Daredevil Media Outlet Behind Rodman’s Trip

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/03/04/business/sub-vice/sub-vice-articleLarge.jpg" /><br /><br /><div data-key="TcbHdt" data-num="2" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"></div><div class="articleSpanImage" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 8px; width: 600px;"><span itemid="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/03/04/business/sub-vice/sub-vice-articleLarge.jpg" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject"></span><br /><div class="credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="color: #909090; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1.223em; margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: right;"><span itemid="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/03/04/business/sub-vice/sub-vice-articleLarge.jpg" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject">North Korean Central News Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency</span></div><span itemid="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/03/04/business/sub-vice/sub-vice-articleLarge.jpg" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject"><div class="caption" itemprop="description" style="color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.2727em;">Kim Jong-un with the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman at a game in Pyongyang last week.</div></span></div><nyt_byline style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"></nyt_byline><br /><h6 class="byline" style="color: grey; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 2px 0px;">By <span itemid="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/brian_stelter/index.html" itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/brian_stelter/index.html" rel="author" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: none;" title="More Articles by BRIAN STELTER">BRIAN STELTER</a></span></h6><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br /><h6 class="dateline" style="color: grey; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px;">Published: March 3, 2013</h6><br /><div data-key="TcbHdt" data-num="2" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;">April 5.</span></div><div data-key="TcbHdt" data-num="2" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The company’s bosses said they were planning a visit to the secretive country, centered on an exhibition basketball game with the flamboyant former N.B.A. star <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/dennis_rodman/index.html?inline=nyt-per" style="color: #666699;" title="More articles about Dennis Rodman.">Dennis Rodman</a> and three members of the Harlem Globetrotters. HBO decided to add what Mr. Lombardo said was “a little bit” of extra financing, beyond what it had already agreed to pay for the newsmagazine.</div><div data-key="IflIfl" data-num="3" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">“It felt like something that could be interesting for the show,” Mr. Lombardo, HBO’s president for programming, said last Friday as he recalled the meeting.</div><div data-key="BFtKJs" data-num="4" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">By Friday, the trip wasn’t just “interesting,” it was international news. <a class="meta-per" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/kim_jongun/index.html?inline=nyt-per" style="color: #666699;" title="More articles about Kim Jong-un.">Kim Jong-un</a>showed up for the exhibition game in Pyongyang the day before, making Mr. Rodman and Vice’s film crew the first Americans known to have met the North Korean ruler since he inherited power from his father in 2011.</div><div data-key="OtaAtS" data-num="5" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">On television and online, people were debating which group was benefiting more from the publicity, Vice or the North Korean leadership. At the State Department, reporters wanted to know why the United States government wasn’t visibly doing more to debrief Mr. Rodman about his interactions with Mr. Kim, the dictator whom he pronounced his “friend.”</div><div data-key="TVcBMR" data-num="6" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The Vice crew remains in North Korea; several more days of filming are scheduled. But Mr. Rodman returned home over the weekend, and in <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/dennis-rodman-kim-jong-un-wants-president-obama-to-call-him/" style="color: #666699;" title="The interview on ABC’s Web site.">his first interview</a> — on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday — he said Mr. Kim was “a great guy” and said “he wants Obama to do one thing, call him” — which generated even more news headlines.</div><div data-key="TstWkh" data-num="7" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">To say this was all part of Vice’s master plan would overstate the matter. The producers and reporters had no assurances that Mr. Kim would attend the game. But when they arranged the trip to North Korea, a rarity in and of itself, they thought like diplomats. To get what they wanted, they considered what they could give — and they came up with Mr. Rodman and the Globetrotters. “We knew he’d be tempted by basketball,” said a Vice spokesman, referring to Mr. Kim.</div><div data-key="TKdThm" data-num="8" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The Kim dynasty’s love for the sport, and for the Chicago Bulls in particular, was evident on the Vice co-founder Shane Smith’s two previous trips to the country. In a telephone interview, Mr. Smith recalled that when the Bulls would come up in conversation with North Korean handlers, “their eyes would light up.” The handlers made sure to show him the basketball signed by Michael Jordan and given to Kim Jong-il by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000, now on display at a museum in Pyongyang.</div><div data-key="MSdBwi" data-num="9" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Mr. Smith described his staff’s chats about the trip: “We said to ourselves, ‘Well, if we go through normal channels, it’s almost impossible to get in. But what if we put together a sort of exhibition basketball team to go over there?’ ” It has been called “basketball diplomacy” in the press since Mr. Rodman and company arrived — “and that was the actual idea,” Mr. Smith added.</div><div data-key="VhaTca" data-num="10" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Vice has a reputation for <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/with-rodman-stunt-american-reality-tv-and-north-korean-propaganda-fuse/" style="color: #666699;" title="Related post on The Lede blog.">stunt journalism</a>, having dispatched people in the past to war zones and hot spots overseas. On <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_us" style="color: #666699;" title="The Web site.">its main Web site</a> over the weekend, an immersive article from India was sandwiched between a first-person essay titled “My Month Without Sex” and another essay about marijuana. The company also publishes magazines, records and YouTube videos, among other things.</div><div data-key="FHtBtw" data-num="11" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">For HBO, the newsmagazine partnership — announced last spring — was a leap, something Mr. Lombardo acknowledged in an interview. But “the whole idea of Vice is to take you places where other organizations are not going,” he said.</div><div data-key="TNKTgi" data-num="12" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">That’s North Korea in a nutshell, since access to the country is so tightly controlled. To get in, a liaison between North Korea and Vice suggested that the company donate basketball hoops and scoreboards to North Korean schools — a good-will gesture of sorts at the beginning of discussions about a visit.</div><div data-key="VebMSa" data-num="13" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Vice employees based in China did so. The company also contacted Mr. Rodman and the Globetrotters, and paid them an undisclosed amount to take the trip, which began last Tuesday. Mr. Smith, apparently unwelcome in the country because of his previous documentaries, has stayed in touch with his crew there through brief sessions on Skype.</div><div data-key="MLiHnt" data-num="14" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Mr. Lombardo indicated that the apparent nuclear test by North Korea two weeks ago, widely condemned by the international community, did not change the producers’ thinking about the trip. He noted that Vice was an independent producer, like many of HBO’s partners.</div><div data-key="TwnTwa" data-num="15" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">“This was not, and Vice is not, about going in and doing the definitive story on North Korea and arms,” Mr. Lombardo said. “This was always intended to be, ‘You know what, let’s get our camera into an isolated country that we hear about, we read about and yet is hard for us to even picture.’ ”</div><div data-key="MLsMSf" data-num="16" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Mr. Lombardo said he was in awe when he saw the photos of Mr. Rodman and Mr. Kim. Mr. Smith felt similarly: “It’s kind of blowing us away,” he said Friday.</div><div data-key="WatWtt" data-num="17" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">While aware that past visits by American celebrities have become propaganda material for North Korean officials, Mr. Smith said he was a “firm believer in dialogue.” He was also aware, he said, that “the last 50 years of diplomacy between North Korea and the U.S. has failed.” But then he quickly added: “We’re not trying to save the world. We’re not politicians. We’re trying to show people something that they won’t see anywhere else.”</div><div class="emActive emReady" data-key="VaHTff" data-num="18" data-sentences="2" itemprop="articleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><span data-num="1" style="background-color: #f2f4f5;">Vice and HBO have not determined when the footage from North Korea will be broadcast.</span><span data-num="2" style="background-color: #f2f4f5;">The first few episodes of the newsmagazine are mostly finished; there will be eight in total, so it could be saved for the season finale</span></div></div>

Dennis Rodman Kim Jong-un Daredevil Media Outlet Behind Rodman’s Trip

North Korean Central News Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency Kim Jong-un with the former N.B.A. star Dennis Rodman at a game in Pyongyan...

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