Multiple Points of View

It’s about one month into my scholarship year I am in an unexpected position. I have received my student visa, the start date of school has been postponed 2 weeks, and my on-campus housing is undergoing maintenance. I am staying in an inexpensive local hotel, but I don’t quite have the feeling of living here. I still have the feeling of visiting. It’s hard to feel a sense of residence when staying in a hotel. I have decided not to leave the area on more vacation-like activities, so that I can keep up to date on the status of my dorm room. I have visited many of the popular sites in Kathmandu and have exhausted the tourist feeling as well. With lots of time on my hands before school starts I have been able to relax, and also get back in touch with the world events I couldn’t keep up with while living in Houston, working 60 hour weeks, and volunteering on weekends. I could always get headlines, but I never had the time to see news reports from multiple outlets in an attempt to understand what was really happening.

One such event that drew attention around the world was the recent “satellite” launch from North Korea. At the end of venturing out and about each day, I could expect to come back to the hotel and watch the television news awaiting the launch. The suspense grew each day since the only news was that there was no launch today, maybe it would be tomorrow. After a few days of waiting, the launch took place and all the news agencies scrambled to report anything they could on the story. With plenty of time on my hands, and a beautiful array of worldwide news agencies broadcasting on regional satellite TV here, I decided to see what I could learn about this news story. As it turned out, I learned more about the news organizations, their countries of origin, and their respective people and cultures more than anything else.

The first television news I turned to was the trusted USA mogul, CNN. Although, here I get the international CNN broadcast instead of the domestic one shown in the USA. It’s actually quite humorous since they employ many people with British accents, possibly in an attempt to combat the domination of BBC World News on the international market. As expected, they were reporting on the developments of the North Korea launch. As I watched the dialog between anchor and reporter, the dynamic became repetitive and very tiresome. Every other sentence switched off from the current news to mention old news on North Korea and how CNN was the first to break that previous story. Then another sentence of the current event followed by more old events and a mention that the reporter speaking now was the one who gave the exclusive of that older report in 2003. Again they made another short statement of the present situation followed by CNN tooting its own horn. Then another small fact followed by the reporter giving some of her resume. After five minutes, all I knew was that North Korea had launched a rocket, and for some reason I wanted to hire the reporter to a full time position.

Only one channel over was BBC World News, the overpowering force in international television and radio news services. Once I changed the channel, the resume harping stopped. BBC was giving the news in a concise factual manner. One statement after another, they clearly stated the few facts that they knew. Next they continued on to the developments in the story that they expected to see in the near future. The report was surprisingly brief, condensed by only talking about the facts on the current event. While this was effective, it left something lacking. Throughout the report there was the air of both indifference and self importance from each person speaking. It seemed clear that I was listening to people who would never be affected by North Korea developing military technology. More importantly I was listening to people who knew that it didn’t endanger their lives or livelihoods in any way. Quite the contrary, North Korea brazenly defying multinational sentiments on weapons proliferation is what ensured that their livelihoods as news reporters would be sustained for quite some time. I decided to find a newscast that came from people with a greater stake in the news story.

Fortunately, I had already been very adventurous with the remote control and I knew the channel for NHK World, the English language world broadcast from Japan. Immediately I saw the anchor for their news program with the most serious look on his face. In his heavily accented English he delivered the top story with a stone cold grave demeanor. After going over the facts that all news organizations were reporting, he made it a point to clearly state that as the rocket passed over Japan, no debris fell on Japan and no Japanese citizens were harmed. Next, the news organization went to a one-on-one interview with a visiting expert on satellite launching rockets. The interview was very concise and there were no jokes or smiles exchanged as the interviewing journalist and local expert went over the details they were there to share. There was no question that this was a serious matter to everyone in the newsroom and each person took this world news development with the utmost importance. The newscasters weren’t excited that this gave them something to fill airtime with or that reporting this story would add to their personal resume. For them it was not a world news development, it was an unfolding plot that had the potential to harm them, their friends, and their families. Watching this broadcast, I was aware of how important this story was to the people of Japan. There was only one group of people I could think of who had more at stake in this development than the Japanese.

Again, my tastes in multicultural TV paid off as I already knew the channel for ARIRANG, the English language Korean world broadcast. Of course, I am referring to a South Korean world broadcast. Normally ARIRANG broadcasts the news in English. In fact, I could hear faintly in the background the sound of the anchors and journalists reporting on the launch in English. I couldn’t make out what they were saying because over their low volume English was a very loud dubbing of Korean. I continued to watch as the report continued entirely in loudly dubbed Korean. It seemed clear that it had been dubbed over in the language that was guaranteed to be understood by every South Korean citizen around the world. With the loud volume of the dubbing, it seemed evident that even a hearing impaired senior citizen of South Korea could understand the broadcast. In addition, they had more North Korean national TV footage than any other news service. It seemed safe to assume that the airwaves containing the footage reached South Korea on a daily basis. I left the TV on as I read the newspaper in my hotel room, waiting to see if the broadcast would return to the normal English. After an hour there was still no change. They were reporting the news as seriously as anyone could and in the language that every South Korean, young and old, could understand. Once again it was clear that these people had a significant stake in this news story. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t understand what they were saying, to try and further grasp just how serious they were.

I came to Nepal in the hopes that cultural exchange would be a large part of my scholarship year. On this day I didn’t interact with Nepali people any more than any other day. By tourist standards I led a dull day that would be shunned as being worthless. I went to the grocery store, ate in a restaurant, read the newspaper, and watched TV. I didn’t see any historical monuments, visit any artisan shops, or climb any mountains. In fact, it was watching television today that was the cultural exchange. I started at my own culture, continued to a familiar culture, and then ventured further east to get to the heart of the top story of the day. The real story was the people whose lives were in the balance of this military proliferation. The actions and demeanor of the reporters and news agencies in Japan and South Korea were more telling than any facts, charts, sound bytes, or video clips.