FINAL PAPER
Abstract
This study seeks out the U.S. news media’s image of North Korea during a time when U.S. diplomacy with the North Korean government was little more than harsh words and stereotypes. It examines the common framing that was used by both the New York Times and the American Broadcasting Company. In all, 65 news stories were read and coded into a content analysis. The study looked for specific characteristics in each news story analytically as well as focused in on qualitative elements.
Management and manipulation by capitalist and government influences was the main focus of the analysis. Because news coverage of North Korea is not readily available to all reporters it was particularly interesting to look at where the reporters gathered their stories. Contextual content analysis techniques were applied systematically to a range of news articles in an attempt to grasp the influences on each story.
Introduction
How do capitalist and government interests affect new stories?
When events take place in foreign countries information has the capability of traveling toward us at horrendous speed. With advances such as the Blackberry and iPhone, what used to be “the wire” is now “wireless.” Whether we’re in a meeting, at the beach, on the mountain, or in the car we can check and find out what is happening at nearly any place in the world via multiple news outlets. We can pick and choose, get it when we want, and best of all, we can reply to it! Often, we admire its efficiency, as well as its intrinsic ability to keep us updated, without analyzing how it got to our fingertips.
The source of our news, whether print, video, or online is more complicated than simply the logo in the background. There are many hidden strings attached that affect the form it is presented in, as well as the words and images. In an effort to understand how media outlets construct news stories and distribute them we must also look at why news is covered. For this analysis, the inclusion of North Korea as an “axis of evil” country and the resulting news coverage is examined to grasp the stresses that are put on news agencies when government officials make such statements.
The main purpose of this analysis is to ask: how do capitalism and government interests affect the American mainstream media images of both the U.S. and North Korea? To guide this research, some areas that are specifically looked at include the international media image of North Korea and the U.S., the way the government and corporate interests consciously influence these images, and ideas for future research. According to Daniel Riffe, Stephen Lacy, and Fredrick G. Fico, “…quantitative histories can help establish the ancestry and evolution of academic disciplines, and the points at which new theoretical directions emerge.” Specific content is looked at because it reflects the antecedent context or process of its production (1998, p. 15-17).
Literature Review
International media images explained-
The role of media images is extremely important when it comes to international relations. Politicians as well as business leaders turn to media images when making strategic decisions that affect large amounts of people and although the public rarely vote on international policy or business decisions they do have the power to boycott businesses and stop visiting countries. In an effort to replicate and understand the process that takes place when an important decision must be made it is necessary to study the characteristics of a media rich, national image. By analyzing multiple news stories about a particular country and looking for characteristics such as visibility, breadth of topic, perspective, and a positive or negative portrayal we begin to find patterns that inherently construct social and political realities. Representations can shape perception of North Korea among the public, academics and policy makers, and make it difficult to obtain accurate information on North Korea. In 2006, research was done on the temporary increases and decreases in Japanese media coverage of North Korea. Hyung Gu Lynn “…argue[s] that television (and other forms of mass media) herded the public into a relatively constricted range of views through narrow, biased saturation coverage of the issue” (2006).
The influences on media images are the largest source of problems when it comes to international countries. This study will focus specifically on the influence of management and manipulation on international news stories and offer some possible explanations for why news is covered in this manner. Events such as the nuclear arms crisis with North Korea provide a comprehensive example of how news outlets manage and manipulate news stories by choosing whether or not to provide access, not providing correct information, mislabeling sources and covering pseudo-events that do not require the coverage they are given. Other influences include our desire to categorize events and cultures, social motivations, the processes and formats used to produce news, the underlying knowledge or “common sense” of the author/sources, and the context or situation surrounding the news and country.
Understanding how the influence of management and manipulation affects news stories is especially important during weapon races. While it is a race America has already won, the strategic foreign policy that results becomes evident in news stories across the nation. Reporters scramble to get the latest information from the White House, Pentagon, and State Department and suddenly phrases like “axis of evil” show up in every news source in the nation. Unfortunately, this form of indexing government officials has been found to be the most efficient way of producing news stories. This topic has become increasingly more important in regards to Iraq and other failed states.
A similar study done on North Korea’s national image by Jinbong Choi “offers insights into the role of news media in the representation of one country’s national image as a case study in decoding media representations and the interplay between them, presidential rhetoric, and national image.” In this study the U.S. and South Korean newspapers were analyzed for patterns and emphasis or exclusion of nationalistic symbols. The findings of this study were that the news media of both the U.S. and South Korea only serves the dominant social and political agenda of elites within these societies (2005).
Study Approach
Everything in context-
Many factors play into the image that is created by U.S. news sources. During the Clinton administration North Korea was suspected of using plutonium for nuclear weapons and would not allow inspectors to enter two testing sites; they argued it was being used for a nuclear power plant. In 1994 the U.S. along with several other countries signed an agreement with North Korea, which promised two new nuclear plants to be built in North Korea in return for stricter weapons inspections. Unfortunately, neither side has kept their end of the deal and negotiations are still being made in an effort to deter North Korea from producing weapons. One article in the New York Times quotes a Bush administration official as saying, “Exports of missile technology are increasing as fast as they can increase them – to whom ever will buy them,” The article goes on to say that missile and missile exports were not coved in the pact (Miller/Sanger, 2002).
The Bush administration has taken a relatively different approach with North Korea. They continue to condemn North Korean leader, Kim Jong II and have issued many reports stating that North Korea is providing weapons to terrorists. On January 30, 2002 President Bush in his State of the Union address labeled North Korea an “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq. This label was not well accepted by other countries but set a course for the media image of North Korea in American news. Many U.S. news sources began portraying the “axis of evil” as a force that was slowly rising up while only noting the worldwide reaction that came from the Mr. Bush’s comment. In 2006 the truth about this campaign finally began to be printed in U.S. newspapers. After several nuclear tests proved North Koreas ability to produce nuclear weapons, newspapers like the Washington Post began to sort things out. President Clinton’s former national security adviser, James Steinberg is quoted in one such article as saying “…It’s clear that the answer is we’re worse off with respect to the nuclear proliferation problem in both North Korea and Iran than four to six years ago, and I would argue we’re worse off in our overall security because of the situation in Iraq” (Kessler/Baker: 2006).
Two studies were done on the U.S. news coverage of North Korea in 2002 using an analytical approach, which looked primarily at how news stories are managed. News management is the process executed by editors, newsroom managers, corporations, large subsidiaries, and often with international stories, government interests. Some specific items that were looked at include government sources, unnamed sources, the context surrounding the news, and how much securitizing of government officials was done by the reporter. There are several other categories of elements to look at as well within the management frame. These include human nature and culture, protecting group identity, processes and formats of news media, ideological perspectives, and the context surrounding the events. Another item that also was looked at is whether the coverage portrayed a long term North Korean stereotype or whether it was just a small series of managed news articles.
Method
How it was done
In an effort to look at an accepted standard in journalism and a source that is read globally; articles from the New York Times – Historical Newspapers were gathered from Proquest Online for the primary analysis. As a newspaper of record, not only does it have an incredible amount of responsibility to produce credible news stories, it also has the ability to document history. Six months (229 articles) of news stories were narrowed down to 45 articles using a method called research randomizer. The time period began the day Bush announced that North Korea was part of the “axis of evil” (January 29th 2002) and ended June 1, 2002.
Articles such as letters to the editor were removed from this study to allow for the focus to be solely on the stories that are reported by the paid staff of the New York Times. Each of the 45 articles was entered into a spreadsheet and quantitatively categorized by the date, length, pictures, byline, author, topic or theme, whether or not it was on the front page and the sources listed. A further, more qualitative analysis was done by recording terms, phrases, and statements that were used in the article to look for negative characterizations. Often characterizations are embedded using evaluative labels and other techniques, which marginalize and trivialize the other (Rivenburgh, 1995, p. 159-160). Embedded terms were categorized by headlines, large quotes, remarks from North Korean officials, remarks from U.S. officials, and descriptions of North Korea. All 13 categories were compiled together into one sheet, which shows the image of six months of news coverage.
A second news source with an entirely different format was also chosen to accurately analyze the media formats used to produce stories related to U.S. foreign policy. ABC evening news clips from the Vanderbilt TV News Archive were gathered from January 29, 2002 until North Korea announced it would negotiate with the U.S. regarding its nuclear weapons program (October 20th 2002). This set of data consisted of every news segment that was shown on the ABC evening news with mention of North Korea. These 20 segments were coded in a spreadsheet based on date, duration, location in newscast, location of primary reporter, topic, description, focus, and sources shown.
Results
Characteristics of the mediums
The patterns of news coverage in the New York Times were staggering. Only one story about North Korea made front-page news. The average article turned out to be 13 paragraphs. Photographs or maps were used in 33% of the articles. Only 73% of the articles had a byline of which only one article was written in North Korea and 11 in the U.S. There were sometimes multiple topics to each story but the major theme in 80% of the stories was foreign relations. About 33% of the stories had nuclear weapons as a major theme also. North Koreans seeking asylum in other countries was discussed in 24% of the articles and was a key reason for having a larger amount of outside sources. On average, there were 2 U.S. outside sources per article and 1.4 U.S. Government sources.
The phrase “axis of evil” was used in 58% of the articles and many other terms that frame North Korea negatively were used such as “…sufficiently nasty that it would have made Stalin envious” (Kristof, 2002). Remarks from North Korean officials were rare but equally as nasty toward the U.S, “North. Koreans would be proud to die in this way, to be the first country to have a nuclear exchange with America,” “North Korea cannot kill the heavy-weight champion, the U.S.,”, “But it can maim one of his limbs, so the heavyweight will not want to fight, that is the North Korean logic,” (Kristof, 2002). Occasionally more positive terms were used such as [North Korea] “expressed willingness to open dialogue with U.S., and will accept a U.S. envoy’s visit to the North” (French, 2002).
Americans didn’t get anything more than fancy news rhetoric about North Korea in the evening television news during a time it was needed most. The longest evening news story that mentioned North Korea during the period studied was five minutes and ten seconds. Within the stories, U.S. government and military officials appeared as 61% of the speaking sources and of all the sources, only 12% were people from outside the U.S. Approximately half of the stories had sources other than a reporter, of those, 88% were American. Other troubling observations include the fact that Peter Jennings was the only reporter for 45% of the stories, 75% were shot in the U.S. and 55% were produced in the studio only. The topic of 75% of the stories was international diplomacy; military and terrorism made up the other 25%. One story out of the 20 was filmed from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and only one story had a North Korean analyst as a speaking source. Other than these exceptions, all of the other clips came from as far away as Alaska and were mainly filled with Bush doctrines.
The dominant images and frames that appeared in the U.S. media of North Korea included a couple underlying themes. America’s military power as well as foreign aid seemed to be noted in nearly every article along with North Korea’s continued weapons programs and impoverishment. Throughout the time period analyzed, the dominant theme was nuclear weapons and terrorism. Around the middle of March, 2002 another theme that became evident was North Koreans seeking asylum in other Asian countries. This undoubtedly continued to shape the image of North Korea as a violent, oppressed country with no human rights. Only one article out of the New York Times went as far as to quote the president of the Korea Society in New York stating “There are over 125 South Korean firms doing business in North Korea.” “…they find the North Korean workers literate, hard workers, and excellent value,” Also noted in this article is “North Koreans are good people, but always get paid in advance,” (Brooke, 2002).
Analysis
What happened?
When studying this material we must begin to interpret why we it is being produced in this manner. In relation to media management the results of both analysis’s resembled highly managed international news sources. The New York Times had more primary reporters and sources outside the U.S. however, they failed to incorporate more than one positive image of North Korea. ABC news did a similar job of framing North Korea predominantly from the U.S. using television images and a very small staff of international reporters. Visual images in both mediums were not available to obtain for this study but the fact that the New York Times only had visuals in 33% of their articles reinforces the fact that few reporters are able to get photos for North Korean stories unless they are of U.S. government officials. The location of the stories within the newspaper or broadcast is also deliberately managed. Within this study, The New York Times put North Korea on the front page only 2% of the time. ABC aired stories about North Korea in the first section of their broadcast 60% of the time.
The sources of information and topics within both mediums form the heart of the argument that coverage of North Korea is managed based on both circumstance and U.S. ideologies. Somewhere around 75-80% of the stories had talk of tense foreign relations and failing international diplomacy; in the 65 stories that were analyzed, only one had a slight departure from the continually negative frame most Americans see North Korea through. Instead of focusing on nuclear weapons, asylum seekers, or the “evildoers”; this one article sought out to provide real news that is crucial to American and international decision makers. A fascinating highlight from it states that Americans are free to travel to North Korea (Brooke, 2002). How bad can it be if we’re not allowed to travel to Cuba, a non- “axis of evil” country, but the U.S. government will allow us access to North Korea? If this is the case, why aren’t reporters covering stories there? Other topics that were reported throughout all of the stories were American patriotism and providing aid to North Koreans.
Just by looking at the average duration of the television news clips, we can surmise that these stories were specifically selected because they fit in a short time slot. “The appeal of both images and metaphors is that they convey a wealth of information in a relatively small package. Narrative is time consuming.” “…the reporting on a crisis, no matter how delicate or immediate, has to be constricted to fit the medium” (Moeller, 1999, p. 47). Another characteristic of the television medium is paying someone like Peter Jennings large sums of money for his professional television appearance. Possibly the most startling thing found was the way the news was presented by a large majority of Americans. Of the television news stories, 90% were about America and what actions needed to be taken against North Korea. Other than three short stories, all of the news that was presented during this period came directly from reporters covering U.S. government sources. This routine of gathering news from the Iron Triangle (The White House, State Department, and the Pentagon) and other Western sources caused the iconic phrase “axis of evil” to be the over-arching theme of North Korea from a western standpoint. A few other things that stood out about the routine of these stories was the way they were clustered with stories from other “axis of evil” or Asian countries and the fact that they were all covered from the same America vs. North Korea angle.
Evident in these studies is both a long-term stereotype of North Korea as being difficult to work with as well as a shorter series of events that took place and caused for international alarm. The particular events that were studied seem to be centered around the dictatorship of Kim Jong II, however all North Koreans who are not fleeing are perceived as his supporters. Several decades ago Peter Dahlgren and Sumitra Chakrapani did a broader study on third world countries and noted that: “In the west, governmental corruption tends to have a person-specific aura to it; the focus is on the individuals who commit the deeds. Removal of these individuals, by implication, restores the integrity of the system” (1982). It was clear that the U.S. government’s gigantic public relations department was working hard at strategically releasing information and oversimplifying circumstances. Over 25% of the articles in the New York Times had no byline and 45% of the news broadcasts had no sources other than the reporter. These facts are inherently suspicious and seem to show that professional journalism of this country is unimportant and comes from reporters who have earned the privileged of reciting government officials.
Conclusion
Summary and Future research
A key factor in this study that can’t be over looked is the accessibility aspect of North Korea. Very little news slips out of the country causing for an overwhelming amount of speculation. Another accessibility issue with North Korea is a poor cultural understanding that is compounded by differences in aspects of everyday life. Part of the problem is that the news outlets seem to be driven by the commercial pressures of needing to attract advertisers and enhance a patriotic reputation, however other problems also exist. Budgets seem to be the key player in these stories. The fact that 75% of the news broadcasts about a foreign country are coming from within the U.S. is outrageous. The lack of foreign correspondents and international news outlets appears to have been filled by short, wholesale news segments and U.S. government officials. Even when it was utterly important that Americans receive the facts about what was taking place in a foreign region, television news and newspaper coverage was far below par, and failed to deliver an accurate report of the international news.
The media image of North Korea suffered some hard hits after being included as part of the “axis of evil”. For the most part the reporters did a decent job of recognizing that the North Korean public was not to blame, however there was a fair amount of ‘self definition’ that took place. Many of the reporters took part in enhancement strategies by referring to ways that the U.S. was attempting to help the North Koreans. This formula along with other elements makes the assumption that since the North Korean governments has “failed”, we must do the rational thing and transform it into a sovereign nation that can govern itself according to our standards. What stays beyond the boundary of legitimate controversy in these stories is how to bring about a peaceful relationship with North Korea.
The implications of these results are frightening. With this type of coverage continually being pumped over the networks it is no wonder that the U.S. public opinion of North Korea is suffering. In a poll conducted in 2003 by the World Public Opinion Organization, 54% of Americans said they supported U.S. military action if South Korea also supported a war effort and diplomacy was unsuccessful in deterring North Korea from producing nuclear weapons (Americans on North Korea). The tactics used by the Bush administration have been around for centuries, although the technology that is now being used to orchestrate public opinion is continually advancing. Further study is needed in terms of the acceleration of ideologies through increasing communications. By critically analyzing this form of popular culture, researchers are enabled to deconstruct common sense and form new social realities where more accurate news coverage can be reported without capitalist and government influence.
Bibliography:
Primary Sources:
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Network Diplomacy
How the American news media portrayed North Korea as an “axis of evil”
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