Laura Ling and Euna Lee make their first statement


I wonder if it will silence their detractors. I also wonder how the response to their story would differ if they were men. I wonder a lot of things.

Their story is here.

Recently I was in a meeting brainstorming potential nominees for the SNCR Awards. (I'm a founding fellow of SNCR.) When someone threw out the names Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the recently incarcerated-then-released Current TV journalists, I was surprised to see that met with some disparaging comments. And some of the words used seemed very ties to gender. "Naive" being the primary one that stuck in my head. Once they were released I wasn't really following their story any longer, so I had missed the criticism.

I guess they didn't miss the criticism, because the link above is their effort to answer each of the things I heard brought up.

Of course we'll be able to see if the story silences their detractors over the next couple of weeks.

But we'll never be able to really know what role gender plays in the reaction to it.

I do wonder, though.

Posted: Tue - September 1, 2009 at 09:25 PM       EmailFeedback

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