Foreign Correspondence

Why should a news organization have a reporter based full-time in Rome?

According to FNC’s Rome-based correspondent Greg Burke, it’s a no-brainer. ”There are more than a billion Catholics, and you have the Vatican here,” he told TVNewser during this writer’s recent vacation to Italy. “You’re always going to have some news out of the Vatican.”

Not to mention that despite the recent political departure of Italy’s never-dull prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the country “produces good, colorful stories.” For example: the trial of Amanda Knox, and the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner.

Important storylines could originate from Italy this summer as well, considering the shaky state of the eurozone. It’s evidence of what Burke predicts will be a news “comeback” for Rome, which experienced its greatest recent media crush in 2005, when Pope John Paul II passed away. The city, Burke says, “is important for a lot of reasons.”

Italy is a second home to Burke, who’s been there for nearly twenty years – first working for Reuters, then for TIME magazine.  Just a few weeks ago, in fact, he obtained dual U.S.-Italian citizenship. One benefit: near-seamless travel within the European Union.

More, including a video interview with Burke, after the jump.

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ABC News’ senior foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz is in Yemen this week, delivering a series of “Inside the Terror Zone” reports that will air across all the network’s news platforms.

The series kicked off on “World News” last night. This morning, more than 70 Yemeni soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing in Sana’a, where Raddatz is reporting from. She appeared with the breaking news on today’s “Good Morning America”:

CNN’s Anderson Cooper is widely regarded as being one of the best anchors in the field, but he hasn’t hosted his eponymous program from outside the country in quite some time. Tonight, he will have a return to form. Cooper will anchor “AC360″ from the Turkey/Syria border tonight.

Joining Cooper will be CNN correspondent Ivan Watson, Stanford University’s Fouad Ajami and guest U.S. Senator John McCain.

Cooper used to travel across the country–and even the world–with some regularity whenever news broke. Over the last year or so, Cooper has mostly based his show out of CNN’s New York studios, with less travel than he had done previously. That was likely due in part to his successful  syndicated show, “Anderson,” which added to his workload, and would presumably somewhat hinder his ability to travel due to scheduling conerns.

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Al Jazeera English is closing its bureau in Beijing after Chinese authorities refused to renew a correspondent’s press credentials and visa. The correspondent, Melissa Chan, has filed more than 400 reports for the network in China since 2007.

From Al Jazeera English:

“Salah Negm, director of news at Al Jazeera English said: We’ve been doing a first class job at covering all stories in China.Our editorial DNA includes covering all stories from all sides. We constantly cover the voice of the voiceless and sometimes that calls for tough news coverage from anywhere in world. We hope China appreciates the integrity of our news coverage and our journalism. We value this journalist integrity in our coverage of all countries in the world.

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Pres. Obama has released a statement on World Press Day, observed every May 3.

“It is a day in which we celebrate the invaluable role played by the media in challenging abuses of power, identifying corruption, and informing all citizens about the important issues that shape our world. It is also a day for us to sound the alarm about restrictions on the media as well as the threats, violence or imprisonment of many of its members and their families because of their work.”

2011 was the deadliest year on record for media professionals. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports at least 46 journalists were killed worldwide in direct retaliation for their work in 2011. CPJ is investigating 35 other deaths to determine whether they were work-related.

Earlier today two Mexican photographers were found dead in a canal in the state of Veracruz.

Columbia Journalism Review reveals that countries like Syria and Libya may have hacked into the computers and email accounts of journalists covering the uprisings there. Among those targeted were reporters for CNN, and CJR suggests that compromised files from a CNN reporter’s email may have resulted in sources being killed by the governments.

In an attempt to warn the people named in the e-mails, he contacted Ahmed Ali, a Libyan activist in the US at the time, and passed him a list of the journalists who’d been hacked, as well as a spreadsheet which showed the names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of underground sources in Tripoli that he said he’d obtained from a CNN account. As proof, he provided the journalist’s username and password to Ali, and Ali was able to log into the journalist’s CNN account with Outlook. Ali then passed along the information to CNN. A CNN spokeswoman told me the network had been informed of “a possible breach,” and had taken steps to remedy it. She declined to go into further detail.

The entire article is worth reading, and really shines a light on how technology, while making coverage easier in many respects, also opens up new risks for journalists.

Back in March, we linked to a Washington Post article that cited internal Al Qaeda memos seized at the home of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The memos in question focused on Al Qaeda’s media strategy, and famously said of Fox News “let her die in anger!”

This morning the Pentagon released a cache of documents seized from the compound, and TVNewser has obtained a translated copy of the media memo in question.

Among the new revelations: Al Qaeda considered going to the U.S. networks with an offer of an exclusive interview with Bin Laden, but decided against it, because “the channel that broadcast them, probably it would distort them somehow. This is accomplished by bringing analysts and experts that would interpret its meaning in the way they want it to be.” Another option proposed was recording an HD video message, and distributing it to all of the U.S. channels.

Also: Al Qaeda thought former CNN staffer Octavia Nasr worked for MSNBC (they also referred to her as “The Lebanese”), and they seemed to like Brian Ross and ABC News (“The channel is still proud for its interview with the Shaykh [Bin Laden”).

Al Qaeda also thought CNN’s English-language coverage was in the tank for the U.S. government, but praised its Arabic-language coverage: “Its Arabic version brings good and detailed reports about al-Sahab releases, with a lot of quotations from the original text. That means they copy directly from the releases or its gist.”

Read the full memo below, and we will keep looking through the documents.

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CNN has named Vladimir Duthiers an international correspondent, based out of Lagos, Nigeria. Duthiers has been with CNN for much of his career, starting out on Christiane Amanpour‘s program, and most recently as an associate producer for “AC360.” he was part of the team that led CNN’s coverage of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

CNN has bureaus in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lagos, Johannesburg and Nairobi. More information, after the jump.

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A tipster writes in, “We are seeing Amanpour everywhere around the TWC [Time Warner Center] getting ready for her show.”

And in fact CNN will announce this morning that Christiane Amanpour‘s new show will debut Monday at 3pmET. While Amanpour continues as ABC News Global Affairs anchor, the veteran CNN anchor and reporter returns Monday with her new 30-minute daily broadcast “Amanpour” on CNN International.

“We are delighted to have Christiane back at CNN,” said Tony Maddox, executive vice president and managing director for CNN International. “Christiane’s sophisticated, incisive journalism is needed now, more than ever to add context and depth to the world’s biggest news and stories,” Maddox said.

“This is an exciting time to have this unique role,” Amanpour said. “I am thrilled to come home to CNN, where I have reported for so many years – and combine this role with the reporting that I will continue for ABC News.” As we reported earlier, Liza McGuirk will EP the show.

As we noted yesterday, a number of American correspondents are in North Korea this week, as the country prepares to launch its first rocket. The U.S. State Department is not pleased by the trip, however, as a spokesperson explained to Politico’s Dylan Byers:

“North Korea is trying to sell this to the world as being about space exploration, when really it’s about testing missile technology,” he told me. “They’re using the press, using this angle of a space mission, to hide their real goal.”

At the same time, he said, “they are tightly tacking the press into tight areas so they only see military hardware. They’re not allowing them to tour the countryside and see the people who are starving.”

You can read Byers’ full piece here. Every time a foreign reporter reports from North Korea they have a government minder, so that is not new. Should foreign reporters push to be taken to off-limits areas ? Or is it worth having the minders to get the story on the rocket launch?