Investigative reporter shares experiences, encourages audience to seek meaningful news
By: Ashley J. Cerasaro

Investigative Reporter Lisa Ling encouraged a UT audience to seek out international news and stories that really affect people because she believes the news networks don’t provide Americans with these types of substantive information.

Ling, a correspondent for National Geographic's Explorer and a contributor for the Oprah Winfrey Show, said she struggles with the fact that North Korea is so isolated, yet here in America, where we have abundant resources at our fingertips, we seek out little information about the rest of the world.

Ling visited North Korea once by posing as a doctor-friend’s medical assistant. She said the people there are completely disconnected from information. As soon as she arrived, she had to check her cell phone in at the airport. She asked them why she must do so, and they said, “because we’re at war, and the enemy, America, can detect cell phone signals from satellite, so that’s why … we sacrifice these things because we are at war.”

Ling joked while it was one country that she wanted to visit the most, it was one county she wanted to leave the fastest.

But Ling admitted she experienced the most culture shock when she arrived back in the United States. America was absorbed in what she felt was a frivolous news story, the Anna Nicole Smith saga:

“Every single bona fide news network was covering this issue nonstop, the morning news, the evening news. It was all over the TV news networks. And when I first heard the story, I thought, ‘Well, it’s sad because someone died, but surely people don’t really care.’ But if it’s covered on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, you can’t help but by default wonder who the baby daddy is, right?”

She criticized news networks for such flippant news coverage and challenged audience members to empower themselves to seek out substantive information:

“Do we as Americans, and I … categorize myself in the same light, do we really seek out information, like the substantive information? And you know, I have to say our news networks are a poor example of resources, and I’m not singling out one network because so many of them just sort of spew this propaganda and pontification. Very, very challenging, but don’t you think it’s time we all take the initiative and assume responsibility?”

While Ling proclaimed her dissatisfaction with the networks’ news coverage, she praised National Geographic’s Explorer program for its commitment to telling the world stories that affect people, stories that no one else is telling.

She showed the audience a video containing snippets of her work at Explorer. The segment titled China’s Lost Girls documented American couples in China seeing their adopted children for the first time. Many audience members wiped away tears after they viewed Ling talking to an overjoyed blind man meeting his new baby girl.

Ling said she’s been covering China for more than a decade. When she first started, she would travel through the airport in Hong Kong and see many non-Chinese couples carrying Chinese baby girls.

“I just thought to myself ‘What is your story? Where do you come from?’ And I had this desire to try and sort of figure out why so many baby girls,” she said.

Ling learned that during the communist revolution, Mao Tse-Tung, the communist party chairman, encouraged party members to be more productive members and have more kids, which resulted in a population explosion. But under Tse-Tung’s rule, there was no gender differentiation.

She explained after Tse-Tung passed, the Chinese government could no longer support the country’s enormous, growing population. So they imposed a policy that became unofficially known as the one-child policy, which limits couples to having only one child.

She said that when couples have to choose between having a boy or girl, they choose to keep their boy. At first she was appalled by their decision, but now she understands their reasoning:

“When I first heard the story, I was so hurt and appalled … how Draconian. How could anyone give away a baby just because she’s a girl? But then when I got to China, that duality thing kicked in. When you spend time in the countryside, you learn that they are devastated that they have to give away their baby girls, but there are economic benefits to keeping a boy. A boy, if he’s your son, he will get married, and hopefully bring his wife to the home. And he will take care of the family and the home, whereas, if you keep a girl, she will get married, and you will be left alone. And so, beyond the sort of fact that the boys carry on the family name, there are economic reasons for families keeping just a boy.”

Ling said that China is making changes but there is still room for improvement.

“In some parts of the country, people are allowed to try and have a son if their first child was born a girl,” she said. “While it was exciting when it was first announced, we have to think about it. What if you continue to get pregnant and continue to have a girl, what are you going to do with the girl?”

Ling said it is stories like these that turn your perspective upside down. And while many of her experiences profoundly affected her worldview, she said there is one experience that has left an “indelible imprint” on her mind and fueled her to continue to pursue journalism.

When she was 21 years old, she was working at Channel One, a news network shown in middle schools and high schools across the country. She agreed to cover the civil war in Afghanistan. Ling admits that, at that time, she could barely identify Afghanistan on the map. When she descended the steps of her plane, she was in utter shock by the scene surrounding her:

“I was immediately surrounded by a throng of little boys that were holding weapons that were larger than they were… I asked, ‘How old are these boys, they look no more than 10 years old?’ And they said, ‘They did not know, but if you ask them how to operate a bazooka, they know.’ And it became so blaringly apparent to me that these little boys were just sitting around and day after day … each waits to fire that weapon. And I distinctly recall thinking to myself, at that time, what’s going to happen to these boys 10 years from now. Well, that was 1994…we’ve all heard of the Taliban.”

When Ling came back to the United States, she wanted to share her experiences with friends and colleagues. She said she tried to engage them, but they had absolutely no clue of what she was talking about because it wasn’t part of the lexicon or the dialogue here. This disturbed her more than that scene in Afghanistan.

Ling shared many stories with her audience that evening, including:

• Her initial motivations for pursuing journalism
• Her first job at a teen magazine show
• Her stint on The View
• Her first time visiting Geographic
• The civil war in Afghanistan and its aftermath
• Her visit to a maximum-security prison in Sacramento, Calif.
• Her involvement with the Oprah Winfrey Show

According to National Geographic’s Web site, when Ling joined its staff in December 2002, she became the first female host of Explorer. She has investigated the increasingly deadly drug war in Colombia, examined the complex issues surrounding China’s one-child policy and explored the phenomenon of female suicide bombers in Chechnya and Israel’s occupied territories. She also explored the hidden and dangerous culture inside American prisons and street gang MS-13.

Ling’s speech, which was held in the Cox Auditorium of Alumni Memorial Building on Monday, Sept. 29, at 7:30 p.m., was co-sponsored by Central Program Council’s Issues Committee and the Asian American Student Association.