In 2013, there will be no foreign correspondents 6
During the Media Re:Public conference in Los Angeles a little over a week ago, I was asked to come up with a 2-minute “provocation” about the future of news for a panel moderated by Jonathan Zittrain. Ethan summarized what all the panelists said.
I actually thought it was a pretty tame prediction, but I spent the rest of the day dodging journalists and editors who wanted to tell me I was wrong, naive, and even careless. Meanwhile younger colleagues were eager to tell me I was absolutely right. My friend Sameer Padania even rolled his eyes at me and said, “Have you even read the report I wrote? That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.” He’s not kidding. You can read it here. My favorite quote is attributed to Channel 4 reporter Sorious Samura, “When will foreign correspondents be foreign?”
I started with an anecdote, about a BBC World radio story broadcast to my California rental car radio. It was about a press tour organized by the Chinese authorities for foreign journalists to enter Tibet. The BBC was not invited, so the reporter interviewed a USA Today journalist about how the event had been interrupted by Tibetan monks protesting. Obviously what is happening between Tibet and China right now is very serious, but I still find this particular story silly. The journalist was reporting about a staged media event he hadn’t even been to, and his main source was another Western journalist.
I’m not targeting the BBC or this particular journalist in particular (he must have filed hundreds of different stories, and maybe even speaks Chinese). I just think the fact that a story like this is considered newsworthy is pretty depressing (especially since it must have been reported by a ton of other journalists already).
How many more years will we have to watch foreign correspondents parachute into a region and pretend they know what’s going on? How many more reports coming out of the Middle East from hotel rooftops will be delivered by people who do not speak Arabic, or know what “the Green zone” in Iraq was called before coalition forces arrived?
Not for long, is what I think. There are too many alternatives, and I’m not even referring to bloggers around the world. The type of thing we do at Global Voices is meant to be a service to professional journalists.
The founder of Alive in Baghdad, a fantastic video website that broadcasts weekly reports by Iraqi journalists, once told me in New York that he has a hell of a time getting news media organizations to recognize that his crew aren’t “citizen journalists” but actually, real, professional journalists who just happen to be Iraqi.
Sooner or later, qualified local perspectives will become what people prefer to hear, rather than what editors defer to when a situation becomes too dangerous for Western journalists to report from. It’s wrong not to have news from a faraway place, simply because there is no longer money to fly foreign correspondents there.
The internet has the effect of making international journalists even more accountable to global audiences that before. Just see Global Voices’ current China coverage. Yikes. Chinese bloggers are pouncing all over Western media inaccuracies. On openDemocracy, articles by authors from the region offer background on political history and media misunderstandings.
When the panel discussion in Los Angeles ended, the BBC’s wonderful Richard Sambrook graciously stood up and agreed with with some of what I said. In his own blog he wrote, “I agree the model of Foreign Correspondent is becoming rapidly outdated and needs re-inventing, not least to have authenticity with the subject which is lacking from many blow-dried parachute journalists.” Sambrook also noted that the BBC regularly uses over 400 “local stringers” around the world.
I think this just helps show that the end of what I consider old-fashioned foreign correspondence is coming closer. It’s not about where a journalist is born or not, it’s about listening and respecting people who are different, and trusting them to have the integrity to describe their own situation. I’m not saying it’s easier. But it could be better.
Here’s a brief report on American foreign media consumption. The part about Anna Nicole Smith is of course the most interesting… Robin from Snarkmarket sent it to me.
Careless & provocative. That’s a pretty hot combination.
It’s irritating that it takes so much time to make western journalists understand that they can trust local journalists and experts – and not think “I’ll wait to I see the news about this on Reuters, AP or BBC – because I know they’re trustworthy “. We’re (disclaimer: I work at a nationwide, danish newspaper http://politiken.dk ) not very good at it.
I often send my colleagues links to sites like yours or blogs, written by journalists in i.e. Pakistan , but often I hear the answer: “I’ll check out Reuters to be sure, Kim ” .
Actually your proposal could give us a better foreign coverage – also because we’re firing our foreign correspondents . We’re loosing ad-money and we i.e. cut down on the freelancers and go to the bureau-material instead.
On the other hand: slowly more and more journalist get used to also checking sites like GV and other independent sources – but it takes time – too long time. So – something is happening , but we must speed up things.
i feel like i just read something very similar to this…
http://rosenblumtv.wordpress.com/
oh, and this reminded me of you too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
[*Very* glad to be counted among "younger colleagues".]
In the report (co-written with Prof Stephen Coleman and Dr Myria Georgiou from the University of Leeds, btw), the debate is less about whether there will be foreign correspondents in 5 years’ time, it’s more about the pluralism of voices that are available to the British national media, and how new media are facilitating this. This means pluralism in terms of ethnic origin, geographical location, political perspective, gender, socio-economic status – Peter Salmon even raises this directly about the BBC’s workforce itself. We ask our interviewees how they feel about this specifically in relation to news and documentaries, and some of the responses are for the status quo, some for a hybrid and some for a total re-evaluation…
Specifically on the BBC thing… Richard Sambrook is right to say that the World Service has hundreds of reporters and stringers indigenous to where they are reporting from – but they’re largely reporting to an international audience, not a UK audience. Here’s the actual recommendation from our report:
“The BBC has a new remit to ‘bring the world to the UK’ – it should develop a more ‘joined-up’ approach to international coverage, using the resources of the World Service and BBC World to help inform the UK audience, and build on existing links between UK communities and the wider world via its Nations and Regions output.”
“what’s that?” inquired the foreignosaurus correspondent
“that is the sound of extinction, coming to get you, bwanza” answered the eager stringer.
what’s wrong with covering a story outside your own country??journalists feeding the local public news about what is happening in other nations link us to the rest of the world. we must also be concerned of what is happening beyond our territories.
the events that are taking place in other countries have certainly an impact to us..