Derrick Shore was nervous when he traveled with Laura Ling to the shantytowns of Sao Paulo, Brazil, several years ago.
Both worked for Channel One, a news network for young adults, and were reporting on the dangerous slums for a series on urbanization. Shore said he was the panicked reporter and Ling the calm producer -- though he is considerably bigger and perhaps better able to defend himself.
"We had a driver who thought we were crazy that we were even thinking of going into" the area, Shore recalled. "And here she is, this little girl, this fearless producer . . . and she had this way of making me feel calm."
Shore and others who have worked with Ling during her years at Channel One and later at Current TV describe a bold and hardworking journalist who is both personable and empathetic. They say those traits served her in her work, including the human trafficking story she was reporting on when she and colleague Euna Lee were arrested in March along the Chinese-North Korean border by North Korean forces.
Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, who work for San Francisco-based Current TV, were convicted by the communist nation's Central Court of an undefined "grave crime" against the regime and sentenced Monday to 12 years of hard labor.
Both women work in Current's Vanguard journalism department -- Ling as a vice president and correspondent and Lee as a film editor -- and are based in Los Angeles. Current, founded by former Vice President Al Gore and others, is a television network carried on cable and satellite that strives to serve as a platform for citizen journalism while also producing documentaries on topics not covered elsewhere.
Ling and Lee's fate has become caught up in the complex standoff between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions.
Some experts have suggested that the North Koreans might try to link any sentence reduction to whatever punishment might be imposed by the United Nations or individual countries for recent nuclear detonation and missile tests.
U.S. officials have said they would not mingle the two issues but are deeply concerned about what is happening to the women in North Korea's notorious prison system.
Although supporters have urged prayers and created online petitions calling for the journalists' release, others have criticized Lee and Ling's actions as naive or potentially harmful to the United States.
