Posts tagged ap

“The press bus took a wrong turn Thursday,” or, Western journalism’s first real look at North Korea’s capital

While on a tour of Pyongyang, NK for the centennial of founder Kim Il Sun’s birth, AP journalists were given a rare opportunity to photograph something other than the elaborate, weird showcases they’re normally subjected to. The bus took a wrong turn and, for just a few minutes, took photojournalists somewhere new.

from the AP report:

A cloud of brown dust swirled down deeply potholed streets, past concrete apartment buildings crumbling at the edges. Old people trudged along the sidewalk, some with handmade backpacks crafted from canvas bags. Two men in wheelchairs waited at a bus stop. There were stores with no lights, and side roads so battered they were more dirt than pavement.

But the biggest surprise was that it wasn’t that bad.

It’s not clear why the regime hides places like the dusty, potholed neighborhood, which is just a mile or so from the center of town, across the trolley tracks and just off Tongil Street.

It doesn’t look like a war zone, or even like a particularly rough New York City neighborhood. Many streets in New Delhi, the capital of one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, look far more battered and far poorer.

FJP: What a sort of nice, unexpectedly humane look at the country.

For more pictures, see this Atlantic Wire article.

Central Pyongyang At Dusk

The New York Times’ Lens blog profiles David Guttenfelder, an AP photographer who is the only Westerner able to shoot in North Korea on a regular basis.

Guttenfelder’s work is a part of “Window on North Korea,” a photography exhibit taking place in New York City that places images by AP photographers next to those taken by Korea State Media (KCNA) photographers.

Via the New York Times:

[The show] has some of the best of the North Korea images by Mr. Guttenfelder and his A.P. colleagues.

But the photos by the KCNA are most telling. They are highly idealized images: everyone is well fed, and smiling. The workers are heroic and the leaders have a heavenly glow.  There are no traces of the hunger, hardships and repression that exist in North Korea. They may be propaganda but they do provide insight into how the North Korean government officials want — and need — their people to see their country.

A slideshow of images from the exhibit is available at the Lens blog.

Image: Central Pyongyang At Dusk by David Guttenfelder, AP. Via the New York Times.

AP: Next Stop, North Korea

The AP opens first Western news bureau in North Korea.

Via the Associated Press:

The Associated Press opened its newest bureau here Monday, becoming the first international news organization with a full-time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures and video.

In a ceremony that came less than a month after the death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il and capped nearly a year of discussions, AP President and CEO Tom Curley and a delegation of top AP editors inaugurated the office, situated inside the headquarters of the state-run Korean Central News Agency in downtown Pyongyang…

…The bureau puts AP in a position to document the people, places and politics of North Korea across all media platforms at a critical moment in its history, with Kim’s death and the ascension of his young son as the country’s new leader, Curley said in remarks prepared for the opening.

“Beyond this door lies a path to vastly larger understanding and cultural enrichment for millions around the world,” Curley said. “Regardless of whether you were born in Pyongyang or Pennsylvania, you are aware of the bridge being created today.”

Curley said the Pyongyang bureau will operate under the same standards and practices as AP bureaus worldwide.

“Everyone at The Associated Press takes his or her responsibilities of a free and fair press with utmost seriousness,” he said. “We pledge to do our best to reflect accurately the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as well as what they do and say.”

Image: Associated Press President Tom Curley, left, and Korean Central News Agency President Kim Pyong Ho hang the Associated Press Pyongyang sign on the door to open a new AP bureau in Pyongyang, North Korea on Monday Jan. 16, 2012. Via the AP.

Eric Carvin’s social media goal: ‘To get to every last journalist at AP’

“We have people everywhere and their skill levels are widely varied. Most AP journalists have a good understanding of social media’s benefits, but there are people who know more, and people who know less. I’ll be involved with training efforts hoping to get to every last journalist at AP.”

Via Alicia Shepard at Poynter, 

AP Exclusive: CIA following Twitter, Facebook

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

At the agency’s Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the “vengeful librarians” also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.

From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue. They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.

Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn’t know exactly when revolution might hit, said the center’s director, Doug Naquin.

The center already had “predicted that social media in places like Egypt could be a game-changer and a threat to the regime,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press at the center. CIA officials said it was the first such visit by a reporter the agency has ever granted.

read the rest of the article at Yahoo! News