English for International Relations 3 – Ms.

Nguyễn Vĩnh Hằng

UNIT 1
NORTH KOREA FIRES MISSILE OVER JAPAN
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By CHOE SANG-HUN and DAVID E. SANGER AUG. 28, 2017

A member of Japan’s military mobilizing a missile unit on Tuesday, on the outskirts of

Tokyo, after North Korea’s missile launch. Credit Issei Kato/Reuters
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea carried out one of its most provocative missile
tests in recent years early Tuesday morning, hurling a ballistic missile directly
over Japan that prompted the government in Tokyo to warn residents in its path to take
cover.

2. The missile flew over the northern island of Hokkaido and landed harmlessly in the
sea, after a flight of nearly 1,700 miles. But the propaganda value for the North Koreans
was, considerable.

3. Public television programs in Japan were interrupted with a rare warning screen
announcing the missile’s flight over the country. Several bullet train lines were
temporarily halted, and the government spoke of the missile — only the third North
Korean projectile to fly over the country since 1998 — in unusually dire terms.

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Halt (v) = Pause

4. “North Korea’s reckless action of launching a missile that passed over Japan is an
unprecedented, serious and grave threat,” said Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe. He
later told reporters that he had spoken by telephone with President Trump. “Japan and the
U.S. stances are completely matched,” he said, adding that they discussed ways to tighten
pressure on North Korea.

Reckless youth makes rueful age

5. The test was a direct challenge to Mr. Trump. Just last week, at a political rally in
Arizona, Mr. Trump suggested that his threat to rain down “fire and fury” on North
Korea if it endangered the United States was beginning to bear fruit. Kim Jong-un, the
North Korean leader, was “starting to respect us,” Mr. Trump said.

6. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had also cited a pause in testing by the North,
saying he was “pleased to see that the regime in Pyongyang has certainly demonstrated
some level of restraint that we have not seen in the past.” Mr. Tillerson suggested that it
could be a “pathway” to dialogue.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs 🡪 The State Department

Foreign Minister 🡪 Secretary of State (Ngoại trưởng)

7. Only days later, that optimism seemed premature when the North Koreans launched
three short-range missiles on Saturday. Two of them traveled about 155 miles before
splashing down, far enough to reach major South Korean and American military bases,
including those about 60 miles south of Seoul.

8. While North Korea has not carried out its threat to fire four of its ballistic missiles
toward the coast of Guam — and near an American air base — the missile it fired over
Japan on Tuesday appeared to be of the same type: an intermediate-range missile that
could target American, South Korean and Japanese bases in northeast Asia.

9. Only twice before has the North fired projectiles over Japanese territory: once in 1998,
prompting a minor diplomatic crisis in Asia, and once again at the beginning of the

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Obama administration in 2009. In both those cases, the North said the rockets were
carrying satellites into orbit. In this case, it made no such claim.

As in the case of the 2009 launch, which was paired with a nuclear weaponstest, North
Korea appears to be testing a new American president.

Notably, the missile fired on Tuesday took off from near Pyongyang, North Korea’s
capital. Early reports, which are often corrected later, indicated it was launched from a
site near Pyongyang’s international airport, not the usual launch site in the northeast,
according to the South Korean military. They said they were still trying to determine what
type of missile was launched.

American officials noted that if it was in fact launched from the capital’s outskirts, it may
have been meant to complicate recent American threats to hit the North with pre-emptive
strikes. That possibility was explicitly raised this month by Trump administration
officials, as a way of seeking to deter the North Koreans.

While the North’s usual launch sites are in remote areas, where there would be little
concern about civilian casualties, any strike near Pyongyang would risk many civilian
deaths and would suggest the real goal was to strike at the regime.

An attack near Pyongyang would also be far more likely to result in North Korean
retaliation against Seoul.

Lt. Gen. Hiroaki Maehara, the commander of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s Air
Defense Command, said that the armed forces did not try to shoot down the missile from
North Korea on Tuesday because they did not detect a threat to Japanese territory.

But when the government detected the launch and followed the path of the missile, it
warned citizens in its path to take cover — just in case any parts fell on Japan.

According to Itsunori Onodera, Japan’s defense minister, the missile launched Tuesday
was very likely a Hwasong 12, which is classified as intermediate range and is fired from
mobile launchers. North Korea successfully tested a Hwasong 12 in May.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at his official residence in Tokyo on Tuesday. “We
have lodged a firm protest to North Korea,” Mr. Abe said. “We have requested an urgent
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meeting of the U.N. Security Council.”CreditKimimasa Mayama/European Pressphoto

Agency
The North Korean missile tests on Saturday and again on Tuesday came during joint
military drills that the United States and South Korea started a week ago. For the United
States and South Korea, these drills — mostly conducted on computer screens — are
normal exercises. But the North calls such annual drills a rehearsal for invasion and often
lashes out with weapons trials and military exercises of its own.

The United States has also been conducting joint exercises with Japanese forces for the
past two weeks, and it was Japan that seemed most directly affected by Tuesday’s launch.

Speaking on national television, Mr. Abe said his government “was prepared to take all
the measures to protect people’s lives.”

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“We have lodged a firm protest to North Korea. We have requested an urgent meeting of
the U.N. Security Council,” he added. Diplomats said the meeting would most likely be
Tuesday afternoon.

The Japanese government sent a text alert to citizens about the launch and advised them
to take protective cover. In a post on Mr. Abe’s Twitter account, the government
confirmed that the missile was fired at 5:58 a.m. local time, before breaking into three
pieces and landing about 730 miles off the coast of Cape Erimo on Hokkaido, around
6:12 a.m.

Takaaki Uesugi, a security guard at the town hall of Erimo, on the southern tip of
Hokkaido, said he first heard about the launch from an alert on his phone.

“I’m really worried about how America will react,” he said. “It’s possible that Japan
could be dragged into a dangerous situation depending on how President Trump responds
to this.”

A woman in Tokyo, Kaoru Kuroko, also said she had heard an alarm on her telephone
soon after the missile was launched. “It was scary,” she said. “I wondered, where will the
missile go to?”

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South Korea said it was ready to defend itself from the North Korean threat. “North
Korea must come to the negotiating table, realizing that denuclearization is its only way
to ensure its security and economic development,” the South Korean Foreign Ministry
said in a statement on Tuesday.

With China to the west and Russia to the north, North Korea can flight-test its mid- or
intermediate-range missiles only to the south or to the east, analysts said.

“In a way, this was a hard choice to make for the North because it meant to fire the
missile over Japan or toward Guam,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean
studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “In the end, it chose to fire over Japan,
demonstrating its capability to launch a missile to Guam but without actually launching
one in that direction, which would have been a huge provocation to the United States.”

North Korea has conducted more than 80 missile tests since Mr. Kim came to power in
late 2011, after the death of his father, but it has not sent any of those missiles over Japan.

Even when it flight-tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on July 28, it was launched
at a highly lofted angle so that it reached an altitude of 2,300 miles. But it flew only 998
horizontal miles, falling in waters between the North and Japan. The North said at the
time that it did so in order not to send its missile over a neighbor. Thus, the missile test on
Tuesday was considered especially bold.

Along with South Korea, Japan and Guam would most likely be the first targets of a
North Korean attack should war break out on the Korean Peninsula, analysts said. Both
are home to major American military bases.

Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul and David E. Sanger from Boston. Reporting was
contributed by Motoko Rich from Yokota, Japan, Hisako Ueno, Makiko Inoue and Kaho
Futagami from Tokyo, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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DONALD TRUMP’S NORTH

KOREAN FAMILY VALUES
Jan 5, 2017 KENT HARRINGTON
No US president has ever brought to the White House an inner circle dominated by his
family – until now. There is ample precedent for family-based leadership in government,
though not in developed democracies.

ATLANTA – With every new US president arriving in Washington, DC, come a handful
of counselors and aides whose personal ties, built over years and forged in election
campaigns, give them pride of place in the administration. From the “Irish Brotherhood”
that brought John F. Kennedy to office to the “Berlin Wall” that guarded Richard Nixon’s
door, close friends and confidantes have often outdone the administration’s biggest
names. But no American president has ever brought to the White House an inner circle
dominated by his family – until Donald Trump.

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Judging by Trump’s business history and presidential campaign – which featured few, if
any, intimates outside his family – his adult children will have a major hand in his
administration’s decisions, despite their lack of experience in international and domestic
affairs. After hiring and firing personnel and shaping strategy during the election
campaign, Trump’s children have remained front and center in his transition team. His
daughter, Ivanka, joined the president-elect’s tête-à-tête with Japan’s Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe. His son, Donald, Jr., played a role in picking Congressman Ryan
Zinke to be Secretary of the Interior in the new administration.
Now, Trump is taking his dynasty to the White House. Ivanka is set to take over the First
Lady’s office there. Her husband, the real-estate investor Jared Kushner, just might be
suited, if only in the eyes of his father-in-law, to serve as a special envoy to broker peace
in the Middle East. Yes, Donald, Jr. and his brother, Eric, will remain in New York to run
the Trump Organization, which oversees their father’s diverse businesses; but Trump’s
claim that his sons will remain at arm’s length strains credulity.
All of this has spurred questions about the Trump children’s capacity to leverage their
father’s presidency to benefit the family business, with many fixating on whether Trump
is violating conflict-of-interest or anti-nepotism rules. But Trump regards such questions
as essentially moot.
That is not surprising. Trump’s management model has long been underpinned by a
hereditary inner circle. His adult children have spent their lives being groomed and
promoted, and have operated at the pinnacle of the Trump Organization for years. They
now occupy three of the company’s board seats, with Trump occupying a fourth. Given
their standing in the company, and their relationship with their father, their influence in
his administration should not be in doubt.
7. The remaining top-level positions are filled by long-time family retainers who, on
average, have 17 years on the job. Several have spent three decades at Trump’s elbow.
Compared to public companies of comparable size, the Trump Organization’s dynastic
C-Suite and the longevity of its consiglieri are striking. The lesson for any administration
appointee should be clear: only loyalty comes close to heredity in winning and holding an
executive role.
8. The record of the modern US presidency sheds little light on whether Trump’s
family-driven leadership style will work. Yet Trump is unlikely to weigh the pros and
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cons of stacking his inner circle with family members, not least because of his own
experience: ever since his father brought him into the family business, he has never
worked anywhere else.
9. Moreover, Trump is far from the only corporate boss who prefers to keep leadership
“all in the family.” A 2016 study by the Boston Consulting Group found that one-third of
American companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more are family-owned. Of
those, 40% are family-run.
10. There is also plenty of precedent for family-based leadership in government, though
not in developed democracies. From Kazakhstan to Congo, blood binds together ruling
elites who share the spoils, guard against usurpers, and ensure that their children succeed
them in power.
11. While it may seem far-fetched to compare the Trumps to, say, the Kims of North
Korea – the world’s longest-running family dictatorship – plenty of similarities are likely
to emerge. Some already have.
12. The first rule of family dictatorships is that loyalty matters above all else. Like the
histrionic pledges of support required from North Korean commissars and generals for
their leader Kim Jong-un, the Trump White House is likely to demand unswerving fealty
to the clan.
13. That message has already been received loud and clear by incoming White House
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Both have repeatedly
affirmed their admiration for Kushner and vowed that he will be deeply involved in
decisions, despite his utter lack of experience.
14. Second, tasks beat titles. Like Kim, who has ignored the pecking order of the ruling
Workers’ Party of Korea to give his sister and brother high-ranking positions, Trump is
likely to entrust his offspring with key assignments. While nepotism laws will probably
rule out official presidential appointments for Trump’s children and their spouses, that
won’t matter much in practice; their de facto clout, as well as Trump’s own priorities, will
quickly become apparent. Indeed, their influence in advancing Trump’s major goals could
easily overwhelm that of cabinet-level appointees, who would be wise to accommodate
them.

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15. Third, there will be unexpected promotions and abrupt purges. In North Korea, all of
this dictated from the top. In his reality television persona, Trump’s enthusiastic firings
and occasional Cinderella-like promotions of low-level employees provide an obvious
parallel. Under Trump, as under Kim, sputtering or failed policies are likely to have
personnel consequences, though only those outside the family will face them.
16. Two weeks before the election, one of the Trump campaign’s top employees, Brad
Parscale, suggested how a Trump White House would function. “My loyalty is to the
family,” Parscale said. No one in Kim’s family could put it more succinctly.
Kent Harrington, a former senior CIA analyst, served as National Intelligence Officer for
East Asia, Chief of Station in Asia, and the CIA’s Director of Public Affairs.

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Analysis: In an Age of Anger,

Nationalism Re-emerges

PARIS — One hundred years ago, the flamboyant, rabble-rousing Italian poet and
playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio marched into the disputed city of Fiume on the Adriatic
with 2,000 squadristi and set up a farcical Italian regency, appointing himself Duce.
For 15 months, D'Annunzio rehearsed rituals that later would be imitated to tragic effect
by Benito Mussolini — the stiff-armed Roman salute, balcony speeches punctuated by
Achilles' war cry from Homer's epic The Iliad, rhetorical dialogues with adoring crowds.
The grandiose D'Annunzio electrified his supporters as he practiced politics in the grand
style and promoted the idea of an expanded Mother Italy.
Ignominiously, the vainglorious poet-hero fled Fiume when the first shots were fired by
the Italian navy. Nonetheless, D'Annunzio's ethno-nationalist adventure foreshadowed the
era of the demagogues — nationalists who initially attracted the support of angry misfits,
but soon channeled the broader disaffection of those who had been left behind as a
maturing industrial revolution upended lives and dislocated traditional forms of political
order.

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A century later, nationalism is on the rise again, threatening to unpick maps that were
mainly drawn up by Western nations at the height of their military and economic power.
Nationalist stirrings are being felt across the globe.
In Europe, where leftist Catalan secessionists are threatening to break with Spain, and
where Germany last month saw far-right nationalists enter the Bundestag for the first time
since the Nazi era. In Africa, where 56 years after British Cameroon and French
Cameroon united following a referendum, the marriage seems to be heading for divorce.
And in the Middle East, where Iraq's Kurds voted overwhelmingly last month to set up
their own national homeland.
War in Syria has opened up the possibility that the country's destiny is to be split into
three among Shiites, Sunni and Kurds.
Feeling powerless
For scholars like Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra, there are similarities between the
so-called gilded age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the globalization and
rapid technological change the world is experiencing now.
The gilding of the late 19th and early 20th centuries benefited some greatly, but masked
serious social problems for large swathes of people, building up a widespread sense of
resentment that sought refuge in the great 'isms' of the time — fascism, communism,
anarchism and nationalism.
Writing in his book Age of Anger: A History of the Present, Mishra argues "much in our
experience resonates with that of people in the nineteenth century."
Now as then, many people feel powerless, have lost faith in traditional political
authorities to protect them and to restore predictability, and resent unequal distributions
of wealth and power. But, he notes, we are witnessing economic-fostered shocks of even
greater magnitude than that experienced when D'Annunzio marched into Fiume with
"dangers more diffuse and less predictable."
Communism and fascism appear busted — ideologies which are unlikely to recover from
their history of bloodlust. In Russia, the Kremlin is making patriotic loyalty to the state,
not communism, the bedrock of its efforts to engineer the resurgence of Russia as a great
power.

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Growing frustration
As frustration builds over marginalization and social injustice, and as expectations about
the benefits of material well-being are dashed, nationalism appears increasingly to be the
political beneficiary. In Poland and Hungary, nationalist governments are in power,
defying the European Union on burden-sharing when it comes to the influx of refugees
and asylum-seekers from the Middle East and sub-Sahara Africa.
Ethno-nationalist movements can be seen developing across the globe, challenging
globalization and immigration. In Europe, many have been around for some time, but
have gained traction through digitally-savvy campaigning, mobilizing political support by
blending ethnic-centric memes of shared ancestry, religion and language with populist
attacks on corrupt elites' accused of selling out their countries for their own benefit.
When it comes to Europe and America, what's changed according to Bart Bonikowski, a
Harvard professor of sociology who studies populist and nationalist movements, is how
nationalist-populist ideas appear as salient to more and more people.
Earlier this year — in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First"
election and as European far-right nationalist leaders such as France's Marine Le Pen and
Italy's Matteo Salvini held their first congress of the Europe of Nations and Freedom —
Bonikowski argued in the Harvard Gazette that many factors were conspiring to heighten
the anxiety the nationalists are feeding off. Those factors include economic crises,
persistent inequality, demographic change and fears associated with terrorism, along with
local political developments like the perceived non-representativeness of the EU
governance system or paralysis in Washington.
"All of these things have generated some level of anxiety among particularly white,
native-born populations and a perceived status loss at the group level among these folks,
which then makes both nationalist and populist claims — and, especially,
nationalist-populist claims — more resonant and more salient than they had been in the
past," he said.
Using social media
Ethno-nationalists not only cheer each other on using social media — helping to reinforce
and magnify the message of each — they also campaign for each other. Britain's leading
Brexiter Nigel Farage made several appearances with Trump during last year's White

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House race, and campaigned in Germany in last month's federal elections at rallies for the
Alternative for Germany.
Ethno-nationalists also learn from each other, swapping notes on what has proven
effective in rallying support and winning elections, and what fails. EU officials fear
others — from the Flemish in Belgium or would-be secessionists in the nooks and
crannies of Europe — will be spurred to copy this month's independence poll in
Catalonia, Spain's restive north-east province.
In Africa and the Middle East, the mix of factors spurring ethno-nationalism are different
from Europe, but economic change and demographic change wrought by immigration
also figure prominently, say analysts.
When it comes to migrant influxes, Western-focused international media coverage has
focused on the flows from developing countries into Europe and the U.S., but migration
movements are also huge between developing countries. In the past 15 years, Asia added
more immigrants than the U.S. or Europe combined. About 20 million people from
Bangladesh are living illegally in India, spurring the Hindu supremacism of Narendra
Modi and his BJP.
Nativism is growing swiftly not only in Europe and America. Pakistan wants to evict
Afghan immigrants; and Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria are among several
sub-Saharan states that have talked of expelling migrants.

'Everybody against everybody else'

And the inequitable distribution of wealth and power also is playing a role in fueling
would-be separatist movements, as is the failure of economic growth and technological
innovation to meet the expectations of rapid material improvement. The availability of
social media and mass communications gives those shut out from prosperity a clear view
of what life is like for those rewarded by globalization, prompting not only aspiration but
envy and frustration.
Mishra, in his book The Age of Anger, quotes Hannah Arendt, the German-born
American political theorist, who warned of how globalization risked triggering "a
tremendous increase in mutual hatred and a somewhat universal irritability of everybody
against everybody else."
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In Nigeria, Igbo activists are calling for a breakaway Biafra state as resentment mounts,
with people in the south-east saying successive governments in Lagos have failed to use
the country's oil-wealth to develop and invest in their region. In 1967, control over oil
production in the Niger Delta was a major factor in Biafra's effort to break away from
Nigeria, which led to a brutal three-year civil war that claimed the lives of as many as
two million people, before the secessionist rebellion was defeated by government forces.
A divided Western response didn't help to prevent the Nigerian civil war — nor to end it
quickly. Britain and the Soviet Union backed the Nigerian government; while France and
Israel supported Biafra. In September 1968, then-U.S. presidential candidate Richard
Nixon noted: "Until now, efforts to relieve the Biafra people have been thwarted by the
desire of central government of Nigeria to pursue total and unconditional victory and by
the fear of the Ibo people that surrender means wholesale atrocities and genocide. But
genocide is what is taking place right now — and starvation is the grim reaper."

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The Eurozone Must

Reform or Die

Jun 14, 2017 KENNETH ROGOFF

With the election of a reform-minded centrist president in France and the re-election of
German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeming ever more likely, is there hope for the stalled
single-currency project in Europe? Perhaps, but another decade of slow growth,
punctuated by periodic debt-related convulsions, still looks more likely.
OXFORD – With the election of a reform-minded centrist president in France and the
re-election of German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeming ever more likely, is there hope
for the stalled single-currency project in Europe? Perhaps, but another decade of slow
growth, punctuated by periodic debt-related convulsions, still looks more likely. With a
determined move toward fiscal and banking union, things could be much better. But, in
the absence of policies to strengthen stability and sustainability, the chances of an
eventual collapse are much greater.

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True, in the near term, there is much reason for optimism. Over the past year, the
eurozone has been enjoying a solid cyclical recovery, outperforming expectations more
than any other major advanced economy. And make no mistake: the election of Emmanuel
Macron is a landmark event, raising hopes that France will re-energize its economy sufficiently
to become a full and equal partner to Germany in eurozone governance. Macron and his
economic team are full of promising ideas, and he will have a huge majority in the National
Assembly to implement them (though it will help if the Germans give him leeway on budget
deficits in exchange for reform). In Spain, too, economic reform is translating into stronger
long-term growth.

But all is not well. Greece is still barely growing, after experiencing one of the worst recessions
in history, although those who blame this on German austerity clearly have not looked at the
numbers: with encouragement from left-leaning US economists, Greece mismanaged perhaps the
softest bailout package in modern history. Italy has done far better than Greece, but that is a
backhanded compliment; real income is actually lower than a decade ago (albeit it is hard to
know for sure, given the country’s vast underground economy). For southern Europe as a whole,
the single currency has proved to be a golden cage, forcing greater fiscal and monetary rectitude
but removing the exchange rate as a critical cushion against unexpected shocks.

Indeed, part of the reason the United Kingdom’s economy has held up well (so far) since last
year’s Brexit referendum is that the pound fell sharply, boosting competitiveness. The UK, of
course, famously (and wisely) opted out of the single currency even as it is now moving (not so
wisely) to withdraw from the European Union and the single market entirely.

It is now fairly obvious that the euro was not necessary to the success of the EU, and instead has
proved a massive impediment, as many economists on this side of the Atlantic had predicted.
Eurocrats have long likened European integration to riding a bicycle: one must keep moving
forward or fall down. If so, the premature adoption of the single currency is best thought of as a
detour through thick, wet cement.

Ironically, by far the main reason why euro adoption was originally so popular in Southern
Europe was that back in the 1980s and 1990s, ordinary people longed for the price stability
Germans enjoyed with their Deutsche Mark. But, while the euro has been accompanied by a
dramatic eurozone wide fall in inflation, most other countries have managed to bring down
inflation without it.

Far more important to the achievement of price stability has been the advent of the modern
independent central bank, a device that has helped dramatically reduce inflation levels
worldwide. Yes, a few places, such as Venezuela, still have triple-digit price growth, but they are
now rarities. It is very likely that if, instead of joining the euro, Italy and Spain had simply
granted their central banks more autonomy, they, too, would have low inflation today. Greece is
admittedly a less obvious case; but, considering that many poor African countries have been able
to keep inflation well within single digits, one can presume that Greece would have managed as

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well. Indeed, if Southern European countries had kept their own currencies, they might never
have dug as big a debt hole, and would have had the option of partial default through inflation.

The question now is how to maneuver the EU out of the wet cement. Although many European
politicians are loath to admit it, the status quo is probably not sustainable; eventually, there must
be either significantly greater fiscal integration or a chaotic break-up. It is astonishingly naive to
think the euro will not face further real-life stress tests over the next 5-10 years, if not sooner.

If the status quo is ultimately unsustainable, why are markets so supremely calm, with ten-year
Italian government bonds yielding less than two percentage points more than Germany’s?

Perhaps the small spread reflects investors’ belief that outright bailouts are eventually coming,
however much German politicians protest to the contrary. European Central Bank purchases of
periphery countries’ debt already constitute an implicit subsidy, and discussion of Eurobonds is
heating up with Macron’s victory.

Or perhaps investors are gambling that the South has walked too far into the cement to get out.
Germany will just keep squeezing their budgets in order to ensure that its banks are repaid.

Either way, eurozone leaders would be better off taking action now, rather than waiting for the
single currency’s next moment of truth. How long today’s optimism lasts is for Macron and
Merkel to decide.

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Trump’s Media Enablers

May 12, 2016 KENT HARRINGTON

Conventional wisdom lays much of the blame for the rise of Donald Trump on angry
American voters, who have allowed him to break every rule in the political playbook
without paying a price. But more responsibility arguably lies with the American
broadcast journalists who amplified his schoolyard name-calling and bizarre policy
views.
ATLANTA – Conventional wisdom lays much of the blame for the rise of Donald
Trump on angry American voters, who have allowed him to break every rule in the
political playbook without paying a price. But more responsibility arguably lies with the
American broadcast journalists who amplified his schoolyard name-calling and bizarre
policy views.
All along Trump’s march to becoming the Republican Party’s presidential nominee,
partisan commentators spun and re-spun his countless outrageous statements, sometimes
with just a tut-tut of disapproval, while other on-air pundits all too often treated his
malignant demagoguery as worthy of serious analysis. When it came to the chores of

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professional journalism – fact-checking, providing historical background, and offering

impartial analysis – television news channels failed to fulfill their election-year
responsibilities.
The reasons are not hard to discern. Spending on political advertising is skyrocketing,
boosting profits at broadcast and cable news networks, which have been struggling with
declining viewership and lackluster revenues. In a highly competitive market, in which
legacy media companies are under pressure from Internet news sites and social media
platforms, news programs quickly realized that they could leverage Trump’s outlandish
behavior to attract larger audiences and strengthen their bottom lines.
At the same time, the industry has been undergoing a fundamental consolidation. Major
companies are snatching up stations across the United States and, in the process, eroding
the scope and quality of local news reporting. The impact of this restructuring on
journalism and its role in the political process should not be underestimated.
Even with the rise of the Internet, local broadcast news remains the main source of
information for the majority of Americans. Opinion polls consistently showthat some
60% of Americans still regard television as their primary news source. News consumers
are twice as likely to express the most trust in local broadcast and cable news compared
to social media, attesting to voters’ reliance on television journalism to inform their
thinking.
Nothing better illustrates local television’s role than how candidates spend their money.
Campaign spending on political advertising is expected to top $5 billion in 2016, nearly
quadruple the total in 2008. And local television is on track to get the lion’s share; more
than three-quarters of that spending – some $4 billion – will be earmarked for political
advertisements on local broadcast and cable television channels.
For media companies that own local stations, reaping the financial bounty from political
ads is one thing; investing in news operations another. And in dozens of this fall’s
battleground states, where the rival campaigns will blanket the airwaves with political
ads, broadcast news departments are increasingly ill-equipped to assess either the
candidates or their political claims.
The industry’s own figures explain why. In 2014, five companies owned one-third of the
1,400 local television stations in the US. Over the last decade, their acquisitions have

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English for International Relations 3 – Ms. Nguyễn Vĩnh Hằng

given them far more than local influence. The 168 stations owned or operated today by
Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest of the five, are a case in point; Sinclair broadcasts in 81
local markets, reaching nearly 40% of the US population.
The accumulation of local broadcasters by a handful of media corporations has left its
mark on journalism across the country. Because of consolidation, fewer television
stations actually gather and report the news. According to the Pew Research Center on
Journalism and the Media, the number of local television stations originating their own
news programming has fallen 8% since 2005.
Federal regulations allow media companies to own multiple stations in a single market,
and in nearly half of them, media companies own or manage at least two. Stations share
staff, facilities, and even stories, reducing not just the number of newsrooms, but also the
competition that brings diversity and depth to reporting.
According to the Radio and Television Digital News Association, a quarter of US
television stations that present local news receive their programming via “news sharing”
arrangements. In other words, the stations do not produce news programs themselves. A
2014 University of Delaware analysis highlighted the consequences. In four of the
television markets the researchers assessed, nearly 100% of the stories broadcast by
“news sharing” stations used the same videos and scripts.
More troubling, research suggests that as local stations reap revenue windfalls from
election campaign advertising, reporting on the candidates’ claims becomes off-limits.
A study by the public-interest group Free Press of political advertisements during the
2012 presidential election found that stations in the six sizable television markets
examined undertook virtually no reporting on the claims made in the political ads they
aired.
In Denver, for example, local stations took in $6.5 million to air nearly 5,000 ads paid for
by the 2012 presidential candidates’ political action committees (ostensibly independent
fund-raising groups that shield their donors’ identity). The same Denver stations devoted
only 10 minutes and 45 seconds in total to examining the accuracy of the advertisements’
claims. The ratio – 162 minutes of campaign ads to every minute of related news –
speaks for itself.

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English for International Relations 3 – Ms. Nguyễn Vĩnh Hằng

Vigorous political reporting is vital to democracy, because it enables voters to understand

the issues and evaluate their choices. But this year, America’s media industry seems more
inclined to bank its profits than bolster its reporting on a presidential campaign that even
its senior executives acknowledge has become a circus. “It may not be good for the
country,” Leslie Moonves, the chairman of one of America’s largest broadcast
networks, said a month ago, “but it’s damn good for CBS.”
Kent Harrington, a former senior CIA analyst, served as National Intelligence Officer for
East Asia, Chief of Station in Asia, and the CIA’s Director of Public Affairs.

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