By Chamise Jones and Sherron Simpson
MASC 686
After nine years of conflict with Iraq, could you find Iraq on a map? The amount of international news Americans are receiving is dwindling, and the results are disturbing.
“I’ve seen college students in Missouri make a map of the world on Earth Day and only have the United States contour filling up the entire globe,” said Frieda Warden, Producer for the Women’s International News Gathering Service.
WINGS is a weekly news and current radio affairs program built by women from around the country. The organization gathers and distributes news to spread awareness of international topics and issues.
Americans have become so consumed with achieving the American dream, that many forget there’s more to the world than just America. Many have never even traveled outside of the United States.
“Americans have been living in a mirror box for a long time,” said Warden. “I don’t even think they know what they are missing.”
Warden said that if Americans would broaden their horizons they could learn from other cultures and nationalities. She says if people embrace their commonalities around the world, they could potentially be of great interest among any society.
“Financial analysts from the U.S. would probably be really interested in news about financial analysts from Europe, or China, or South Africa. Even sports coverage in the U.S. is pretty narrowly national,” said Warden. “I don’t think Americans can afford to be so insular these days, so hopefully things will change.”
Awareness of international affairs is more important that people recognize. We live in a global economy and many international decisions directly affect our economy, in some form or fashion.
Domestic affairs consume the minds of many, until something happens to shift their attention, such as the recent outbreak of the swine flu or an international economic disaster.
University of Arizona journalism professor Margaret Zanger recently worked as the Iraq training director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, a non-governmental organization based in London that specializes in training reporters in post authoritarian societies.
Zanger was stationed in Baghdad, Iraq for a year and a half training journalists on an “international standard.” She says that most of the reporters in the Middle East were use to government censored reporting, infiltrated with opinions.
Although Iraqi journalists were unfamiliar with the way journalism was practiced in the west, Zanger says they were often times more knowledgably about American affairs and politics than most Americans.
“I think that’s true almost anywhere you go outside the United States. People are much more aware,” said Zanger. “It’s Americans who live in this little bubble.”
Zanger says that there are many factors that contribute to America’s lack of knowledge of foreign affairs, including the size of the United States compared to most other countries.
While living in Cairo, Egypt, Zanger spent a lot of time in Europe because of its close proximity. She says because of the vastness of the United States, many American’s don’t often travel from state to state, not to mention across the country.
Media outlets are not immune to the current economic situation. One major effect the economy has had on the media industry is their ability to cover international affairs.
As newspapers cut staff and reduce their content, international news has become scarcer. The Iraq war has become mundane for readers and has slowly disappeared from the front page.
Vice president of multimedia strategy and news for Media General, Donna Reed, says that the economy has undoubtedly affected Media General’s ability to cover international news.
“A lot of foreign bureaus have closed, even some of the larger wire services,” said Reed. “Even the Associated Press has had to evaluate where it has bureaus and how many people it has in those bureaus.”
Reed recalls that during the earlier years of the war, the Richmond Times Dispatch along with other individual papers, was able to embed reporters and photographers with Virginia troops for months.
In December 2004, Times-Dispatch reporter Jeremy Redmon and photographer Dean Hoffmeyer were stationed in Iraq to cover the war.
On December 24, 2004, Redmon and Hoffmeyer were eating with soldiers in a mess tent on one of the military bases, when according to The Seattle Times, a 122 mm rocket slammed into the tent leaving 22 people dead. It has been called one of the deadliest attacks on Americans in the war’s history.
Since 2003, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 138 journalists have been killed in Iraq by aggressive human action while on duty. The insurgent attack Redmon and Hoffeyer witnessed, emphasized the danger of reporting internationally. Reed says it is also a financial burden on the organization to maintain foreign correspondents.
“We’ve considered it a couple times, but it’s very expensive to equip them,” said Reed. “They have to be fitted for life jackets and all kind of other protective gear.”
Reed says the recession along with the issues being faced by many newspaper outlets across the country may have caused news organizations to under report the war and other international affairs.
Elisa Tinsley is the director for the Knight International Journalism Fellowships Program for the International Center for Journalists. The program works with journalists to improve journalism worldwide. The organization has worked with over 20,000 journalists from 176 different countries.
The program has fellows, as they are called in the program, stationed in over 80 countries, including Mexico, Pakistan, India, and South Africa. Tinsley says that while there are some bureaus still left, the staffing within those bureaus has dramatically reduced.
“International staff used to have full crews,” said Tinsley. “Now reporters are asked to be camera men, photographers, producers and sound men,” said Tinsley.
Because of the expense of international coverage, many organizations have closed international bureaus or drastically trimmed back on resources in those areas.
Also, correspondents who remain are now being asked to cover larger areas. It is extremely difficult to cover international news thoroughly as international bureaus sizes are decreasing.
Zanger recalls her visits to Jerusalem where she would often come across reporters from the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune. But, in the last 10 years news outlets have cut back on foreign correspondents.
“You don’t find them anymore,” said Tinsley. “These are fairly large newspapers and they don’t have a foreign correspondent in the Middle East anywhere.”
Local television stations and newspapers have become more dependent on news wires, such as the AP. Reed says that although Media General no longer has international reporters, each of their brands have wire editors who monitor the wire for story selections. The AP has a bureau office in Richmond, Virginia.
Stories with local angles are often the ones that make it into the paper. The amount of local news contained in the papers fluctuates from day to day depending upon special limitations.
“We try to give people a variety. Sometimes it’s spot news, breaking news, and certainly coverage of the war, but then we also try to layer it with political and economic news,” Reed said. “Some are just good news stories that are coming out of other countries. We look for a variety as well as what the top stories are.”
The Richmond-Times Dispatch often includes briefs on international stories. Editors have taken stories and condensed them to two or three paragraphs to give readers more of a variety.
It is the role of the producer or editor to provide the correct mix of news to society. Some journalists have even raised the question ‘does it matter if people are not concerned with international news?’
“Sometimes people don’t know what they need to know,” said Tinsley. “And that is the role of the media to bring to light the things that people need to know.”
More and more of the news content contains sensational stories. Non-stop coverage of the Octomom and the amazing British singer from the British version of “American Idol” continue to be the top headlines for many broadcast news show.
According to Neilsen Media Research, the top show in broadcasting television the week of April 27, 2009, was “American Idol.” There was not a news show listed in the top 10.
Tinsley forces herself to read every part of the newspaper, even if she does not feel like it.
“I even look at the sports section,” said Tinsley. “If I don’t, I feel like I am not informed.”
Because of the economy, even the AP, one of the most popular wire services has begun evaluating their bureaus and staff.
CNN currently has 47 international bureaus that reach 200 million households. But in the United States, CNN International is not one of the thousands of channels on the television guide.
Click on the map to view CNN International videos from each of its bureaus. Each location contains an annual report that lists the safety levels for journalists reporting in those areas and any unsafe situations journalists encountered in 2008. Each bureau is colored coded to represent the corresponding safety levels :green = good situation, blue = satisfactory situation, yellow = noticeable problems, pink = difficult situation and red = a very serious situation.
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Werden, WINGS producer, says that American news outlets rely too much on wire services. She says that most either use the AP or CNN which are often filtered in the American interest.
Roar Nerdal is a freelance journalist in Salvador, Brazil. He was born in Norway and says he follows CNN International, Newsweek, and The Economist (UK) to receive the bulk of his international news.
“Even though this is top of line,” said Nerdal. “I feel American news lack the foreign angle. How do Brazilians, Norwegians and Chinese see the world?”
Werden suggests that more local stations partner with international media outlets to offer citizens more complete coverage.
“American’s need to understand international news from international perspectives and not only filtered through a very narrow view of American interest,” Warden said. “Americans have really been “dumbed down” by their media, hopefully they’re getting tired of this.”
There are many factors to consider when an international journalist is stationed at a bureau. Appropriate funds is the main reason many newsrooms lack international journalists.
One option that larger newspaper publishers may consider is the outsourcing of foreign news correspondents. Outsourcing will allow news organizations to save money and still report international news. Tribune Co. and Washington Post Co. are discussing such a matter now. If an agreement is made Tribune could close their own bureaus and publish stories by the Post Co. Tribune could save millions of dollars.
Tinsley says the problem isn’t just providing international news. The media must inform society and stop providing news that the media industry thinks is interesting.
“Its balancing not just international, national and hyper-local news,” said Tinsley. “There also needs to be an effort by the media to play a role in helping people understand what’s going on in their world whether they want to know it or not.”
While local news is not as readily available as it use to be, the tools to further explore domestic coverage internationally are available, for those who desire to so. The Internet offers an assortment of international news from all around the country.
“All that info is there for free on the Internet. But it just takes more effort on a person’s part,” said Zanger. “And of course Americans, who know nothing, aren’t going to make that effort.”
The major deterrent of international news consumption among Americans is context. Many Americans don’t have a complete understanding or background knowledge of international cultures, issues, or history making it much more difficult for them to understand current news and events.
The University of Arizona recently began offering an international journalism curriculum to better educate students on covering international affairs. Program developers say that the Sept. 11, attack further emphasized the need for well-trained journalists with a thorough understanding of world issues and events.
The international journalism curriculum is collaboration among the school’s centers for American, Middle Eastern, and Near Eastern Studies departments and classes are available for any undergraduate or graduate student enrolled in either of the corresponding programs.
Zanger teaches a course called “Media coverage in International Crises” which focuses specifically on how journalists operate during an international crisis.
One of the courses offered through the Latin American Studies portion of the program is a simultaneous five credit package consisting of two classes. The first class, Press Coverage in Latin America allows students to gain an intensive understanding of a Latin American country.
Students then take an all expense paid trip, sponsored by donors and grants, to the countries the students have studied.
“One of the most important things a journalists need to do is to background themselves on a country,” said Zanger. “One of the main things I do, and I believe the other teachers encourage students to do to is, to educate themselves very quickly but in some depth about a country before they even think about going there.”
The University of Arizona is less than an hour away from the Mexican boarder. The school launched Border Beat in the spring of 2007, an online publication published by UA journalism students.
Border Beat offers news, insight and resources about the U.S. and Mexico region. The school has also produced a bilingual newspaper, El Independiente, for almost 30 years.
El Independiente mainly covers the city of South Tuscan, which is 85 percent Hispanic. In 2005, the program extended to include the U.S Mexico border where students can use the school’s travel fund to thoroughly cover important issues.
Zanger says the education system is also to blame for the lack of concerned citizens. In addition to teaching world history, they should also correlate history to the present. Having a tangible knowledge of world history and past affairs, assist anyone in staying abreast of international current events.
“You can’t understand Somalia today, unless you understand what happen to Somalia in the early 90’s,” said Zanger.
However, as more news organizations close foreign bureaus, there are less reporters to cover international events in Somalia and other countries. Zanger says she prepares her students for the uncertain future for foreign correspondents by encouraging them to do freelance reporting internationally and abroad. The opportunity for freelancing is growing.
In addition to freelancing opportunities that studying abroad may present, Zanger says that the cut back on foreign correspondents will ultimately strengthen international journalism, because only the passionate reporters will remain.
Tags: Chamise Jones, Sherron Simpson, VCU
