Of missiles and mercurial
media By Aidan Foster-Carter
People are so horrid about that Kim
Jong-il. I can't think why. He's been very good to
me. Thanks to him, I've been to Kyoto - five
times. And many another delightful spot, for one
conference after another on the eternal conundrum
which is knotty, nutty North Korea.
Similarly selfishly, the latest missile
shindig wasn't all an ill wind. I got my Warholian
15 minutes of fame, with a whirligig of radio and
television interviews. Handy pocket money, too.
(Some pay, some don't. As a freelancer, it helps
just to get your name and face out there.)
Not that I had a clue what was going on.
Never trust an expert! Despite having followed the
place since about 1970, North Korea
wrong-foots me all the
time. My bet was that the Dear Leader wouldn't
actually fire his big rocket. I even penned a
confident - you always have to sound confident -
op-ed article to that effect, which fortunately
didn't get printed.
The first phone call
from the British Broadcasting Corp came at 10:20pm
on the Fourth of July. I was on a train in Surrey,
England, heading back to Hampshire after a hot day
seeing friends and family in London.
Thus
I learned that North Korea had indeed carried out
its missile launch, after weeks of keeping us
guessing. Knowing what this portended, for a
moment I contemplated turning around and heading
for London there and then. With the news just in,
every radio and TV channel would need an instant
pundit - and it was a bit late for them to phone
people. But I was sweaty, tired and underdressed
(for TV; no problem on radio). So I headed home,
brain working overtime: to go online for the
details, and get some sleep for the long day
ahead.
Wednesday, July 5, was one busy,
dizzy day. It began early (6:45am) with lots of
radio. Besides BBC World Service, there was a full
house of Celts - Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland - plus local radio in Essex and Warwick.
I'd been booked for BBC Radio 4's flagship
Today too, but was first postponed and then
stood down. They always do that to me. Still, this
was all done by phone from home; hence no great
inconvenience, just a tad annoying. (Not like
another pundit friend, who got canceled at 4:30am
by GM (Good Morning) TV just as he was ordering
the cab to appear on their early breakfast news at
6am!)
Broadcasting is strange. Or maybe
just news-driven, but they only seem to notice the
big bangs. Considered as work, it's very episodic.
Weeks go by when no one phone at all, and the
paranoid who lurks in every freelancer starts to
fear that they've forgotten that you - or, more
worryingly, Korea - exist. Then North Korea fires
a few rockets, and it all goes, well, ballistic.
At one point calls were coming in faster than I
could answer or record. I fretted about forgetting
some, or that two bookings might clash if one runs
late (as they often do).
They're a fickle
bunch, too. The BBC's more downmarket 5 Live
had asked me on - only to dump Kim Jong-il and
plump for our scandal-prone Deputy Premier John
Prescott instead. But for a day or so, until the
next hot story comes along, broadcasters are
desperate to have you - and will bend their own
rules to do so.
Thus normally radio people
prefer you in a studio, for voice quality. At
home, thanks to the Beeb, I have a box of tricks
called a Codec; which, via an ISDN (integrated
services digital network) line, makes it sound as
if I'm in the studio - when truth is I'm in my
underwear. That's the joy of radio. This time I
was elsewhere, without all that gear, but in the
urgency no one minded: the phone was fine.
Another rule: if you've been on program A,
you can't usually do B as well; where B is either
a competitor or in the same stable - eg, not both
World at One and PM the same day, as
these are successive BBC Radio 4 news programs at
lunch and dinnertime respectively.
But
this time, taking a hasty train to London, I did
the rounds of BBC World TV, News 24, Sky, More 4
(Channel 4), and BBC 4 (not to be confused with
Radio 4). The last two go out head to head at 8pm.
They both wanted me, so the former was
pre-recorded.
All this meant much toing
and froing across London. They offer to provide a
car, which must cost the BBC's license payers -
ie, every Brit, including me - a fortune. But
given the capital's traffic, I find even the
aging, creaking London Underground a quicker bet.
So it was twice on the Central Line out to
the BBC television center at White City, with
Grays Inn Road (ITN) and Millbank (Sky) in
between. At each, elegant makeup ladies powdered
my glistening brow. (England has recently moved to
the tropics, in case you hadn't heard.)
It's nice to be pampered. Nicer yet to
meet those one had hitherto admired from afar. I
got interviewed by two of my BBC heroes: not only
George Alagiah, but also Zainab Badawi.
Then there's the unexpected. Back home and
up early next morning for Radio Manchester, the
strong Mancunian accent was familiar. Terry
Christian, no less! A name to conjure with here.
Back in the 1980s Christian hosted a notorious
Saturday night "yoof" TV show called The Word.
Anything could happen on The Word, and
quite often did. Eventually it got banned.
Yet cheeky needn't mean stupid. I hate Big
Brother-style dumbing down, but Terry knew his
stuff - then and now. His questions about North
Korea were spot-on and well informed.
This
is something that varies a lot. I don't envy
presenters, who besides thinking on their feet
must pretend to omniscience (even more than us
one-track pundits) and ask the right questions.
But their grasp of the nuances is uneven to say
the least. Nor do some much care.
Worryingly, ignorance seems to increase
across the pond. Fox TV phoned, wanting someone
who'd met Kim. I suggested Madeleine Albright.
Who? Er, your former secretary of state! (I'm not
sure if right-wing Fox even speaks to
Clintonistas, mind, or vice versa.)
Weirdest of all was one Adam Carolla. A
new name to me, but suffice it to say he took over
some radio slots when the notorious shock-jock
Howard Stern moved to satellite. I hadn't quite
grasped what I was getting into here. Worried
about the future of Western civilization? You
should be. At 7am in Los Angeles, people are
driving to work, listening to grown men (overgrown
schoolboys, really) discussing doing truly
disgusting things. With asparagus.
Next
up, North Korea! I strove to enter into the spirit
of it, so probably made a total idiot of myself.
There goes my Korea. I plead guilty to tabloid
tendencies, and enjoy the challenge of adapting to
different audiences and levels; eg, you need a
different tone on BBC Radio 5 than on Radio 4. I'm
proud to have written both for the New Left Review
and Marie Claire.
What Carolla didn't know
about Korea would fill a container ship. But hey,
he called me "professor". Respect! I did my best
to enlighten the asparagus perverts. And here at
last, I got to tell my best answer to the
question: Why does Kim fire missiles? It was
deemed too rude for the BBC. Probably too much for
your sensitivities also, dear ATol reader ...
Others too phoned in from around the
globe: France, New Zealand - and Jamaica! That was
a first: all the nicer since I knew the presenter,
Trevor Munroe, in student days long ago. This was
1968, when even in Oxford we were revolting.
Trevor went on to be a leading activist and
academic in Jamaica. It sounded as if the years
had mellowed him, as they have me.
In
among all this, a Persian rug arrived. Last year,
out of the blue, I did some interviews for Sahar
TV in Iran. Yes, really. Down a phone line, for 25
minutes; it must have been ever so exciting
onscreen. Late at night (11pm) here, so the small
hours in Tehran: I wonder who was watching. Weird,
but a real chance to reach out - and dig deep into
the issues, unlike the usual rushed two to three
minutes' Q&A, which compels you to be glib and
think in soundbites.
All this was live and
uncensored: at one point I recall defending US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice! (They no
longer use me; I wonder why.) No pay, of course.
But my contact, a friendly and chatty young woman,
did say a small thank-you gift was coming. So a
year passes - and suddenly a parcel arrives from
Iran, containing an elegant woven mat. I shall use
it to pray for peace.
But I digress. All
this was so last week. North Korea's missile
challenge hasn't gone away - except from your
radio and TV. Since then we had the Mumbai bombs,
and now Israel's and Hezbollah's criminal
co-conspiracy to destroy Lebanon is, quite
rightly, the top story.
So my phone has
stopped ringing, and I can get back to writing on
Korea, which is my bread and butter: steadier
work, fortunately, than the ephemeral swarm of
broadcasters. As it happens I had July deadlines
anyway; so the missile week really was hectic. I
could never be a full-time broadcaster: my nerves
wouldn't stand for it. But once in a while the
adrenaline rush is quite a buzz. BBC World has 16
million viewers, so they say. Thanks, Dear Leader!
PS: Oh all right then, since you ask. Why
does North Korea fire missiles? Why do dogs lick
their ...? Carolla filled in the punch line for
me. Because they can.
Aidan
Foster-Carter is honorary senior research
fellow in sociology and modern Korea, Leeds
University, England, and a freelance writer and
commentator on Korean affairs. For his columns for
Asia Times Online, clickhere.
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2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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