Appeal of fake news

By John Burton

The English narration dubbed over the North Korean video paints a dystopian picture of life in America, where citizens are forced to eat snow to survive after they wiped out the bird population for food. Homeless people sit on park benches next to blue body bags filled with the remains of their deceased friends. Instead of spending money on essentials, Americans like to “buy guns to kill each other, especially children.”

“This is how they live in modern-day America, huddled together ― the poor, the cold, the lonely and the homosexuals,” concludes the deadpan voice of the British-accented narrator.

The video images were taken from a North Korea television report on economic woes in the U.S. and Europe, with lots of shots of homeless people living in shelters and crowding around soup kitchens in wintry urban landscapes. It’s the type of “what’s wrong with capitalism” report that once was standard fare on Soviet television.

But what sent the video viral earlier this month was the doom-laden English narration with its outrageous claims that the living conditions in the U.S. had become so desperate that Americans were grateful for North Korean volunteers doling out cakes, blankets and coffee and supplying tent material for the homeless.

It became a sensation on the websites of reputable foreign media outlets, including Time, the Washington Post, Wired, the National Review, Yahoo News!, the Daily Caller, the Week, the Blaze and Slate in the U.S. and the Daily Telegraph, the Sun and the Daily Mail in the U.K.

All of them appeared to accept the video at face value and declared it as another example of how wacky are the North Koreans.

But the English narration was a hoax, written by a British travel writer, Alun Hill. He had taken the original North Korean video report posted by Uriminzokkiri, the official Youtube channel of Pyongyang, and added his own rather fanciful and hilarious text and reposted it on Youtube under his name.

“I’ll admit I was shocked that it went around the world as factual (whilst I was asleep in London) ― and that only the Huffington Post contacted me,” he later commented.

This little episode says a lot about the current state of journalism, particularly when it applies to covering North Korea.

It is no so much an example of lazy journalism as what has been called “hamster wheel” journalism ― the constant pressure on journalists employed by big media organizations to update or post new stories online. The Internet has enormously expanded the flow of information, but one downside has been its impact on the quality of daily journalism.

The goal among most major media outlets now seems to be to publish the news as quickly as possible ahead of the competition rather than giving journalists time to dig deeper into a story or provide thoughtful analysis or context. This attitude can lead to skipping on fact-checking as well as promoting conformity as media outlets try to match each other on stories.

In the case of the hoax North Korean video, there were plenty of warning signs. When scenes in the actual North Korean report switched from the U.S. to Europe, the fake narration explained that there it was because “other parts of America (are) often disguised as foreign countries in Europe.”

There appeared to be a willful need to suspend disbelief as in “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.” Even when the doubts about the credibility of the video crept into some of the news stories, they were quickly dismissed or played down. The Daily Telegraph noted that there was a “slim chance” that it was hoax. The Sun said that “some Internet users branded the video a hoax” before adding that it was “unclear if the voiceover’s translation is accurate.”

A quick check with any Korean speaker, readily available at least in many U.S. newsrooms due to the presence of Korean-Americans, would have exposed the hoax since the original Korean audio can be heard in the background of the fake video.

The rush to post the video reflects the one-dimensional portrayal of North Korea in much of the Western media as The Other ― a strange and alien place. In many respects, the Western reporting on North Korea is unsophisticated, taking Pyongyang’s often over-the-top pronouncements at face value. Moreover, it is hard to contradict the most outrageous stories about North Korea because of the closed nature of its society.

But that is no excuse for stopping from trying to report about or analyze North Korea in a serious manner as one would any other country. While the Internet has promoted a lot of garbage information about North Korea, it has also encouraged a good deal of excellent in-depth analysis on specialized websites devoted to the country. Perhaps journalists and their editors from the mainstream media should spend more time studying them instead of rushing the next fantasy story into print.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.