International News Reporting: Frontlines and Deadlines. Owen, John and Heather Purdey (eds.) (2009). West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 280.
This collection, nicely put together by John Owen and Heather Purdey (both faculty of City University of London), is devoted to the nuts and bolts, as well as the real challenges, facing international news reporting. The book is composed of fourteen articles written by widely seasoned news professionals. The topics of the book include traumas and crises that reporters face: news staff’s personal safety, overall trends in international news, the operation and business of news agencies around the world, challenges derived from new media technologies, photo journalism, different kinds of reporting staff/careers, news sources, and diplomacy and international relations. One can immediately recognize from this list of topics that the book is rather comprehensive and incorporates all key issues that students who aspire to become international journalists must grasp. It is extremely rich with up-to-date information about the field and is full of details from great experiences that these veteran journalists and news managers share in their articles.
The book is also interesting be-cause it provides abundant examples and tips for how international reporters should cope with all sorts of issues and dicey situations that might arise on the job. For example, one of the most daunting tasks for foreign correspondents is covering human-caused and natural disasters—conflicts, genocide, wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, and so forth. The stories of covering these tragic events are revealed by the reporters, and it is remarkably moving, enticing, and, at the same time, highly informative. For example, the first chapter provides a very telling personal account of a female war correspondent: how she handled various life-or-death situations. The chapter also discusses how her personal perspectives evolved through years of working under extremely stressful and depressing conditions. Another chapter offers advice on how journalists should prepare to face traumatic events and deal with likely post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The book’s last chapter, written by a paralyzed correspondent, talks about how to cover humanitarian crises from different angles: news agency finance, aid agencies relationships, different writing tasks, and transportation. The issues raised by the chapters are real and particularly important to international correspondents, but are rarely addressed in journalism textbooks.
The book also contains numerous cases that vividly illustrate some complex and intricate scenarios foreign journalists inevitably encounter and how the varied treatments of those will result in dramatic—war or peace—differences. For example, one chapter written by Bridget Kendall unveils the codes that diplomats often use in “diplo speak,” which could be hard for outsiders to crack and for novice reporters to fully understand. It also acutely shows the highly intricate relationship between reporters and their sources. The stakes and risks that international correspondents face are high. Thus, the book not only adequately addresses the “how” part of being a good professional, but it also occasionally leads readers to ponder on the value system or philosophical foundation upon which ethical journalistic practice is based. The suggested discussion questions after each chapter can also be helpful in facilitating student in-class participation.
The book would be very suitable for both undergraduate and graduate courses that cover international journalism, or for those courses that address issues related to international communication or media studies in general. Students would soon be engrafted with years of field experience from veteran reporters and be familiar with potential challenges related to international journalism. For U.S. or non-British readers, this book can serve as a window to see what the best British news practitioners do and how they discuss international news reporting, making the book useful in courses that compare international journalism practices.
H. DENIS WU
Boston University