User:Loucraig/sandbox2

Some elements copied from Laura Ling article

= Rough Draft for Laura Ling article =

Introduction
She worked for Current TV, which until 2013 was owned by former Vice President Al Gore, as a correspondent and vice president of its Vanguard Journalism Unit, which produced the Vanguard TV series.

Laura Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee were detained in North Korea after they started filming refugees from North Korea who had crossed the river and entered China; many of these refugees were women, and once across the border, they were often sold as brides.

Early Life
Ling's father Doug is an immigrant born in China during the 1920s; her mother Mary Mei-yan (née Wang) is an immigrant from Tainan, Taiwan and was the head of the Los Angeles office of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs. They divorced when Laura was four years old and her sister Lisa was seven.

At UCLA Ling served as a student analyst for the Center for Communication Policy. There, she worked on the Violence Assessment Project studying television programs.

Career
At the time of her capture, Ling was undercover making a documentary about North Korean defectors, who were primarily women, and the dangers they faced once across the Chinese border at the Tumen River including forced marriages and trafficking, deportation, and being viewed as a criminal.

Ling hosted a one-hour news show on E! Network, entitled E! Investigates, which premiered on December 8, 2010. The show targeted a younger audience and focused on pop culture. Her second show on E! was called Society X with Laura Ling, which aired on October 3, 2013. In addition, Ling hosted a news program on KCET, which focused on local news in Los Angeles; the show aired nightly. Ling has also worked on projects for Nightline, NBC, PBS, and The WB (now The CW).

In 2015, Ling partnered with The ONE Campaign to make a documentary How Africa is Hacking the Its Energy Crisis, which was posted on the Seeker Stories YouTube channel. Ling also created and reported on Rituals with Laura Ling, which was also posted to the Seeker Stories YouTube channel.

2009 Detention in North Korea
Of the trial, Ling stated, "I had tried to prepare myself for a lengthy sentence, but realling nothing could prepare me for the verdict when I heard the words twelve years...he said, no forgiveness, no appeal...And I was wondering if those words meant that the window of opportunity had closed and my fate was sealed."

Diplomatic Crisis
Many in both the United States and South Korea have also accused Ling and Lee of creating a diplomatic crisis with the DPRK during a particularly tense emergency that was already ongoing between North Korea and the United States. These accusations have been addressed in both Ling and Lee's memoirs. In an interview with NPR, Lisa Ling said of the political climate with North Korea, "The tensions on the Korean peninsula had been worsening and becoming increasingly more severe, and some say that it was one of the low points in U.S.-North Korea relations." In the efforts to negotiate Ling and Lee's release, diplomatic envoys were brought up as an option, and many different envoys were considered including the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, former President Jimmy Carter, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and finally President Bill Clinton, who was ultimately accepted as an envoy by the North Koreans.

Awards
Ling was named one of Glamour magazine's Women of the Year in 2009. In 2011, Ling received the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and in 2014, she won an Emmy Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award (Radio Television Digital News Association) for SoCal Connected. In 2012, Ling was inducted into the San Juan Education Foundation Hall of Fame. As the Director of Development and Correspondent for Discovery Digital Networks, Ling won a Gracie Award in 2016.

While she was the vice president of Vanguard, the show won several awards including a Peabody Award, two Emmy nominations, a Prism Award, and an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award.