1. Reporting From
A Foreign Land
Vincy Davis
Roll No : 128

2. Basics
 A Correspondent is a reporter that usually has some
level of expertise over her subject and includes some of
her own perspective on the news. Eg: Health
Correspondent
 A Reporter, on the other hand, offers largely fact-based
reporting.
 A Stringer is a freelancing reporter and/or
photographer who contributes reports or photos to a
news organization on an on-going basis but is paid
individually for each piece of published or broadcast
work.
 Foreign bureau is a generic term for a news office set
up in a country other than the primary operations
center. It is located in a foreign country and refers to all
creative and administrative operations that take place

3. Present scenario
 In the developing world, there have been
aggressive efforts to cover global news and
provide alternate voices to the Anglo American
monopoly. Eg. Al Jazeera in the middle east
 In contrast many of the world’s largest
commercial news organizations - mainly
American networks - have mirrored their sense
of the perceived public mood by reducing world
coverage.

4. Background
 Professional foreign news reportage is credited to Moses
Yale, editor of The New York Sun
- First to cover the Mexican War of 1846 using pony
express relays, stagecoaches and telegraph
- Decided to share it with competition at a price. Led to
the formation of world’s first news agency – Associated
Press
 Paul Julius Reuter used newly laid cables to deliver
Europe’s financial news then later, world events. Reuters
(1851)
 Both AP and Reuters understood journalism of being
there first mattered along with understanding logistics
and comprehending the story.

5. Role of News Agencies
 “…Wholesale butchers of the information
business, shipping great slabs of fact-based
news to newspapers which then fashion and
serve it under their own brands and charge full
retail price to readers and advertisers who in
turn want the readers.”
 Provide text, photos and raw videos to
subscribing networks.
 Offers strict facts
 Building up awareness of impending stories
before they hit front pages so that alert clients
will be ready when the time comes.

6.  Reuters- Largest international multimedia news
agency with 196 bureaus in 131 countries
followed by AP and AFP
 Each agency has its own style of shaping
reports – USA based AP carries lots of US
oriented news; AFP has its strong French base;
Reuters considers the needs of financial services
industry as well as the media
 Stringers/Freelancers play a vital role in
contributing to news stories and are actively
hired by agencies as they provide flexibility in
the system.
 All agencies have strict rules about sourcing
their reports.

7. Challenges for News Agencies
 Timeliness: How to continue being the first to
the story when anyone can access the
technology to record events and distribute them
over the internet?
 Technology: Will the democratic nature of
technology destroy the Agency’s model? Will it
be driven by journalism or technology?
 Taste: Can Agencies keep their reputation for
accuracy, fairness and balance faced with a web
audience that wants unmediated access to
news, where “shock” takes precedence over
“significance”?

8. Diplomacy and International
Reporting
 Diplomatic journalism not to be mixed with propaganda
 It is necessary to interpret government- speak or
‘megaphone diplomacy’ to get at the heart of the issue.
A diplomatic reporter’s role here is to sift through the
jargon, understand subtleties and make it accessible to
the reader.
 Often, journalists are given or denied access to a
foreign office on the basis of how ‘friendly’ their
reportage is towards their country. Eg. the Indian
government refused to extend the visa of Japanese
journalist, Shogo Takahashi ‘allegedly’ because his
reports focused extensively on poverty and the caste
system.

9. Challenges
 Thinking ahead
 Beware of taking information at face value especially
from “off the record” sources
 Predictions
 Closed societies
 Reading ‘diplo speak’. “A frank exchange of words”
means there was a blazing row.
 Challenge of ‘spin’ i.e practice of distortions, ommissions
or even blatant lies to mislead journalists
 Avoiding bias
 Technological challenges plus dealing with new sources
of information

10. General ‘Sources’
 Official and private media
 Official sources – Officially released data and
news conferences
 Business sources
 Diplomatic sources
 Private sources – Ranging from local journalists
to well placed academics to military officers
 NGOs, Human Rights groups and other lobby
groups

11. Reporting From
A Conflict Zone

12. Issues/Challenges
 Parachute journalism
-Lack of cultural perspective
-Formulaic reporting
-Sensationalism
 Sources of information
-Dangers of relying heavily on govt. sources. ( The
challenge of ‘spin’)
 Censorship
 Safety. Management of trauma
 Moral dilemma. Representative of the country or
newspaper when in a foreign land?

13. Roy Gutman, Pulitzer Prize winner for revealing the
existence of Serb-run concentration camps in
Bosnia : "You've got to do everything in your
power to stop these things and exposing it is
one of the best ways to do it.”
Gutman is careful, however, to limit the journalist's
role: "Our job is to supply the facts so other
people can make the judgments. The worst
thing is to step across the line and recommend
what should be done."

14. “Killing the Messenger”
 According to International News Safety
Institute’s 2007 report, over 1000 members of
the media were killed around the world between
1996 and 2006.
 85% deaths affected local reporters, editors and
photojournalists.
 Daniel Pearl, Wall Street correspondent was
executed in 2002 and its video was uploaded
online. Al Jazeera’s station in Baghdad was
bombed by US war planes in 2003. Two
journalists were killed.

15. Are foreign correspondents becoming
redundant?
 Many foreign bureaus have shut shop over the
years due to :
- Economics. Setting up dedicated news teams
abroad is very expensive.
- Public’s seemingly loss of interest in
International News
 New media (Blogs, social networks, other user
generated content) proving to be competition.
 Yet technology is seldom used to highlight what
is happening around the world especially Africa
 24X7 news channels do not make international
news a priority unless there is a huge breaking
news. Exceptions being BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera.

16. Possible solutions to revive the
practice
The old way of foreign reportage is slowly dying
out…
According to a research, people are less interested
in world news mainly because the issues are
traumatic, and coverage is one sided, jaded and/
or shallow. Figures showed they’d be more
interested if they get to hear all sides of the
story.
Training locally stationed journalists might just be
the way to be. This includes making provisions
for their safety.

17. Bibliography
 International News Reporting, John Owen and Heather
Purdey 2009
 http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/how-india-tr
 http://www.suite101.com/content/international-news-reportin
 http://www.fccsouthasia.net/ Foreign Correspondents
Club
 http://www.suite101.com/content/media-watchdog-groups-a1
 BIAS IN MEDIA
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_3_23/ai_7
8804223/