The Value of Foreign Correspondents
It was hard to read today’s Ask the Post chat with David Hoffman, AME for foriegn news, without hearing Tom Fenton and his message of news organizations failing to convey the world to their U.S. audiences echoing in the background–especially when Hoffman wrote, “The correspondents generate most of the ideas [for our overseas coverage]. This is why I feel so strongly about the value of foreign correspondence — there’s no substitute for being there, on the ground, observing, recording, checking and sifting information.”
As Fenton has been arguing, and as one questioner in today’s chat said:
I really don’t think you fully convey just how widespread and passionate anti-U.S. feeling is right now. In the Middle East, of course. Tony Blair may just possibly lose his job over his alliance with Bush. In Latin America, where leftist governments are being elected in part on anti-U.S. feeling.
Again, I’m not accusing you of failing to report these facts. It’s just that I often read foreign papers (even traditionally friendly ones in traditionally friendly countries, like Australia), and I am regularly shocked (even a little frightened) by just how disliked we are right now. People who travel say the same thing.
And I’m not sure you always manage fully to convey just how intense feeling has become in so many places.
As Fenton wrote in the book’s introduction, “We need more and better news. Our lives depend on it.” Makes you wonder how TV network news execs have been following Fenton and his crusade. Will we see a resurgence in foreign coverage? Will we, perhaps, see a TV network foreign correspondent based permanently somewhere, ANYWHERE, in the Muslim world?
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Nadine Cheung
Editor, The Job Post
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