Media Shows Their Hypocrisy in Supporting North Korea
At a time when where supposed to be brought together and united as Americans to support our athletes abroad, the media has proven true the old slogan "my enemy of my enemy is my friend." Since the very start of the Trump administration we have heard warnings from the left in our country of how a dictatorship might be on the rise and that President Trump stole the election (although there has been no credible evidence found to prove the point.).
However, with the arrival of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's (who is an actual dictator) sister, Kim Yo-Jong, the media again lost all credibility after praising the tyrant's sister. Since arriving at the Olympics on Feb.9, the media has taken every chance to report negatively on the Trump administration who is being represented by Vice President Mike Pence and his wife.
But praise a dictator's sister? CNN didn't wait long to help start the negative coverage. In their first article they described an historic first handshake between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean representative, Kim Yo-Jong as a positive moment-it didn't take them long to start throwing in negative jibes at the vice president. While describing the scene as historic (which it was), they described Pence as looking "stony faced," during the historic moment. Continuing down in the article, they ran a description titled "Pence looked uncomfortable."
In another CNN article, which was titled "Kim Jong UN's sister is stealing the show at the Olympic at the winter Olympics," CNN went onto lavish praise on the dictator's sister. The Koreas have been divided between communist and free, since the end of the Korean War in 1953 when the two sides agreed to an armistice and agreed to dividing the country after three years of war, which left almost 40,000 American troops dead. Kim Il-sung became leader of the North Korean side and started the repressive policies that are now in place. North Korea has also undergone several famines since the end of the Korean War. The most recent, lasted from 1995 to 1998 and resulted in the deaths of approximately two to three million (though numbers are hard to accurately get from the restrictive regime.). The famine also came at a time when the world community provided aid to the dictatorship, as the regime often used missile tests as a bargaining chip for the aid.
The media negativity toward the Trump administration continued not only with CNN's coverage, but several other outlets including, the Wall Street Journal, who in one of their articles described the North Korean cheer squad as "being impossible to ignore." The North Korean's routinely threaten their people with execution at foreign events for not performing satisfactorily to the regime's likening. Another troubling headline came from NPR, as the author titled her title, "Amid Olympic Détente, Pence Snubs North Koreans in Visit to Pyeongchang." The author of the piece didn't wait long to trash into Mr. Pence. In the opening paragraph she stated how "Pence is facing backlash," for his snub of the North Korean representative. Yet the author does not go into detail about who Mr. Pence is facing backlash from.
In a final display of the media's favoritism of the North Korean regime, Politico ran a title "Fred Warmbier criticizes North Korean Olympic Spirit." Warmbier is the father of Otto Warmbier who was taken into custody by the North Korean regime and was later returned to the U.S unconscious and died a few days later. He had significant brain damage and was unconsciousness when he was returned to the United States after being detained for allegedly stealing a party poster in a North Korea hotel room.
The heart of the issue for the media criticism of Mr. Pence is his staunch position against same sex marriage. Mr. Pence also signed a religious freedom law while Governor of Indiana in 2015. In the latest available poll, only seven percent of journalist are registered Republicans. Critics said that it made it easier for employers and businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community in Indiana.nCoverage of the issue in the media is also heavily favored in toward supporting same sex marriage. A poll done by Pew Research Center in 2013 has shown that a majority of the major news channels, had high favorable numbers supporting same sex marriage. MSNBC had 64 percent positive coverage, while 30 percent was mixed and six percent opposing. Fox News had 29 supporting coverage, with 63 percent mixed and eight percent opposing. CNN had 39 percent supporting coverage, 57 percent mixed with four percent opposing coverage.
In North Korea, however, gays as well as Christians are horribly oppressed by the Kim regime with both facing extreme oppression. Both sides are not allowed to come out openly and express their beliefs or views in fear of being arrested.
The media has shown their hypocrisy for supporting a brutally oppressive regime which not only oppresses a favorite group of theirs in the culture wars but also has shown their un-Americanism by siding with foreign dictatorships over President Trump.
Tom Manning is a professional writer from Lindenhurst, New York.
