I recently clicked on a link to a KCNA article, and immediately noticed that my Media Bias Fact Check browser addon started flashing the icon for "fake news and questionable sources". So, I read the detailed report from Media Bias Fact Check.
What struck me about the Media Bias Fact Check report on KCNA was that they did not provide links to specific articles for their fact checking, like they normally do, but instead quoted an article from Mic about "5 ridiculous things said by KCNA" or something like that. This article was poorly sourced and repeated several known falsehoods as well as unverifiable claims. So, I attempted to manually verify everything claimed by Mic and its sources, and basically everything turned up either wrong, unverifiable but probably false, or deeply misleading, except the claim that KCNA had reported on some sort of North Korean miracle cure made of ginseng.
I managed to find several articles about that, albeit only on the unofficial KCNA website (kcna.co.jp), which appears to be run by Chongryon: "Kumdang-2 Injection", "Kumdang-2 Injection Efficacious for Bird Flu", "Kumdang-2 injection efficacious for SARS", "Kumdang-2 injection (R) manufactured", and "Korea Jangsaeng J.V. Company" mentions Kumdang-2 in passing.
So this has left me with kind of a mixed impression. That while a lot of western reporting exaggerates the state of North Korean media in a way that's honestly really racist and built on Red Scare nonsense, that this does not mean that North Korean media does not have issues with poor sourcing and even peddling pseudoscience.
So, I would like to know your experiences with KCNA, and your stances on using it as a source. What is KCNA useful for? What is KCNA not useful for?
It's as trustworthy as any other state media outlet. The goal isn't objective truth so much as it is presenting the direct government domestic/foreign lines. Like Al Jazeera its foreign coverage can sometimes be a good counterweight to western narratives about events. Tonally though North Korean media has this writing style where everything is melodramatically angry and doesn't translate well from the Korean idioms.
Don't try to watch the broadcasts because there's no translation and at least for me the audio is heavily desynced on the webstream. It takes me like a dozen tries to find a decent episode on KCNAwatch every time I want footage for my dog's videos.
