Hunting in packs

When the media go after a target (and boy, they are like a pack of wolves, or an under 8s soccer team) all other stories get swept asunder. Mick Hartley has a tale that was ignored by much of the mainstream media (and also, sadly, by much of the blogosphere).

It's a tale of kidnapping, sexual slavery, China and North Korea. Two defectors from North Korea, Kyeong-Sook Cha and Soon-Hee Ma, appeared before the House Committee on International Relations, and provided firsthand accounts of widespread tragedy occurring in the Sino-North Korean border areas.

Kyeong-Sook Cha went [from North Korea] to China with her younger daughter to look for her older daughter, who had disappeared. In the process, she witnessed widespread sexual slavery of North Korean women in China. Cha and her younger daughter were likewise kidnapped, sold as sex slaves, captured by Chinese police, repatriated to North Korea, abused by North Korean security agents, witnessed torture of pregnant women and babies, escaped to China and repeated the experience that would have broken most women the first time. [...]

Unfortunately, no one from the mainstream media was present to bear witness to their moving testimony. Their misfortune was that the hearing took place on Oct. 27. The media in Washington, D.C., were in a feeding frenzy over the Harriet Miers withdrawal and the "Scooter" Libby indictments. Cha's and Ma's tragic stories were ignored.

In exasperation, Suzanne Scholte, of the Defense Forum Foundation and North Korea Freedom Coalition, remarked the media were "more interested in bringing down George Bush than Kim Jong-il." [...]

It's that mentality of think local and screw the global. I don't like my leader. He is so evil. Your leader is not as evil as mine. Is. Is not. My leader in trouble gets more viewers, sells more papers than whatever your leader does.

Tragedy loses out to farce. You too can have a cool windbreaker like Kim Jong-Il.