Here’s a little something on the subject of another topic
the media knows less than it needs to about: foreign relations and ongoing
diplomatic talks.
Particularly, we’re talking about relations with China, the
incredibly powerful economic rival of ours trapped in amusingly symbiotic
relationship with the United States. The media’s ongoing quest for a good lead
is causing conflict where there really, really doesn’t need to be any.
Apparently the US government is alleging that the Chinese
have violated a UN ban on nuclear weapons sales when one its firms (again,
allegedly) sold components that could be used to build a mobile nuclear missile platform to North Korea. There are
no indications in the article about whether these components components are up to date
or obsolete, nor is there mention of China’s response until the very end of the
article.
Foreign policy, once considered a boring topic by a large
portion of leading headline media firms, is now just as much a victim of
dramatization as every other piece of news. As long as the story is the kind
that can survive being sensationalized, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with
dramatization. Sometimes it can even draw our attention to something that we
need to be learning about to begin with. Then, well, then there are times that
an incredibly important detail gets likely intentionally buried in the bottom
of an article:
“Washington suspects that the Chinese company, Hubei Sanjiang,
did not sell North Korea an entire vehicle and that it believed the components
were for civilian purposes, suggesting it was not an intentional violation of a
prohibition of military-related sales to Pyongyang, the U.S. official said.”
Oh. Wait. You
mean we don’t actually think the
Chinese are helping the North Koreans build a missile? But Reuters is just
going to report on it anyhow, without even the mention that the whole issue is
a developing story?
I have no problem
with reporters working for mass media wires beating war drums in their articles
as long as we adequately fund our schools. Oh. Wait.
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