The North Koreans Need a Wall

In this country, we build a wall to keep the Mexicans out. In North Korea, they need a wall to keep their own people in.

A story has appeared in newspapers and other media around the world, including the United States. It goes like this:

About two weeks ago, fifteen people attempted to flee North Korea to China because they were hungry and they had relatives in China who could help them. The North Koreans shot these 13 women and two men to death on a bridge near the town of Onseong.

Is it true?

The only source for this story is a newsletter put out by the Good Friends, a humanitarian aid group based in Seoul, South Korea. I have been unable to locate a copy of that newsletter and information about Good Friends is non-existent. One newspaper said it was a Buddhist group.

I have no reason to doubt the story, and we know from other sources that food is scarce in North Korea, and that the North Koreans have been known to shoot people for rather minor offenses.

But it is disconcerting to be unable to determine if any media source confirmed the information. It seems the story popped up somewhere and was then picked up by the media and reported as fact. Many of the articles are almost identical.

While it may not seem like that big a deal, it is unhappy because if reflects a trend . The more I learn of the media in the United States, the more I realize that they have lost their way. Forthrightness, honesty, integrity, fairness, the confirmation of sources, making sure of the facts -- these things that in years past defined real journalism -- have disappeared down some hole of corporate greed and/or political gain.

And it's not just the Republican Party mouthpiece, Fox News. It's NBC and CBS and ABC and MSNBC and all the rest. With rare exceptions, the newspapers share the shame, the blame and the guilt. It has become damn near impossible to get the truth from the mainstream media in the United States.

Thank goodness we have Media Matters and Alternet and Honest Reports and all the other, alternative sources, to find out what is really happening and how the major news outlets are skewing the information we need to know to become informed citizens.