International News And Foreign Correspondents

In this fifth volume of his highly acclaimed Newswork series, Stephen Hess offers a revealing look at how the print and broadcast media cover international affairs and how foreign correspondents do their work, and concludes with suggestions for improving international coverage.

Despite the importance of foreign news, its history, transformation and indeed its future have not been much studied. The scholarly community often calls attention to journalism’s shortcomings covering the world, yet the topic has not been systematically examined across countries or over time. The need to redress this neglect and the desire to assess the impact of new media technologies on the future of journalism – including foreign correspondence – provide the motivation for this stimulating, exciting and thought-provoking book. While the old economic models supporting news have crumbled in the wake of new media technologies, these changes have the potential to bring new and improved ways to inform people of foreign news. In an increasingly globalized era, journalism is being transformed by the effortlessly quick sharing of information across national boundaries. As such, we need to reconsider foreign correspondence and explore where such reporting is headed. This book discusses the current state and future prospects for foreign correspondence across the full range of media platforms, and assesses developments in the reporting of overseas news for audiences, governments and foreign policy in both contemporary and historical settings around the globe. As Emmy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Serge Schmemann reminds us in this book, "quality journalism and unbiased reporting are as valid and necessary today as they ever were [...] one of the primary tasks of journalists and scholars as they follow the changes taking place must be to ensure that the ‘new international information order’ now imposed by the Internet remains true to the ideals and traditions that define our journalism." This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

This book articulates the skills and perspectives that future foreign correspondents need to adopt in an increasingly globalized world. By revisiting entrenched traditions in the training and practice of international reporting, The Future Foreign Correspondent examines the changing role of a correspondent, outlining aspects that will evolve, the skills that will continue to be pivotal and those becoming even more important, such as the need for greater cultural understanding within the global media sphere. This book is a must read for journalists, media students and researchers interested in understanding what needs to be taken into consideration when reporting transcultural news spheres.

This book reveals that 'fixers'—local experts on whom foreign correspondents rely—play a much more significant role in international television newsgathering than has been documented or understood. Murrell explores the frames though which international reporting has traditionally been analysed and then shows that fixers, who have largely been dismissed by scholars as 'logistical aides', are in fact central to the day-to-day decision-making that takes place on-the-road. Murrell looks at why and how fixers are selected and what their significance is to foreign correspondence. She asks if fixers help introduce a local perspective into the international news agenda, or if fixers are simply ‘People Like Us’ (PLU). Also included are in-depth case studies of correspondents in Iraq and Indonesia.

Foreign News gives us a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look into the practices of the global tribe we call foreign correspondents. Exploring how they work, Ulf Hannerz also compares the ways correspondents and anthropologists report from one part of the world to another. Hannerz draws on extensive interviews with correspondents in cities as diverse as Jerusalem, Tokyo, and Johannesburg. He shows not only how different story lines evolve in different correspondent beats, but also how the correspondents' home country and personal interests influence the stories they write. Reporting can go well beyond coverage of a specific event, using the news instead to reveal deeper insights into a country or a people to link them to long-term trends or structures of global significance. Ultimately, Hannerz argues that both anthropologists and foreign correspondents can learn from each other in their efforts to educate a public about events and peoples far beyond our homelands. The result of nearly a decade's worth of work, Foreign News is a provocative study that will appeal to both general readers and those concerned with globalization.

International news has long been studied and understood as produced by outsiders – foreign correspondents working in exotic, international locales. This book challenges this established view by putting the spotlight on the insiders working in their own countries producing news for international audiences. Western male foreign correspondents who report from areas affected by crises and conflicts for an ‘audience back home’ have long stood in as visible metaphors of international news production. But the understanding of who produces international news is starting to shift as scholars come to take into account the often-invisible role played by locally based, non-Western news-workers who have always been part and parcel of international news production. The roles and responsibilities of these professional, specialised locals within the global flow of news have only increased as falling news industry revenues have meant reductions in non-local staff in foreign news bureaus. Available research shows that the involvement of local journalists and fixers, as well as NGOs, as sources of news and information in international news production is marked by economic, socio-cultural and practice-related tensions. To shed light on these growing yet relatively less investigated changes happening in international news-making, this book brings together the latest of studies conducted on this form of journalistic labour around the world. This book will contribute to both the breadth and depth of our future understanding of local news-work that benefits distant audiences, and also help cement the place of such journalistic work as a vital topic of analysis in its own right. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

International news reporting is undergoing a profound transformation. Western newspapers and broadcasters have steadily cut back on foreign correspondents and reporting over the last 20 years in the face of economic pressures. Now technology and cultural changes brought by globalisation are bringing additional pressures to news organisations and the internet has also allowed new voices to be heard. News organisations are having to adapt and redefine themselves in the face of turbulent changes to how we learn about the world.

International news has long been studied and understood as produced by outsiders - foreign correspondents working in exotic, international locales. This book challenges this established view by putting the spotlight on the insiders working in their own countries producing news for international audiences. Western male foreign correspondents who report from areas affected by crises and conflicts for an 'audience back home' have long stood in as visible metaphors of international news production. But the understanding of who produces international news is starting to shift as scholars come to take into account the often-invisible role played by locally based, non-Western news-workers who have always been part and parcel of international news production. The roles and responsibilities of these professional, specialised locals within the global flow of news have only increased as falling news industry revenues have meant reductions in non-local staff in foreign news bureaus. Available research shows that the involvement of local journalists and fixers, as well as NGOs, as sources of news and information in international news production is marked by economic, socio-cultural and practice-related tensions. To shed light on these growing yet relatively less investigated changes happening in international news-making, this book brings together the latest of studies conducted on this form of journalistic labour around the world. This book will contribute to both the breadth and depth of our future understanding of local news-work that benefits distant audiences, and also help cement the place of such journalistic work as a vital topic of analysis in its own right. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.