PressEthic

I’m half serious. Ever seen him on magazine covers and on television? He’s not the kind of person you would like to sit next to at a party. He’s short and fat and it kind of makes it so much easier for us to hate him rather than to try to understand him.

However, there’s something scary about U.S. media demonizing him. I told you guys in the class I had a growing problem with Newsweek. Particularly with the magazine’s covers. Well, they topped their previous covers this week with a new one which shows Kim with two small mushroom-shaped red flames on his sunglasses under a long headline three sentences long saying, “For 50 Years, North Korea Plotted to Go Nuclear. Now Kim Jong Il says it has. The long, strange history of how rogue scientists, black marketeers and a Stalinist regime have changed the rules of the Nuclear Club.”

I have to say the photograph is funny. A brilliant display of witty Photoshop skill, if not a journalistic one.

Again, the story that goes with the cover is rather rational. The story is basically a chronology of how North Korea developed the nuke and how the U.S. government failed to stop it. Though the story hardly contains any fact newly discovered is unabashedly biased against Kim, it’s still within the common sense. I find the magazine’s bias excusable since Newsweek is an American magazine and Kim clearly is a threat to America now. In short, it is one of those relatively well-written, informative round-up stories magazines run every time some horrible incidents (North Korea’s nuke in this case) break out. Well, except the cover.

Time and the Economist ran a similar story this week, though with slightly different focuses. Their headlines were more, well, less hot-tempered. Time’s headline said “Nuclear Rogues & How to Control Them,” while the Economist said “Who can stop him how?” Time’s story focused on the changing climate in nuclear weapons control, whie the Economist’s focused on what America, China and Russia must do to open the possibility of a peaceful, diplomatic resolution. By the way, the diplomatic resolution is something all the experts interviewed in all three magazines agreed on despite their usual—by usual, I mean chaotic—disagreement.

Here’s the point I want to make after the long mumbling explanation above. The kind of attitude Newsweek showed on its cover is a cheerleading. A propaganda. A propaganda for what? No one, including the editors at the magazine, seems to have a clue. The magazine proved its wit, which might have helped the sales. But meanwhile, the magazine’s condemning Kim rather than describing him. Such a case of demonizing is often excused in the name of the national interest—more honestly, for the sake of public catharsis and the magazine sales—but it’s dangerous and unethical, because it builds contempt and fury, not understanding of the situation, among its mass readers.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m against Kim. It’s a loathing experience to see a fat dictator with 20 million undernourished people behind him. But I’m also against an uncalculated aggression. That’s precisely what made me mad at the magazine’s cover.