The Risks of Reporting from Abroad

The arrest and eventual release of Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee by North Korea, and recent reports of North Korean and Chinese authorities cracking down on refugee networks, have renewed the public debate over how far foreign journalists should go in covering repressive nations.

The leaders of countries such as Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), China, North Korea and Zimbabwe restrict foreign media access, fearing that independent interpretations of their policies and actions will threaten their rule at home and damage their reputations abroad.

In order to suppress news that reflects poorly on their regimes, these nations create elaborate surveillance networks to monitor foreign journalists as well as local dissidents who might assist reporters in gathering information. Journalists who travel to these countries essentially become unofficial international representatives to the local population, openly presenting and discussing views that government officials have attempted to forcibly silence.

Needless to say, challenging a regime's control over information in such a manner is extremely dangerous for both journalists and their local contacts. They must balance the safety concerns for reporters and the dissidents assisting them with the need for public awareness on issues suppressed by authoritarian governments. Unfortunately, these are risks that reporters and the citizens of repressive regimes have to take on a regular basis if there is to be any chance of creating dialogue that can foster significant change.

The alternative is to remain complacent and content to ignore important realities of human suffering in the world. Ling and Lee chose to take a risk to expose the human smuggling issue at the Chinese-North Korean border, and to show the work of agencies working on the spot to help the victims. The issue is not that they were reckless in their work but that they were up against possibly corrupt local interests and a repressive regime intent on seeing that the story does not get out.

The circumstances surrounding their arrest raise serious questions as to what extent Chinese provincial authorities and North Korean border security guards may have colluded to prevent Lee and Ling from getting a story that reflects poorly on local authorities on both sides of the border.