John Maxwell Hamilton

Redefining Foreign Correspondence

Scholars have used the traditional elite foreign correspondent as a prime measure of the quality of foreign news coverage. They regularly track the size of the corps of correspondents and focus their analyses of foreign news on coverage in major established news outlets like The New York Times and CBS. While this model has worked well for many years, it does not now. This is a result of the chronic decline of elite foreign correspondents coupled with the proliferation of alternate sources of foreign news. This article outlines trends changing the flow of foreign news and suggests some of the implications for scholars who wish to study the nexus between news and foreign policy.

US Foreign Correspondents Changes and Continuity at the Turn of the Century

This article reports the findings from a comprehensive survey of US foreign correspondents conducted in 2001. Some trends - such as Eurocentrism, relatively high degrees of education and the like - continue. New trends also appeared in the study. More foreign nationals work for US media than ever before. The Internet is having a profound impact on the way foreign correspondents go about their work. Both of these new findings, which have important implications for foreign news coverage, are discussed. Overall, nothing in this study suggested that the general neglect of traditional foreign newsgathering will be reversed in the near future.

Foreign Reporting Enhanced by Parachute Journalism

Interviews with editors and reporters at 50 daily newspapers found that 45 papers practiced ad hoc reporting trips abroad, thus substantiating that parachute journalism is a growing trend.

AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT

This study of the medias influence on the Spanish–American War revises the revisionists through quantitative research. In this, the first study to accept Caudills challenge to reconstruct historical public opinion through agenda-setting research, we do not find the yellow press started the war—as has been previously theorized and disproved—but we do find that sensational and conservative newspapers together created an enabling environment for going to war. We hope this study puts journalists’ impact on that major historical event in better perspective and leads to more efforts to use a wide range of quantitative research tools to understand history.

NORMALCY AND FOREIGN NEWS

This longitudinal study examines what is “normal” in US newspaper foreign coverage in the twentieth century. A quantitative content analysis of three newspapers among the 40 examined by Woodward (1930) looked at two constructed weeks of each in 1927, 1947, 1977, and 1997. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to explain the findings related to 39,841 articles encompassing 246,301 paragraphs in 168 issues. Our findings support what we call Woodwards Law: putative lapses in foreign news coverage are actually the norm. Low levels of foreign news are the benchmark that should set expectations; it is the increases, which occur particularly during wars, that are exceptional. This research indicates, first, that the proportion of foreign news is relatively small in times of peace. Second, increases indicate that lamentations about the decline of foreign news during the twentieth century were overstated. Third, neither absolute-item frequency nor front-page analyses provide a complete or accurate picture. Our investigation, one of the most exhaustive ever, suggests a better outcome through examination of the entire news hole using both proportion and absolute-item frequency.This longitudinal study examines what is “normal” in US newspaper foreign coverage in the twentieth century. A quantitative content analysis of three newspapers among the 40 examined by Woodward (1930) looked at two constructed weeks of each in 1927, 1947, 1977, and 1997. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to explain the findings related to 39,841 articles encompassing 246,301 paragraphs in 168 issues. Our findings support what we call Woodwards Law: putative lapses in foreign news coverage are actually the norm. Low levels of foreign news are the benchmark that should set expectations; it is the increases, which occur particularly during wars, that are exceptional. This research indicates, first, that the proportion of foreign news is relatively small in times of peace. Second, increases indicate that lamentations about the decline of foreign news during the twentieth century were overstated. Third, neither absolute-item frequency nor front-page analyses provide a complete or accurate pict...

NYT Pulitzer Stories Show More Independence in Foreign Sourcing

A comparison of Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondence at The New York Times to non-winning stories finds increased use of named sources and source diversity across eight decades for both. Yet, winning stories reveal much more independence from official U. S. views.

The Paradox of Respectability: The Limits of Indexing and Harrison Salisbury’s Coverage of the Vietnam War

In December 1966 through January 1967, Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times wrote dispatches based on a visit to Hanoi that disputed the administration’s claims that its highly accurate bombing did not hit civilian targets in North Vietnam. Administration officials, other journalists, and even his own paper challenged his reporting. Deemed unpatriotic, Salisbury was denied a Pulitzer Prize. This case study employs documents from the files of the New York Times , the CIA, and the Harrison Salisbury Papers at Columbia University, as well as content analysis of his coverage of Vietnam compared with other reporting by him that won a Pulitzer. The study shows how editorial standards of news sourcing become higher when correspondents challenge the official line. While illustrating factors that lead newspapers and reporters to index foreign news to the prevailing political consensus, it also demonstrates the limits of indexing and the conditions under which journalists may effectively challenge the official line.

THE HISTORY OF A SURVIVING SPECIES

In 1925, University of Chicago sociologist Robert Park published a seminal essay on “The Natural History of the Newspaper.” That history, he wrote, “is the history of the surviving species. It is an account of the conditions under which the existing newspaper has grown up and taken form.” The reporting of foreign events in American news media has its own natural history. Commercialization and changing forms of ownership, the emergence of new media, developments in technology, evolving norms of professionalism, the shifting panorama of world affairs—these and other factors have forced continual changes in the collection and distribution of foreign news. In this essay, the authors consider these dynamic factors in identifying clearly defined periods in this evolution and demonstrating how this historical framework helps us understand the new and highly complex era of foreign newsgathering we are now in.

A Natural History of Foreign Correspondence: A Study of the Chicago Daily News, 1900-1921

This longitudinal study combines quantitative and qualitative techniques to document and explain the evolution of foreign news in the Chicago Daily News, the newspaper that virtually invented the ideal of a quality, professional American foreign news service. Foreign news at the newspaper began as an experiment and evolved over time, adapting to factors such as cost, ownership, competition, and the urgency of events abroad. This study, through its focus on change over time and on conditions that shaped change, attempts to articulate a dynamic, historical approach to studying foreign correspondence.

The natural history of the news: An epigenetic study

Scholars, editors, and reporters have tended to treat news and journalism as synonymous. This conception has privileged a particular kind of journalism often called the Anglo-American model. This study argues journalism has been a type of news reporting for a relatively brief period. Using the concept of epigenetics, the authors argue that journalism is usefully seen as a coating on the DNA of news, which has existed for centuries. Journalism emerged as a result of special factors. As powerful as the Anglo-American model was, it was never fully realized, nor could it become the regnant model throughout the world. Journalism will carry on, but along with many other types of news, all of which carry coatings from the past.