by Zahra Hankir
The industry turbulence has inevitably affected foreign reporting. A foreign bureau is expensive to maintain, especially in a conflict zone. It requires a local staff, drivers, and possibly also a security detail. Yearly costs could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Because of this, foreign reporting was an early casualty in technological disruption. I often hear foreign correspondents described as a dying breed. Journalists who’ve had careers like mine wonder whether others will have the same opportunity. “Journalism met the market—and found it uncomfortable,” Richard Sambrook wrote for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. “The truth, that expensive journalism seldom paid its way, was being exposed. International reporting, with its high costs, was often at the forefront of budget cuts necessitated by these changes.”
Across the Western world, the number of foreign bureaus run by international news organizations has shrunk. As early as 2011, the American Journalism Review reported that eighteen newspapers and two chains had shuttered every one of their overseas bureaus in the last dozen years. Not only did a vast number of local and regional newspapers decrease their coverage of foreign news but television networks also slashed the time devoted to it, narrowing their focus largely to war zones.
One disturbing implication for the crisis in legacy media is the growing use of freelance journalists, often young enthusiasts willing to take greater risks to cover dangerous zones for the promise of a byline. Many freelancers were among the contingent of foreign reporters kidnapped by ISIS in Syria over the past few years.
* * *
—
Ever since William Howard Russell’s reports about the Crimean War, the traditional foreign reporting model has been that journalists witness historic events and relay them to the rest of the world. Technology and globalization, however, have knit a more interconnected world. The news business has been disintermediated: a breaking story can be followed, blow by blow, minute by minute, on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
No one could have reported on the war in Syria, for example, without closely following the flood of YouTube videos published by rebels, or evaluated the evolution of ISIS without tracking their posts on platforms such as Telegram. Journalists used WhatsApp to contact their sources just as often as they used mobile telephone lines. With access to much of Syria either blocked or too menacing for reporters, an important tool for investigating attacks was provided, particularly in the early years of the civil war, by a Leicester blogger who had never set foot in Syria and had no prior training in journalism. By scrolling YouTube channels from Syria, Eliot Higgins was able to study the weapons used in the conflict, providing reporters and human rights organizations with valuable clues about foreign suppliers. Moreover, as financial constraints have led news organizations to parachute more reporters onto breaking stories rather than base them in countries around the world, information gathered from local sources and citizen journalists has become more valuable.
Social media, local blogs, and citizen journalism have been critical tools in my own reporting, too. During the 2009 elections in Iran, for example, they provided essential information about organized protests that I would not have known about otherwise.
The 2009 elections in Iran promised to be one of the most exciting: Mir Hossein Moussavi, the reformist candidate trying to deny the radical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term, had run an energetic, lively campaign and won the endorsement of reformist and pragmatic factions in the regime. He seemed tantalizingly close to ending the erratic, economically illiterate presidency of Ahmadinejad. I was expecting a runoff in the election, so I waited until the first round before getting on a plane to Tehran. By the time I boarded, however, the results of the first round had been announced: Ahmadinejad had won in an unlikely landslide victory. The “Green Movement” that had burgeoned in support of Moussavi, capturing the imagination of the West, reacted with rage, setting off mass protests—the largest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. My colleagues in Tehran, where the Financial Times is one of the rare news organizations to have an office, had been reporting for weeks on the electoral campaign, traveling across the country. Their numerous interviews had left them with a strong suspicion that the election had been stolen.
Although I had a valid journalism visa in my passport, I was told by the authorities in Tehran that I would not be able to report and would have to remain in the office. The preelection euphoria had given way to the gravest crisis in the Islamic republic, as the protests escalated and the authorities unleashed the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij militia. In the vicious crackdown that ensued, dozens were killed and thousands arrested. The crisis was also fought online, in a cat-and-mouse game in which activists organized sudden protests through social media and the regime fought back with sporadic blocks to the internet. As important as the online information was, however, my colleagues and I could not do our job without also going out and talking to people, capturing the mood of social angst and fright. As we wrote at the time, Tehran residents were “caught in a twilight zone, gasping for normality amid deepening insecurity and uncertainty.”
Two years later, the Arab 2011 uprisings developed spontaneously, for the most part, outside the main opposition parties and without organizational structure.
* * *
—
Foreign reporting has also adapted to shifts in the ways in which societies consume information. Many of us may still watch television news and enjoy long-form reportage in print, but we read spot news on our smartphones all day. The nature of competition has also changed: news competes for millennials’ attention with social media browsing, music, and games, all available on a smartphone. Text on its own is no longer sufficient to maintain that attention, so charts, timelines, quizzes, audio, and video are now offered to engage readers.
In the New York Review of Books, Lindsey Hilsum, the international editor for Channel 4 News in the UK, writes that younger viewers, who often watch news with subtitles instead of voiceover, aren’t very concerned about the correspondent’s face or even voice. When it comes to conflict the trend is “towards raw, dramatic video, shot by local activists and journalists . . . often filmed by rescuers with helmet cameras. On the whole the online viewer does not seem to mind that none of this is mediated by an on the spot reporter.”
In print journalism, too, readers, particularly younger ones, are attracted to new formats. That has led organizations to combine on-the-ground reporting from foreign correspondents with articles that can be written from desks in London or New York. Let’s take the case of a terrorist attack in a European capital. Two story formats are favored by readers on a fast-moving story: a daily post on “what we know so far” and background explanation. Foreign correspondents collaborate with editors in London or New York to write these stories. Before a reporter from the foreign bureau even arrives at the scene, journalists at their desks in London or New York forage through social media to build a fuller picture of the situation, using photos and tweets from witnesses to offer readers early updates on the evolution of the incident.
* * *
—
Does this mean foreign reporters are redundant? Not at all. While their numbers have shrunk, and practical alternatives to reporting in the field are more widely available, there can be no substitute for the knowledge and the firsthand accounts that foreign reporters bring. Indeed, the role is vital in an increasingly complex geopolitical environment where events move rapidly and shift unexpectedly. The direct contact with sources, the ability to see and feel the story on the ground, the off-the-record conversations, the big and small interviews, and the random encounters—all of these remain key to informing the public. In the age of fake news and political manipulation, it is more important than ever for foreign bureaus to be staffed with reporters who develop expertise in a domestic story. The largest media organizations continue to protect their foreign networks, and
some of the savviest new media entrants (BuzzFeed, for example) have adopted the traditional model and built up new networks in recent years.
Foreign reporting is not about covering conflict, however important it is to reveal the realities of battle. I never thought of myself as a war correspondent, nor did my editors at the Financial Times, where I was told time and again that “we don’t cover wars.” A foreign reporter’s task is to convey an understanding of a society, an economy, and a political landscape, providing context for events he or she is reporting on. You can capture a moment through a Facebook post, a YouTube video, or a Twitter thread, but it is the foreign correspondent who tells the story, whether through a tablet, a smartphone, a television screen, or a newspaper.
“To be a journalist is to bear witness, the rest is no more than ornamentation,” Roger Cohen, the longtime New York Times foreign correspondent and now columnist, wrote in 2009 after covering the mass protests in Iran. “No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream. . . . No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenaline rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt.”
Cohen’s words remind me of the night in February 2011 when Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak appeared on television to announce his resignation. Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolution, erupted in collective euphoria. That night, Cairo was a feeling, not a city, a sentiment that could be reflected only by being there. It was late in the evening, and families spontaneously poured out of their homes as if to catch their first breaths. They melted into army crowds and the masses of activists who had been camping out in Tahrir. The aspirations of Egyptians were painted on their smiles, in their cheers and their embraces, and through the mesmerizing sound of a nationalist tune from Umm Kalthum, the late Egyptian diva. The morning after Mubarak fell was quiet, but no less striking. As if to prove to themselves that Egypt had forever changed, and hold on to the thought, the people went back to the square to clean up, carrying their brooms.
There are poignant memories from Iraq before the 2003 invasion that have also stuck with me over years of reporting: the stunted children begging the lone foreigner for a dollar, the obsessive capacity of officials to demand bribes, the unconcealed encouragement for corruption in a state where everyone was told to fend for themselves and taught that the more they cheated foreigners, the better. Few Iraqis ever openly spoke of their hatred for the regime, but many did not need to. I could see the dread and the loathing in the eyes of impoverished Shi’a in Sadr City on the outskirts of Baghdad. I feared they would be driven to revenge the moment the Sunni regime was toppled. The people of Iraq were brutalized by dictatorship and starved by the most draconian international sanctions in history. That society broke, or politicians failed to govern responsibly, shocked those who contributed to bringing down the regime. It came as no surprise to others who, like me, had reported on the country.
Reporting in close, oppressive societies is challenging. And reporters under pressure can be made to feel as though they must adhere to red lines and withhold some of the most sensitive information they uncover. But writing from a distance or relying on exiled opposition sources can also distort a complex reality and perpetuate stereotypes of countries and societies. Take Saudi Arabia, a deeply conservative state that has, until recently, been sparing in its willingness to provide visas for foreign journalists. I’ve always found the reality of Saudi Arabia more complex than the simple image of an absolute monarchy and breeding ground for extremist ideology. Even without political parties or organizations, I have seen and read more political debate in the kingdom than in neighboring states with more liberal reputations. Over the years, I’ve witnessed a society in ferment. I’ve met Saudi liberals who have radicalized and radicals who have softened and become liberals, clerics who spoke to me without once looking in my direction, and religious scholars who have worked on reforming Islam.
My most vivid memory of Saudi Arabia is of a trip I took in the aftermath of September 11 for a special report on the kingdom, planned before the attacks had taken place. It was a revelation. While the world mourned in solidarity with the United States, my dispatches told of a different mood among Saudis. Behind the shock at the attacks lurked a sense of denial about the responsibility of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda chief who hailed from one of the kingdom’s most prominent business families. Some young Saudi men admitted to a secret appreciation for bin Laden for having dared to stage the most spectacular terrorist attack in U.S. history, challenging not only the mightiest country on earth but a Saudi regime that was considered too submissive toward Washington. The conversations followed a disturbing pattern: they began with a denunciation of the attacks and sympathy for victims and their families, but drifted toward the end with a throwaway comment that betrayed an admiration for the master terrorist. It was evident at the time that the real target of al-Qaeda was primarily the Saudi regime, and the aim was to force a rupture in relations between Riyadh and Washington.
Would I have understood this without being there? Probably not. The attacks by a group of mostly Saudi hijackers turned the spotlight on radicalization in the kingdom, the religion-infused education system, and the intolerance preached by the puritanical Wahhabi Islam. But while cries of “Why do they hate us?” rang out in the U.S., Saudi Arabia’s rulers fretted about having lost their society to the hold of conservative clerics. One crucial facet of the September 11 story was that the Saudi royal family’s tricky balancing act—designed to keep the U.S., the clerics, and the people in check—was collapsing.
* * *
—
The upheaval in the media industry is not over, and the future of foreign reporters is difficult to predict. The romanticism long associated with being a foreign correspondent has been fading, as interest in foreign news among Western societies has lessened. Yet we should be under no illusion that media organizations can report the world from the comfort—and distance—of foreign desks, and without investing in foreign correspondents. As Bill Schiller, a former Toronto Star foreign editor, says: “If we ever hope to explain what Lyndon Johnson’s late presidential adviser Jack Valenti once called a foreign culture’s ‘ancestral rhythms,’ we have to go to where those rhythms play out—and watch as they are rearranged on a daily basis. We’ve got to get close enough to listen—and understand what we are hearing.”
Acknowledgments
My warmest thanks to the nineteen sahafiyat in this book and to our formidable foreword writer, Christiane Amanpour, who believed in the project from its outset; all met tight deadlines with grace and wrote honestly and beautifully, inspiring me at every step of the way with their patience and courage. I know that for many of them, taking a step back from their day-to-day work—in some cases while reporting from a war zone—to explore how their careers have affected them personally must have been challenging. I have no doubt that their strength will inspire many young and aspiring journalists around the world, particularly Arab women and women of color.
Of these women, a very special thank-you goes to Nour Malas and Aida Alami, who wrote sample chapters for this collection before I’d even secured an agent. Without them, the project would likely have forever remained in my inbox. Thank you also to Vivian Salama, the former Baghdad bureau chief for the Associated Press and now a Wall Street Journal reporter, whose gorgeous essay on leaving Baghdad, which she wrote for my blog, Florence of Arabia, convinced me even further that a book like this needed to exist.
In 2008, the late and great David Klatell, my adviser at Columbia Journalism School, encouraged me to write my thesis on private Islamic education in New York City. I had hesitated when I first pitched the subject, worried that covering my own community might in some way tarnish or taint my reporting. Klatell advised me to never shy away from reporting on my people, my country, or my region—whatever or whoever matters deeply to me—so long as I uphold the highest journ
alistic standards. I have continued to cherish his advice throughout my career as a journalist. My thanks to him for his mentorship, and his deft sense of humor.
My gratitude to the Scripps Howard Foundation, without which I would never have attended Columbia University, nor had the privilege of meeting so many incredible professors and journalists who would later become my friends, peers, and even some of the contributors in this book.
This project was enriched by Jessica Papin’s guidance, wisdom, wit, kindness, on-point editorial insights, and endless support and enthusiasm. Thanks also to the entire team of Our Women on the Ground supporters at Penguin Books, including Sabrina Bowers, Louise Braverman, Kathryn Court, Nora Alice Demick, Lydia Hirt, Na Kim, Sara Leonard, Randee Marullo, Patrick Nolan, Lindsay Prevette, and Kate Stark. I’m honored and delighted to have worked with the incredible Gretchen Schmid, the editor of my editing with the most discerning eye, who pushed me always to edit and write clearer and better, without sacrificing nuance and passion.