Foreign correspondence refers to news coverage of international events and locations by journalists sent abroad from their home country. Over time, as technology advanced, more foreign correspondents were sent overseas but costs have led most print and television outlets to reduce their international presence. Now, foreign news coverage relies more on wire services, citizen journalists, and occasional deployments of reporters to cover major stories.

1. Prepared by Mark Grabowski

2. It’s coverage of people, places and things overseas by our press
corps. Takes its name from the letters that travelers sent home
describing the exotic sights and experiences encountered during
their foreign travel.

3. • Development of Foreign Correspondence
• War Coverage
• Famous Correspondents
• Innovations & Technological Changes

4. • Since the first
newspapers, the
media has devoted at
least some coverage
to news from abroad.
In fact, the first
newspaper in
America was banned
because of its foreign
coverage.

5. Early stories were
about piracy,
diplomacy, crimes
and doings of
European royalty.
Today, the media
still covers much
of the same.

6. • During Colonial Period, coverage wasn’t provided by
true journalists, however. It was either plagiarized
from European newspapers or involved letters from
Americans visiting overseas.
• Reporting news overseas initially took considerable
time. It might be several weeks or even months before
news of major events in Europe reached America. For
example, Americans waited seven weeks to receive
word of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which
ended the War of 1812

7. • It was costly. During the Mexican War of
1846-48, daily newspapers on the East Coast
would have to pay a lot of money to get news
from the battles taking place 4,000 miles away
in Texas. They used riders, steamboats,
railroads, etc. As a result this led to the
formation of what would later become the
Associated Press. Newspaper owners realized
they could save money by sharing resources
and stories.

8. • With rise of the modern nation
state, publishers saw value in
foreign news. Wanted more
than wire service copy.
• It was also getting easier to
travel thanks to technological
breakthroughs like the steam
ship (bottom), which allowed
for faster transportation, and to
report the news thanks to the
the telegraph (top), which
allowed for quick transmission
of news from far away.

9. • Newspapers hired their
own reporters to go abroad
and provide readers with
scintillating tales of
adventure and gossipy
information about rich and
famous American travelers. In 1888, Nellie Bly, a reporter
at the New York World, took
a trip around the world,
attempting to turn the
• These reporters tended to fictional book Around the
be well-known writers, World in Eighty Days into
college-educated and fact for the first time. Her
newspaper sponsored a
known as “travelling contest in which readers
commissioners”. tried to guess the exact
second she was arrive at her
various destinations.

10. • This gave rise to the foreign correspondent
stereotype later seen in Hollywood movies
such as Roman Holiday.

11. • This war may have
come about, in large
part, due to the
“Yellow Journalism”
frenzy and circulation
battle between New
York newspaper
publishers William
Randolph Hearst (top)
and Joseph Pulitzer
(bottom).

12. • The two men’s newspapers pushed for American action in Cuba and
provided inflammatory coverage to whip up public sentiment against
Spain. For example, even though it was unclear what caused the USS
Maine, a U.S. battleship, to sink, both publishers blamed Spain. The sinking
was one of the precipitating events of the war.

13. • As a result of its victory over Spain, the U.S.
became a world power and the country
became much more involved globally.
American businessmen were also doing more
business overseas. Consequently, Americans
cared more about events overseas.
• Radio was also invented in 1912 and national
radio networks emerged in the mid-1920s,
making it even easier to spread news.

14. • This interest increased more
following World War I when
Americans became even less
isolationist and more involved in
global politics.
• Consequently, foreign
correspondents now focused
more on serious and substantive
issues (political turmoil, war,
peace talks, the Rise of Hitler
and Communism, etc. – i.e.
“history in the making”) and Edward Murrow became
spent less time pursuing stories well-known for his WWII
about travelling Americans and coverage on the radio. He
adventure. established a network of
• Coverage was peaking. correspondents in Europe,
Newspapers were sending more enabling him to provide a
and more correspondents firsthand account when
overseas. But journalists ran into Germany invaded Austria
difficulties reporting due to and Czechoslovakia.
access restrictions and military
censorship.

15. • For correspondents, Vietnam was a war like no
other. For first time, military gave them unlimited
access to battlefield and censorship was minimal.
• For the first time, regular TV footage of war
appeared on the network news, making stars of
reporters and also raising insoluable questions
about the power of video images in war.
• The media were blamed for their role in generating
dissent at home, and critics claim that dissent had
“lost” the war. However, most military analysts now
agree the media wasn’t to blame for the poor
outcome in Vietnam.

16.  Daniel Pearl murdered
• Over the years,
many foreign
correspondents
have been attacked,
taken hostage and
even killed. In fact,
151 were killed in
Iraq and 24 in David Rohde taken hostage 
Afghanistan (3
Americans in each),
according to the
Committee to
Protect Journalists.
 Lara Logan sexually assaulted

17. In the past year, notable war
correspondent deaths include
American journalists Marie Colvin, an
Oyster Bay native and reporter for The
Sunday Times, and Anthony Shadid, a
two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for The
New York Times, who died in Syria.

18. • CNN was the only news
outlet with the ability to
communicate from inside
Iraq during the initial
hours of the Coalition
bombing campaign.
Operation Desert Storm as
• CNN realized that captured live on a CNN night
audiences would be eager vision camera with reporters
narrating. See initial broadcast:
to watch certain kinds of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOP
news reports any time,
day or night

19. • A 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center for
the People & the Press found that some 70
percent of the public relied on television as a
main source for national and international
news last year.

20. • Following the collapse of Communism and the
Soviet Union, the U.S. established itself as the
sole superpower and Americans were less
concerned about foreign news.
• Now, Americans are only interested if there’s
some kind of military conflict, crisis or scandal.

22. • “Squeezed out by intense coverage of the
presidential election campaign and the domestic
consequences of skyrocketing oil prices and the
subsequent credit crisis, international and
overseas events received by far the least
attention from the 30-minute evening news
programs of the three networks - the primary
source of national and international news for
most U.S. citizens - of any since the report was
first published in 1988.” – 2009 Tyndall Report.

25. • Maintaining a foreign newspaper bureau, for
example, costs $1 million plus in Baghdad.
• Not surprisingly, most print media outlets have
completely eliminated or at least drastically reduced
their foreign reporting staff.
• For example, in 2006, Newsday had half a dozen
foreign bureaus. Today, they have none. The Boston
Globe recently closed its remaining foreign bureaus.
• Print media outlets, such as newspapers and news
wire services, have gone from a total of 307 foreign
correspondents in 2003 to 234 as of January 2011.*

26. • Most print media outlets these days receive their
foreign news from wire services, such as the
Associated Press and Reuters, and from locally-based
stringers.
• Some are even outsourcing foreign news coverage.
New York Daily News recently hired Boston-based
start-up called GlobalPost to use the company's
network of part-time foreign correspondents. The deal
costs less than what the Daily News would pay one
entry-level reporter, plus they save on bureau and
travel expenses.

27. • In the 1980s, American TV networks each
maintained about 15 foreign bureaus; today
they have a third or fewer. ABC has shut down
its offices in Moscow, Paris and Tokyo; NBC
closed bureaus in Beijing, Cairo and
Johannesburg. Aside from a one-person ABC
bureau in Nairobi, there are no network
bureaus left at all in Africa, India or South
America -- regions that are home to more
than 2 billion people.

28. • ABC News took a new step in the process of redefining
foreign correspondence in 2007, when it sent seven
television journalists with laptops and handheld video
cameras to one-person bureaus around the world.
Dana Hughes, an ABC correspondent based in Nairobi,
told the American Journalism Review, "We are fixers,
shooters, reporters, producers, and bureau chiefs."
Five jobs, one person.
• Other strategies are to fly in reporters to cover
breaking news stories abroad. As the reporters may
not have had time to study the language or culture of
the area, their reporting may lack context and a true
understanding of the significance of events.

29. • Foreign correspondents can have a
significant impact on the world, by bringing
attention to important information the
public doesn’t know.
• For example, in the 1990s, Newsday’s Roy
Gutman exposed a network of
concentration camps run by Bosnian Serbs,
where Muslims were beaten, starved and
often murdered. The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees estimates
5,000 to 6,000 lives were saved as a result
-- and Gutman won a Pulitzer Prize.
• Now more than ever, we need foreign
correspondence. And there is some hope….

30. American Journalism Review’s January 2011 cover story
was on the decline of foreign news coverage.

31. • CNN maintains 33 international newsgathering locations, and
in January appointed three new international correspondents.
• NPR now has 17 foreign bureaus. A decade ago, they had only
six.
• Los Angeles Times has 13 foreign bureaus (down from 24 in
2003. Will soon cut down to 8)
• The New York Times has 24 foreign bureaus
• The Washington Post maintains 17 international bureaus
• The Wall Street Journal has 35 bureaus and an Asian and
European edition
• Christian Science Monitor, a national news organization based
in Boston, focuses on international news.

32. • Thanks to Internet and satellites, Americans
have access to more international coverage
than ever before. For example, Al-Jazeera and
BBC News on TV and all kinds of websites.
• Citizen journalists are also beginning to fill in
some holes. During the 2008 Iran protests and
the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, regular
people on the ground used Twitter to describe
what they were experiencing – and they got
word out before the mainstream media.

33. Unrest in the Mideast has piqued Americans’ interest in foreign news coverage.

34. For the first time in a long time, Americans are interested in
foreign news – and the amount of media coverage matches
Americans’ interest in foreign news.

35. • American Journalism Review
• American Journalism: History, Principles &
Practices
• Pew Research Center for Journalism
• Committee to Protect Journalists
• New York Times