By Michael Breen
The front-page headlines last month about the apparent sickness of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il presented media around the world with a dilemma ― how do you report something when you don't know anything?
If you read the news stories, from the scrupulously accurate The Wall Street Journal to the entertaining British tabloid The Sun ― both, incidentally, owned by Rupert Murdoch ― you cannot fault them. They do not make false claims and they make sure that ``maybe'' and ``apparently'' appear in the right place.
Here's what the Journal wrote on September 9: ``North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il has suffered serious health problems and is believed to have had a stroke within the past month, according to U.S. officials.'' The article noted that Kim had failed to appear at the country's 60th anniversary celebration earlier that day and then added, tellingly, that the U.S. officials it had interviewed ``said the dictator's current state of health isn't known.''
In reporting rumors and things you can't confirm, there is one rule of thumb in journalism. That is, that if you don't believe what you are writing to be true, you should not be saying it. That means, reporters and their editors assumed that, if Kim had not actually had a stroke, he had suffered something just as bad. He was sick and they were grasping to find out more.
Their professionalism left us with the correct impression. Kim may be ill. Nevertheless, the overall coverage was misleading in the sense that it failed to emphasize the fact that, for all we knew, during this particular death-watch, Kim Jong-il might just have likely been on holiday in Bali.
That is a problem with journalism. At least the Journal was honest enough to point out that its sources knew nothing. Given the hierarchy of truths, that fact should have been the lead paragraph ― and for intelligence pros scouring the papers for real information, I'm sure it was. But then, ``U.S. officials haven't a clue whether reports are true or not'' is a non-story. (A lot of times, reporters call up people to chase something and find that there's no story and so write nothing about it).
But, given the absence of news, anything about North Korea is news. Much of it is misleadingly circular. I once pressed the Unification Ministry on the source for its figure of 200,000 in the North's gulag and the official got annoyed and said, ``Mr. Breen, it was in The New York Times.'' I checked that paper and saw it had cited South Korean government officials.
In the Kim illness case, you could base a story on any diplomat in Seoul ― ``western officials'' (or even ``western intelligence officials'' if you're stretching it) ― who have read the South Korean papers.
Even more credible would be a diplomat based in Pyongyang. Readers might assume he's at Kim's bedside, but the chances are he knows less than us and is also reading South Korea newspapers. (In a great irony, in the communist heyday, East European embassies and news agencies received much of their information on the country from media monitoring material produced by the ``enemy,'' the (South) Korean CIA).
Occasionally as with last month's story, something new was thrown in, such as when the head of the South Korean National Intelligence Service (the grandchild of the KCIA) told lawmakers that Kim had to be helped to brush his teeth. This information has led to speculation that the lady presumably doing it for him, a Ms. Kim OK, may be running the country.
I find the fact that this information was given out to be more interesting than the information itself. Intelligence people are not stupid. As anyone who has ever watched a James Bond movie can tell you, the ``M'' in a country as clever as South Korea is not going to burn his agents like this. If this information was not being whispered widely enough in Pyongyang so that the source could have been one of a thousand people, it's probably not true.
What is true is that those who knew the truth about Kim Jong-il's health did not speak. Therefore, reporters knew nothing. They still don't. It is possible that Kim Jong-il had a stroke. But we still do not know. It is possible that, as we speak, he is receiving therapy. We do not know.
And so we come back to an admission of what we know: nothing. And that, because we already know it, is no longer the top story about North Korea.
Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants Exclusive Partner of FD International. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.