the way you have touched me.
God Bless
Pmch
N.IrelandTo Laura and Euna:
Dear Laura, After listening to your interview with Larry King... more
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Journalist Laura Ling provides harrowing details of how she and producer Euna Lee were apprehended and held in North Korea while on assignment covering human trafficking in Asia. Personal accounts, letters and never-before-seen footage from Ling, Lee and producer Mitch Koss reveal the team's experiences at the center of a widely publicized international standoff.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more Vanguard, visit http://current.com/vanguard.Journalist Laura Ling provides harrowing details of how she and producer Euna Lee were... more
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In this special Vanguard episode journalist Laura Ling revealed details about the human trafficking story she and producer Euna Lee were investigating before being apprehended and then held in North Korea.
What was your reaction to hearing their story?
http://current.com/shows/vanguard/team/laura-ling/In this special Vanguard episode journalist Laura Ling revealed details about the... more
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When the phone rings at 1 a.m., I usually ignore it. But early the morning of March 19, 2009, I awoke to the sound of my cell phone buzzing on the nightstand. It was a call I never expected to get.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two of my colleagues at Current TV’s documentary series, Vanguard, had been apprehended by North Korean soldiers and taken somewhere inside that black hole of a country. I sat up in bed, trying to absorb and understand what I’d just heard.
This week, Laura is finally speaking at length about her experiences, first on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and then on Current in a special, very personal episode of Vanguard.
The story Laura and Euna were working on—about women from North Korea whose lives as refugees were still fraught with danger and fear—hadn't set off major alarms when they set out. Laura was my boss, an accomplished journalist who had reported on stories in some of the most dangerous areas of the world. She had just covered the drug trade in Juarez, Mexico—one of the most dangerous places in the world—and she’d worked extensively on sensitive stories in China.
Euna was an editor who normally worked only in the office, on her first trip as a field producer. Mitch Koss, the producer on the shoot, had an extensive career in journalism. He'd even previously reported on missionaries helping refugees out of North Korea—right in the same area that he, Laura and Euna had headed out to.
When you’re out in the field, you never know what may go down. Risk profiles change constantly, and what may at one moment be a perfectly "safe" story can suddenly become risky. Considering where our teams had been in the past, we’ve always exercised a high degree of caution on the field, constantly weighing the risks and rewards of our every move. Laura and her team were taking precautions, and it didn't seem like a story that required much risk. We had no idea that they would be in a situation where things would spiral out of control so quickly.
That early morning after first getting the news, I braced myself, then called Current’s CEO, Joel Hyatt, who quickly relayed the message to the network’s chairman, Vice President Al Gore. I then reached out to Laura’s and Euna’s families. It was frightening and surreal.
Telling the Vanguard team proved difficult in a different way. This is a group of intrepid journalists who regularly put themselves in harm’s way to report on stories they feel need to be shared with the world. As much as I couldn't stop thinking about how terrified Laura and Euna must be, I also worried what the implications would be for us—the team Laura had assembled herself. We were in the midst of production on our third season, each story dangerous and difficult in its own unique way.
Mariana van Zeller, another Vanguard correspondent, was on assignment in Sri Lanka, and my first impulse was to talk her into coming home. She was, after all, reporting about terrorists in a war zone. But—and I remember this so clearly—Mariana said that, in spite of the fact that she wanted to be close to us, she couldn’t. We had a job to do, an important one.
The weeks and months that Laura and Euna were held captive never became easy. While the pain couldn't compare with what they were suffering in North Korea, or what their families were enduring, everyone at Current was shaken. We had no idea how the North Korean regime would act, except unpredictably. Much of our time was spent gathering around televisions any time a piece of news would trickle out. We struggled through an emotional rollercoaster to maintain Laura's vision for the show and continue our work reporting around the world.
We knew negotiations were taking place far behind the scenes, but we had no idea when to expect a breakthrough. We were grateful to have the support of organizations such as Liberty in North Korea (LINK), which helps spirit North Koreans to freedom, as well as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters without Borders, who fight for journalists’ rights and safety around the world.
Occasionally, a glimmer of hope would surface. We attended candlelight vigils, sent care packages and wrote letters. Then we heard about President Bill Clinton’s mission to North Korea—and soon after Laura and Euna were finally home.
Vanguard is dedicated to responsible, fearless reporting. Our commitment to this mission is greater than ever before. As we’ve learned first hand, there are major dangers involved in investigative reporting. But we believe there’s an even greater risk in not going after the stories that most need to be told.
"Captive in North Korea," a special Vanguard episode with Laura Ling, will air on Current TV on May 19 at 10/9c.
When the phone rings at 1 a.m., I usually ignore it. But early the morning of March... more
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Laura Ling, a Vanguard correspondent, producer and vice president at Current TV for five years, appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Tuesday, along with her sister (and Oprah contributor), Lisa Ling.
Laura talked about the story that drew her to North Korea, her imprisonment, interrogation, trial and eventual release, and about the book she and Lisa have written, Somewhere Inside, out now from HarperCollins.
From the show's recap, she also shares the story of how her captors wanted President Barack Obama to serve as envoy in negotiating her and Euna Lee's release:
[T]he most important relationship Laura developed was with her investigator. "In the beginning, he was very, very stern. One look from him could send me into a state of nervousness and fear," she says. "But over time, I feel like I developed a relationship with him and that he wanted me to go home. And he was trying to convey information to me that I could convey to Lisa that might help me get home." The interrogator told Laura that the United States needed to send an envoy to negotiate her release. "At one point, we were talking about who would be an acceptable envoy," she says. "And I was trying to say, 'Well, what about the chairman of my company, Vice President Gore?'" Instead, President Barack Obama was suggested. "I said, 'Sir, with all due respect, if you think President Obama is going to come here, you might as well send me to the camp right now," she says. "And he said, 'Well, what about past presidents?' That's how President Clinton's name evolved." Laura convinced her interrogator to let her call Lisa to relay the information. Soon, the sisters were the only channel through which the governments of both countries were communicating. "It was unprecedented [that] they let Laura call me," Lisa says. "That's how the information was getting across, and that's how eventually it was communicated from Laura to me that the envoy had to be Bill Clinton."
Hear more from Laura, and watch never-before-seen footage from her investigation about North Korean refugees, in a special Vanguard episode. "Captive in North Korea" will air Wednesday, May 19 at 10/9c.
Watch a preview:
Laura Ling, a Vanguard correspondent, producer and vice president at Current TV for... more
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Hosts Max Lugavere and Jason Silva present a look at the culture and people of China in a way usually seen only by locals and the most adventurous travelers.
See how Shanghai has become China's gay friendliest city in recent years, then take a detour to a Chinese convenience store for some unusual snacks with Laura Ling.Hosts Max Lugavere and Jason Silva present a look at the culture and people of China... more
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Dear Vanguard Fans:
After five memorable years, we are sad to announce that Vanguard’s executive producer Laura Ling will be moving on from Current Media. In a letter addressed to the staff, Laura felt it was time to focus on starting a family and the writing of a book with her sister Lisa Ling about her captivity last summer in North Korea and the bond they shared that helped them get through it.
“Working at Current and leading the Vanguard team has been the highlight of my career.” wrote Laura Ling. “It has been challenging, but thoroughly rewarding; intense, but fun. I’m extremely proud of the Vanguard team, which is working so passionately to raise awareness about some of the most important issues affecting our world. I will continue to be a champion of their work and of Current as a whole.” Dear Vanguard Fans:
After five memorable years, we are sad to announce that... more
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Yesterday morning, outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, I stood in a long line for two hours with thousands of other people. We were all braving a pretty cold morning for Southern California, but we weren’t lined up for tickets. The line was over half a mile long, and ended in a big circus-style tent. Inside, amidst many helium filled balloons, 50 nurses were dispensing H1N1 vaccines. Lots of little kids were crying. “It’s just like the county fair,” I observed to my son, “except with shots.”
We were all there because swine flu vaccine is scarce, and the Pasadena Health Department was making it available to people who are under 24, over 65, pregnant, or facing chronic health issues. Most of the people standing in the line were not eligible to get the shots themselves, they were parents. There were a lot of strollers. Other people brought little chairs for their toddlers, which they kept moving as the line moved, ala Woody Allen playing the cello in the marching band in “Take the Money and Run.” Kids left the line to play nearby when they couldn’t bear it any longer. My son got a bit restive also, but since he’s in high school, and has a driver’s license, I gave him the keys to my car and 20 bucks, and he left for an hour to get breakfast.
All in all, we were an orderly bunch, and everything went smoothly. And that’s what struck me. Among the many different subjects I’ve covered over the years are disease outbreaks. In April of 2003, I covered the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong and China. And in November of 2005, Laura Ling and I covered Avian Flu in Vietnam—a flu that unlike H1N1, swine flu, never produced a serious outbreak in people.
Battle Against Bird Flu (Video)
Pandemic (Video)
But what struck me yesterday in Pasadena, and struck me on those previous stories, is that there are some situations which don’t seem like they’ll get better unless government is efficient, and everyone is willing to cooperate in an orderly fashion toward a common goal.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Does Sri Lanka offer lessons for Obama? - Darren Foster
- Kaj’s robot and weapon firing skills are put to the test - Lauren Cerre
- What Do You Want to Watch? - Mitch KossYesterday morning, outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, I stood in a long line for two... more
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Tomorrow, Vanguard is moving offices from here in Hollywood to a lot in downtown Los Angeles. Like other lots, this one has a lot of security and badges and so forth. Where we are now is a little less informal, with a double garage door that rolls up to admit light and air on warmer days, such as today. It’s also, as I’ve alluded, in a pretty vivid part of Hollywood in terms of street action. I think I’ve also mentioned that back in 2001, a block away, Laura Ling and I shot an hour episode of the “Breaking It Down with Serena,” series that we produced for MTV called “A Week on the Streets.”
But the first time I shot a story here was in December of 2001. My friend and former colleague Anderson Cooper, then an ABC News correspondent, had gotten the news division to agree to do a story on the male street hustlers who stood out on Santa Monica Boulevard, and my employer of the time, Channel One News, agreed to loan me out to help produce it.
Anderson and I were happy to be working together again, and, so, one rainy and cold—for LA—night in early December, there we were on Santa Monica Boulevard. Anderson had a small format camera. I had a small format camera. There was a two person union crew with a beta cam to make things meet the union requirements then in place at ABC News. The only thing there wasn’t at the end of the evening were any male street hustlers on camera.
We all came back the following night, and initially, had no better luck.
It turned out that simply by standing there with all of our cameras, looking friendly, we couldn’t get them to walk up to us and spontaneously start telling us their stories. It was kind of discouraging.
But that’s because had lost sight of an important point in this business: You can’t be sure if people will talk to you unless you ask them. So I was obliged to start walking up to people and saying: “Excuse me, sir, I couldn’t help notice that you’re standing here on this curb, looking into the cars that drive past. Are you perhaps a male sex worker? If so, would like to be on ABC News?” After approaching no more than two or three people, I got one to agree. Then it was easy to find more. Pretty soon, there’s a street hustler who’s also selling methamphetamine, standing next to Anderson on the corner of Highland and Santa Monica near midnight on a Saturday, talking about what he looks for in the passing cars.
No one in Vanguard seems to have ever done a follow-up with these guys, to see how their business is serving the toughest economic times since the 1930s. On the one hand, you might expect that there are more of them out there now—the LAPD and LA Sheriff’s Department permitting. On the other hand, it could be the johns have less money to spend too. And now we won’t know, unless someone else does the story, because we’re moving out of the neighborhood and going downtown.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Eating on the run with Vanguard - Joanne Shen
- What Came Through the Wall - Mitch Koss
- Does porn have the answer? - Christof Putzel
- What world have we entered? - Mitch Koss
- Hey Electronic Arts, when you going to do a pirate video game? - Kaj Larsen
- Christof’s Doc, the Porn Community, and Obscenity… - Mitch KossTomorrow, Vanguard is moving offices from here in Hollywood to a lot in downtown Los... more
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Adam Yamaguchi and I are making a presentation next week to a group of public information officers for large institutions on the topic of why Vanguard is great and worth co-operating with. Which, as we prepare for it, forces us to confront the question: Are we?
One of our ambitions for being in the Vanguard is to tell you about important stuff that you ideally didn’t know too much about, if at all. Think of the new episodes that we’ve put up this season, and the worlds that Mariana and Adam and Adrian have entered to show you things that you should know. We sometimes like to think of ourselves as sometimes serving as an early warning for issues that later will become prominent—hence our name. But for you to heed what we’re telling you, you have to trust that we know what we’re talking about, that we’re not exaggerating, or misunderstanding, or misrepresenting the situation at hand.
Why should you trust us?
The same question pervades what we do in producing Vanguard. A lot of what we do behind the scenes involves talking with various individuals and institutions and asking them to cooperate for free with us in putting together one of our documentaries. Imagine that you’re minding your own business and I call you up, say my name and the name of this network, name some subject or another that I’m researching, and launch into a series of questions. If I were calling on behalf of some more recognizable entity—such as MTV or the Newshour on PBS, which I have—it still requires a leap of faith for you to engage me. What if I’m lying? I could be: 1) a prankster; 2) an identity thief; 3) a salesperson; or 4) a nut. When you add to that dynamic the fact that I work for a new series, Vanguard, on a new network, Current, that average person might not yet know about, then it’s even more amazing how the vast majority of people respond cooperatively. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how nice people can be and feel like blurting out into the phone: “Thank you sir/madam for not hanging up on me!” But that would probably make the person on the other end of the line suddenly wonder if I was 4) a nut.
Anyway, what we hope persuades the subjects who agree to help with or be in our documentaries, is the same thing that persuades you to trust our work when you watch it: As much as possible, we approach our stories without a particular angle. We’re not trying to prove a particular point, we’re trying to illuminate a situation so that you can make your own mind up about it. If, for example, Laura makes a Vanguard documentary in which there are both cops and criminals, which she has, then we like to think that she could show the result to both an audience or cops and an audience of criminals, and both groups would feel fairly represented. Ideally, if you cooperate with us when we’re shooting a story, we portray you as you are, without us filtering the information or telling the viewer how to feel about it. And similarly, if you watch one of Vanguard’s documentaries, you shouldn’t get the feeling that we’re manipulating you to react in a particular way. The human spirit rebels when it senses that it is being pressured to abandon independent judgment. Oscar Wilde put it most famously: “It would take a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.” Three quarters of a century later, Andy Warhol used a more laconic version of the same thought: “But that’s what I like about it.” We try our best to bring you compelling stories with important information. We leave it up to you how to react. And we like to think that this makes us trustworthy.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- My Second Tour of Sri Lanka - Mariana van Zeller
- Chinese Mobsters and Megacities - Joanne Shen
- The world: A dangerous place for do-gooders - Kaj Larsen
- The world: A dangerous place for reporters - Darren Foster
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass - Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! - Cerissa TannerAdam Yamaguchi and I are making a presentation next week to a group of public... more
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Yesterday my colleague Darren wrote about how the world is becoming increasingly dangerous for journalists. While the recent high profile events that Darren mentioned (Roxana Saberi, Laura Ling) have put a spotlight on the perils of journalism, there is an interesting corollary trend that has largely escaped mainstream attention. Slowly but steadily the world is becoming a more dangerous place for humanitarian organizations.
Non-profits, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), aid agencies all used to be afforded a larger degree of protection in the countries and conflicts in which they operated. It’s difficult to define when the trend started occurring, but there has been a rapid escalation in the last two decades of violence against aid organizations. Perhaps the most notable example is the withdrawal of Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF, or known commonly as Doctors Without Borders in the US) from Afghanistan in 2004. Doctors Without Borders had been providing medical services in Afghanistan since 1980. They fearlessly worked throughout the bloody confrontation with the Soviets, the brutal civil war that followed, and the repressive regime of the Taliban in the 1990s. But, after 24 years of operating in one of the most difficult places on earth, coupled with an incident in which five of their staff members were killed, MSF decided that it was too dangerous to operate in the country. This left a major void and a population without access to basic medical treatment at a time it was desperately needed.
Similarly, last year in Somalia, MSF was forced to halt all operations and withdraw 87 staff members after three of its people were killed in a roadside bomb. This was on the heels of an incident in which two staff members were kidnapped. I was in Somalia in 2006 and could see the rampant escalation of violence against what used to be perceived as neutral actors. When I was in Mogadishu, the UN had pulled out all international staff, using only local Somalis as proxies to conduct their activities.
These are but a few examples. The general trend line is that more and more aid organizations are being targeted in conflict zones. The humanitarian space is rapidly shrinking. Even in places where NGOs can still operate, they have to devote a larger and larger portion of their resources to security, thereby diminishing the care they are able to give to the local population, which in turn makes them perceived less as allies and more as foreigners, which makes the aid organizations more vulnerable. It’s a vicious cycle.
Its reasonable to ask why the humanitarian space is rapidly disintegrating. There is a combination of factors. One component is that in both Iraq and Afghanistan the insurgency style conflict has blurred the lines between combatant and non-combatant. This has had spill-over effect to the NGO community. The UN peacekeeping branding has lost some of its perception as a strict peacekeeping force as well. Blue Helmets with .50 cals don’t exactly scream peace, and it is likely that the NGO community as a whole has been impacted by the changing perception of the UN. Finally there is a more worrisome reason that has been whispered about in the aid community. It has been suggested that the military itself is blurring the line between military action and humanitarian action. In an effort to win hearts and minds, the military is engaging in many of the same types of missions that have traditionally been the domain of humanitarian organizations. Detractors say that when the missions are the same, it makes it less important for combatants to distinguish between the motivations of different organizations. For example when I was in Afghanistan in 2005, I was embedded with the US military when they went on a mission called a MedCap. The purpose was to provide medical care in rural Afghanistan. Some in the humanitarian world claim this is exactly the kind of thing that pollutes the line between aid and military action, and puts providers at risk.
The military disagrees with this analysis and believes it is critical to their efforts to engender good will among the civilian populace. Its difficult to know the answer, but it is troubling that an organization like MSF which survived the Russians, a Civil War, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, couldn’t survive the American occupation.
What is clear though is that what (and who) were once considered safe in some of the most difficult areas in the world are no longer so. Aid workers joke with the gallows style humor that the famous red cross plus sign, used to act a bullet proof vest. A vehicle emblazoned with it on the side could drive through the middle of a fire fight and the shooting would stop. Now its considered a bulls-eye.
Whatever the reasons, the shrinking humanitarian space is a reality with fairly severe consequences. In many places organizations like MSF are the only people operating there. Without them, the populations, become less healthy, more impoverished, and increasingly isolated from the outside world; exactly the root conditions that make them ripe to become conflict zones in the first place.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- The world: A dangerous place for reporters - Darren Foster
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass - Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! - Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. - Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” - Mariana van ZellerYesterday my colleague Darren wrote about how the world is becoming increasingly... more
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There’s a lot of soul searching going on in the field of journalism these days. It’s been a tough year. And I don’t just mean for the declining newspaper industry.
It’s a little early to be doing end-of-year accounting, but it relates to Vanguard’s story this week, so bear with me.
Looking back, 2009 was a year that saw perhaps more high profile cases of journalists in jeopardy than in a long while: freelance reporter Roxana Saberi, New York Times reporters David Rohde and Stephen Farrell, Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari and of course our colleagues Laura Ling and Euna Lee, just to name a few.
Reporting, especially in conflict zones and repressive environments, has always been and will always be a risky endeavor. Our president of programming likes to quote “The Godfather” when we talk here about the risks that reporters often assume: “This is the business that we have chosen.”
And while it’s true that many of us often choose to parachute in and out of risky places in order to tell stories that we believe need to be told, there is also the understanding that we have a safe place to retreat when things get too dodgy.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case for local reporters.
While reporting this week’s episode of Vanguard, "Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror", Mariana van Zeller and I encountered one of the toughest media crackdowns we’ve ever experienced. Like all independent reporters, we were shut out of the war zone, refused entry into hospitals where the sick and wounded were being taken, and banned from refugee camps. But worst of all, in Sri Lanka’s War on Terror the government had drawn an eerily familiar line: “You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” And few people felt comfortable speaking openly or challenging the government’s prosecution of the war out of fear that they would be labeled a traitor or worse, a supporter of terrorism.
Much of the risk reporters take on is when trying to navigate around the barriers that are put up to block them from getting information, information that is often vital to drawing a true picture of events. Needless to say, Sri Lanka’s media crackdown was frustrating for us. But the struggles we faced were put into perspective when we visited the office of The Sunday Leader newspaper. There we found the empty office of Lasantha Wickramatunge, a prominent Sri Lankan journalist and editor of the Sunday Leader. Lasantha was a dogged reporter who spent his career exposing corruption and misdeeds in government. He was also a vocal critic of Sri Lanka’s War on Terror. It was a stance that would cost him his life.
In January, just months before the war officially came to an end, Lasantha was shot in the head and killed by unknown gunmen while on his way to work. But knowing that he was a target, just days before he was killed, Lasantha wrote an editorial that on his instructions was only to be published upon his death.
“When finally I am killed,” he wrote. “It will be the government that kills me.“
Lasantha’s letter from the grave received worldwide attention. But he was not alone. According to Amnesty International, at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists and media workers have been killed since 2006. And many others have been assaulted, arrested or fled the country. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka is also not alone. All over the world, there are journalists who daily suffer repression and intimidation, risk imprisonment and sometimes their lives in pursuit of truth.
This is the business we have chosen.
***
Within the journalism community there is a healthy debate now taking place about how we can better look after ourselves and members of our community, and still cover important stories. A few weeks ago, Mariana van Zeller and I were invited to New York by PBS’s FRONTLINE/World to participate in a small gathering of journalists and media representatives to discuss the challenges of covering conflicts and working in repressive environments.
The participants ranged from New York Times reporters to freelancers, established media organizations to fairly new upstarts like ourselves.
The idea is to eventually create a resource for journalists of all stripes when it comes to covering difficult stories. For more info go here.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass - Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! - Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. - Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” - Mariana van Zeller
- A Shout-Out to Interns Everywhere - Tracey ChangThere’s a lot of soul searching going on in the field of journalism these days.... more
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Every now and then, something that seemed impossible to achieve, comes to pass. But we don’t always notice and say, “Holy Shit!” That’s because we live in an age where an over-abundance of trivial information is coupled with a rapid pace of change. Often, when we learn about a new occurrence, it’s difficult to think back even a few years and remember why it’s significant.
That’s the case with the subject of this week’s Vanguard doc, Mariana van Zeller and Darren Foster’s Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror. Which is one of the reasons why it’s so cool.
Without spoiling the suspense in Wednesday’s episode, in it Mariana and Darren look at the recent demise of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the LTTE, one of the nastiest and most formidable insurgent/terror organizations in the world. With the US facing escalating violence in Afghanistan, they’re telling an important and engrossing story with big implications.
But besides plugging their episode, what I want to do here is vouch as to how nasty—and seemingly impossible to defeat—the Tigers really were.
In April of 2000, when the Tigers had a huge offensive going, Laura Ling, Gotham Chopra and I went to Sri Lanka, after Laura succeeded in getting us journalist visas in two days of trying, after I tried for a year and a half and failed. We arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, and found out that in order to get past the military checkpoints to head to the conflict zone, we needed a Road Permit, which we didn’t have. It took Laura a few days of negotiating with the Minister of Defense to get us the permit, and meanwhile we looked around Colombo a bit—what struck us was how common large suicide bombings by Tigers were. Our hotel had been bombed, and many public places had huge doves painted on the pavement—a sign that there had been a bombing. Hundreds of people had been killed in the city in the previous couple of years.
Outside the capital, fighting between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government continued to intensify. The week prior to our visit the Tigers had staged an amphibious landing at Elephant Pass and over-run a large Sri Lankan military base. The guys at the US Embassy in Colombo told us: “There are only two groups in the world that could stage an amphibious landing of that size—the US Marine Corps, and the Tamil Tigers.” The city seemed to live on edge.
Laura finally got us our road permit, and we drove out to the east, where the government controlled the main highway via a series of fire bases built along it—until night fell, and then the Tigers controlled the highway, along everything else off the highway which they controlled during daylight also. En route to a safe hotel run by a Tiger sympathizer, the sun set on us, and we had a pretty intense few hours driving the highway in the dark, afraid the soldiers in the fire bases we were passing would mistake us for Tigers and shoot, while the Tigers would mistake our van for a military vehicle and shoot.
The second day, we reached the end of where the government controlled the highway. There was a military base, and a barrier, like a train crossing, leading to Tamil Tiger country. Laura got on the phone with her friend the Minister of Defense back in Colombo, the soldiers raised the gate and we headed into Tiger Territory driving a steady 40 km per hour and honking our horn every 100 meters as a sign to the Tigers not to fire on us. Finally, some Tigers flagged us down, took us to a nearby command post. For such dread folks, they seemed very soft spoken and placid. They served us ice cold Coke—it was hot—and then showed us the cyanide capsules around their necks—they all wore them so they could commit suicide if captured. Then they gave us a tour of the area. We met a couple 16 and 17-year old girl Tigers who’d already had several years of combat experience. They were also placid, but now it began to seem spooky. Not surprisingly the Tigers were big into a culture of martyrdom. They showed us a lot of monuments to dead leaders, and a cemetery with 1000 fresh Tiger graves. They offered to let us stay to the night and go with them to fire mortars at a Sri Lankan military base, but we decided to head back.
My conclusion back then: What a nightmare. So when Laura and I heard early this year that the Tigers might be close to being defeated, we found it astonishing. And then Mariana and Darren went over to check out this important but underappreciated development. And the result is not only fascinating, but important. Check it out Wednesday.
This Week on Vanguard: Sri Lanka: Notes from A War on Terror
"Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror" airs this Wednesday at 10pm ET / 10pm PT on Current TV.
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Happy? Or scared?
Today’s big economic news is a report showing the US Gross Domestic Product grew 3.5 percent from July through September, the first GDP growth in over a year. Wall Street was happy. Stocks on the Dow Jones average rose nearly 200 points. The Obama Administration’s $787 billion stimulus program, combining tax cuts and government spending got some of the credit. At the same time, another report this week showed that American consumer confidence is down, partly due to unemployment continuing to climb. It’s almost at 10 percent now, while wages are mostly flat and home prices remain low, 401Ks are not recovered, blah, blah, blah…
If you’ve looked at a newspaper, or TV screen, or the Internet in the past 18 months, you’ve seen all the dismal stats.
So now that the GDP is growing again, which way are things going for you? Not in the next six months, but in the next six years. What kind of economy is going to emerge from the greatest economic decline since the 1930s? That’s the big question, and it points out one of the big dilemmas of journalism. You would think that the really important stuff would be stuff that you would want to pay closest attention to but the important stuff — the average American’s position in the economy — often builds over a lot of time, sometimes over many years, in the way that you’re supposed to boil a lobster, starting with the water at room temperature, so that by the time he or she is cooked, he or she doesn’t notice (so they say). So although this present recession seemed to start abruptly, the factors behind it kind of crept up on us. And that’s what’s tough to cover, and tough to follow.
As I've said before, at Vanguard we try to look forward. In May, we did a documentary mini-series in which we tried to look at the economy that we’ve had in the US since the 1980s, against the backdrop of its collapse. Laura Ling went to Las Vegas, formerly the fastest growing place in the US, for "Lost Vegas."
Adam Yamaguchi went to China’s manufacturing center for "Outsourcing Unemployment."
And Lauren Cerre and Tracey Chang went to Argentina for "Thank You, Recession."
Basically, we were looking at what kind of economy will emerge from this present downturn. Will we manage to go back to the system we’ve had since the 1980s? There we had tremendously high levels of consumer spending on cheap stuff — cheap because we’ve outsourced many of our manufacturing jobs to places where wages are lower. And our wealth creation came from real estate, stock, and equity inflation — essentially a series of bubbles. Or we could go back to the system we had in the ‘50s through the ‘70s, where there wasn’t so much economic separation in the US — we were essentially middle class — and wage growth was the key to economic improvement.
As we travel around the world, there is also another model that we see in globalized economies: Those economic engines of the developing world, like China and India, where the “developed” portion of the economy, the economy that we see and which looks like ours, doesn’t include all the population, or even most of it. Many, or most citizens, in these countries are invisible in economic terms. In fact, when Tracey Chang interviewed the COO of Infosys, the poster child of India’s high-tech development, in Bangalore India, he pointed out to her that India’s growth was not including most people.
So where are you going to emerge? Right now there seem to be three directions.Happy? Or scared?
Today’s big economic news is a report showing the US Gross... more
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I was about to tell you about how Vanguard’s office here in Hollywood is located in the unofficial transgender street hustler capital of Los Angeles County, and about the effect that recession seems to have had on them, when my colleague Darren Foster mailed me this link.
I can switch subjects because even though, in March of 2001, Laura Ling and I shot an hour doc for MTV on street hustlers one block from where my desk at Vanguard now is, Laura and I also shot one last fall on the war among Mexico’s narco-traffickers.
When considering the size of the recent raids around the US against what’s happening in Mexico, one question is why the narco war down there isn’t up here, given how big the narcotics distribution networks here seem to be. The standard answer is that the cartels in Mexico didn’t used to be particularly violent either, until the federal government started to pressure them. In the old days, before the year 2000, when Vincente Fox was elected Mexico’s first president from a party other than the PRI in 70 years, cartels could maintain their position as multi-national corporations pretty much in the way that other multi-national corporations maintain their positions in their host countries—they were too big to fail. But once Fox, and his successor as President, Felipe Calderon, started to act against the web of corruption that bound the cartels to law enforcement and government officials, the cartels were obliged to maintain their positions the old fashioned, Chicago-in-the-1920s way, by shooting it out.
Another view might be that we seem to have just passed out of one of the more violent epochs in American history, the roughly 40-year period from the mid-‘1960s, until just a few years back. And if you look at all the urban homicides we had in that period, and look at how many were related in some way to narcotics, then maybe we already had our narco war. It was simply that, unlike what’s going on now it Mexico, ours wasn’t organized, just low-level dealers and users committing murder, often against each other. And where violence by powerful organized criminal groups can be viewed as a threat to the state, unorganized violence is just a threat to the neighborhood.
On the third hand, we seem to be in an era where globalization brings us all sorts circumstance that we don’t seem to have seen before, and sometimes when you’re in the middle of something, it can be tough to see which way the trend line is moving.I was about to tell you about how Vanguard’s office here in Hollywood is located... more
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Last week, the US dollar hit a 14-month low against the euro, coming just shy of the point where it takes $1.50 to buy one euro. Commodities priced in dollars, such as oil, went up in price to off-set this decline, and the weak state of the US greenback set off a certain amount of discussion in the media. But in keeping with Vanguard’s mission, we warned you about this decline nearly two years ago… Sort of.
In this story, which was shot mostly in the fall of 2007, Adam Yamaguchi looks at the reason behind a phenomenon that we’d been noticing first hand as we traveled the world on stories: In recent years, the dollar seemed to buy less and less. In July of 2000, when the US government had a surplus, I was shooting for MTV in Germany with Laura Ling, and less than $0.90 US bought a euro, and Europe was charming.
By the time “The Poor Dollar,” was shot, Europe was challenging. Scenes of Adam experiencing first hand the weakness of the dollar versus the British pound and the euro, of Tracey Chang witnessing the weakness of the dollar versus the Canadian dollar and Filipino peso, are interspersed with Adam’s look at the causes of the dollar’s decline: The US trade deficit, the US government’s budget deficit, and overspending by US consumers—throughout this decade 70% of the US economy was based on consumer spending. In fact, our spending what we didn’t have was the engine of the world’s economy.
And, indeed, throughout the first half of 2008, just as we told you in "The Poor Dollar," oil prices skyrocketed, in part due to speculative frenzy—the stock bubble had started bursting the previous fall, driving speculators to new areas—but in part due to the dollar’s downward spiral.
So at that point, we felt that Vanguard had fulfilled its mission of giving you an early heads up on important changes in the world. But, when we’re doing our job properly, we’re just an early warning system, not prognosticators. In looking at the dollar’s decline, we didn’t factor in the effect a dose of worldwide financial collapse would have on the greenback. As America plunged into the deepest recession it’s had in 70 years, Americans cut back spending and started saving. The trade deficit dropped also. Oil prices collapsed. And the dollar got stronger.
But as the US economy revived a bit during the summer and the US government hit its highest proportional deficit since 1945, the dollar has been sinking again, and you can take another look at "The Poor Dollar." Our warning seems to be germane once again.
Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned that after the recession is over, the US government dials back on deficit spending, the only way the dollar can be strengthened is if Americans learn to live within their means. And that raises a larger question, one that Laura and Adam looked at this spring in "Lost Vegas."
That is, can we continue to base our economy on US consumers supporting the world, and on stock, real estate, and commodity bubbles that go with that, or is the only way to avoid our country declining like our currency is to find some other way forward? We don’t know, but we’re pointing out the question.Last week, the US dollar hit a 14-month low against the euro, coming just shy of the... more
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