Foreign Correspondence

North Korea is slowly beginning to open up to more foreign media following the death of Kim Jong Il late last year. ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff will be reporting from the country all this week. Likewise, NBC’s Richard Engel is in the country and filed a report this morning on “Today.”

Update: CNN is there too, with senior international correspondent Stan Grant repping the cabler. It is a busy week in North Korea, with a planned rocket test launch, as well as the 100th birthday of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.

Woodruff first reported from the country in 2005, with trips back in 2008 and 2010, where he witnessed the public introduction of current leader Kim Jong Un in a parade. Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren has made three trips to North Korea, in the last four years, most recently last May.

Kenyans are upset about a news report that appeared on CNN International. The report–about the deadly grenade attacks in Nairobi last week–said that the violence was “widespread” throughout the country, and featured a graphic with what looked like a scorched Kenyan flag (photo right via).

The correspondent in the CNN piece, David McKenzie, apologized for the “banner” on Twitter, but said that the reporting in the piece was accurate:

Our reporting onlast night was accurate, the banner used in bulletin was not. I contacted CNN for future bulletins. Apologies to all.

— David McKenzie (@McKenzieCNN) March 11, 2012

In a separate Tweet he said that CNN had pulled down the video from its website.

One of Kenya’s largest newspapers, The Daily Nation, reports that Kenya’s ambassador to the U.S. has asked the channel for a formal apology:

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Sunday at 8 PM, CNN will run a special on the situation in Syria. Unlike many other specials, this one turns the lens on the reporters covering the conflict. Dubbed “72 Hours Under Fire,” the special chronicles correspondent Arwa Damon‘s last trip into the country, and features interviews with Damon, CNN executive VP Tony Maddox and other staffers and executives.

The goal is to shine a light on how incredibly difficult and dangerous the situation in the country is, and what news organizations are doing to shine alight on the situation there.

“It’s a humanitarian crisis. We might not be able to bring about immediate change to Syria, but the one thing that we absolutely cannot do is walk away from this story – no matter how long it takes,” Damon says.

The situation in Syria continues to evolve, even as western news organizations evacuate their correspondents from the country. B&C’s Andrea Morabito spoke to TV news executives and correspondents (subscription required) to get to the bottom of what goes into covering such a difficult story. While it is extremely difficult and dangerous, getting a correspondent into the country assures substantial coverage on all of the news platforms.

The shortage of compelling live video footage affects how much the Syria story can be covered on television, with reporters often having to stand on the border of neighboring countries, in stark contrast to the images of ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and CNN’s Anderson Cooper getting roughed up in Cairo’s Tahrir Square a year ago during the unrest in Egypt.

“If Richard [Engel] were to get in, just by virtue of being there in a place that we don’t have normal access to and the danger that it poses to our people for being there would probably force its way high up into our network shows,” David Verdi, NBC News VP of worldwide newsgathering, says of the network’s chief foreign correspondent.

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The death of journalist Marie Colvin in Syria continues to resonate in the TV news world, and yesterday a few well-known foreign correspondents shared their thoughts on the situation there, and what it means to cover a war zone.

On “AC360,” Christiane Amanpour talked about the important job that Colvin and others did by bringing attention to the atrocities being committed in Syria.

On “CBS This Morning,” Lara Logan said that she feels “guilty” about Colvin’s death.

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Two foreign journalists were killed in Syria yesterday, 28 year-old French photographer Remi Ochlik and Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin.

Colvin–a Long Island native–was killed just hours after she appeared on CNN’s “AC360″ last night, talking about the death of a little boy, one of many deaths she has witnessed in the country. As we have reported, Syria is quickly becoming one of the most dangerous assignments for foreign journalists, in some respects even more dangerous than Iraq and Afghanistan were.

Colvin’s final report for CNN is below.

Last week CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward found herself sneaking out of Syria. The weather wasn’t helping.

“We had a tough crossing because it had been raining all week, the ground was literally just mud, and we were wading through canals and trudging through this mud in the middle of the night,” Ward told TVNewser.

The crisis in Syria continues to escalate, but the government there has been clamping down on journalists, forcing any western news organizations to sneak into the country in order to report on it. The journey into the country is almost as dangerous as the situation itself.

“There are several ways to do it, and several borders to do it through,” Ward recalls. “We went in through Turkey, we were relying heavily on a network of activists willing to risk their lives to make sure that their story gets out there to the world. We actually went in across the border with smugglers, it is a dangerous undertaking.”

The government has opted not to grant any journalism visas, keeping most foreign reporters out. Only those willing to take serious and very real risks are sneaking in. Yesterday the New York Times announced that one of its star reporters, Anthony Shadid, passed away in Syria. Shadid died of an apparent asthma attack. Due to the underground nature of reporting there, quality medical care–or often any medical care–is not easily accessible.

“The Assad regime has been very calculated and cynical in refusing to grant visas to journalists to report independently from inside the country, because they are aware of the fact that if there isn’t information coming out, and if there aren’t impartial observers, journalists on the ground getting information out about many of the atrocities, they will go undocumented,” Ward says. “Journalists will have a very tough time covering the story because they will be relying so much on second or even third hand information.”

The regime briefly granted journalism visas earlier this year, but as Ward notes, any journalists in the country at the time were not getting an accurate picture of the situation there.

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Yesterday the New York Times announced that one of its reporters, Anthony Shadid, died in Syria of an apparent asthma attack. News of Shadid’s death was reported on Both NBC’s “Today” and CBS’ “CBS This Morning,” and on cable CNN’s morning shows discussed his passing at some length as well.

The most heartfelt response was probably on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” from Mike Barnicle.

“Tweeters tweet, bloggers blog, and reporters report,” Barnicle said, noting that Shadid was definitely in the third group.

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Shadid was shot while reporting in the West Bank a few years ago, and last year was kidnapped in Libya. He appeared on CNN after he was freed to discuss that incident:

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There continues to be a massive civil war in Syria, but thanks in part to a government crackdown on foreign journalists, coverage on cable news tends to be from afar.

As the situation continues to deteriorate, news organizations will have to weigh the pros and cons of trying to sneak producers or correspondents into the country. A number of journalists have been killed in the country, so sneaking in is not a matter to be taken lightly.

Cable news is dominated by politics, but as 2011 showed, revolutions make for extremely compelling TV.

CNN is the only cable news channel to have a correspondent in the country right now, and it has far more coverage than either Fox News or MSNBC, according to TVEyes. CNN correspondent Arwa Damon snuck into the country, and has been reporting for CNN both in daytime and primetime. According to TVEyes, CNN had at least one segment on Syria (often two or three) every hour from 1PM-11PM yesterday.

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The cable news channels have seemingly been all politics all the time over the last few days, but it is hardly the only big news happening at the moment. In the Middle East, there is an event that will have a more significant long-term impact than intra-party political sniping: the protests in Syria, and President Assad’s announcement that he will not step down. In addition, a French TV journalist for France 2 TV was killed in a mortar strike in the country.

CNN’s Nic Robertson is in the country on a visa (previously reporters have had to sneak in), and has been giving updates from the divided nation:

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