Media Coverage of North Korea's Satellite Launch

Remember the controversy and speculation surrounding North Korea's satellite launch in April? How people were analyzing just how far a North Korean rocket strike could go-just exactly who was in danger? And how it ended up being a dismal failure and kind of quietly went away after that? It was seriously hyped up in the media for days in advance. Here's a look back at how the media-and the analysts-were judging the situation right before the launch.

Stories from Western news organizations such as BBC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post took similar approaches, emphasizing speculations that the satellite launch is a cover for a missile test and focusing on Barack Obama's and other officials' condemnations and warnings. A story from The Korea Herald on April 4 is somewhat along that vein, except it had an updated estimate for the launch of either Monday or Tuesday, as opposed to, for instance, BBC's less up-to-date estimate of between April 4-8. (Western news media were reporting the launch could be as early as Saturday...whereas in South Korea, it was already Saturday, and they didn't believe the launch is happening until next week.) This discrepancy could perhaps be due to the time difference.

The most interesting angle I saw was a story in the Japan Times from the Kyodo News wire, "Public will be alerted quickly after launch." Unlike the other articles, which almost exclusively deal with public officials' very fit-for-TV sound bites, this story showed how the launch would affect citizens in Japan. It talks about Japan's plans for getting information about the launch to municipalities and news media within one minute of the launch. People across Japan would hear of the launch within minutes from the news media or from municipal PA systems reserved for disaster use. Interestingly, the first link in this information chain is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, yet I found hardly any coverage of this in the U.S. media. It's an interesting angle, and I'm surprised it hadn't been covered more.

China Daily's coverage was interesting, too, but for a different reason. China Daily's article was basically a rewrite of information from CNN (it explicitly credits CNN), but what a rewrite! No mention of the possibility it is a missile test. Just North Korea said it is a peaceful satellite launch, followed by quotes from a U.S. official saying the U.S. is displeased and "There will be a reaction to it." Amazing.