Through Their Eyes: Foreign Correspondents in the United States

Patterns: Some findings, 1999-2003

Patterns Some findings, 1999–2003 29 The foreign press corps in the United States experienced a growth spurt in the second half of the twentieth century, from 616 correspondents in 1964 to more than three times that number in 2000, according to the Editor and Publisher International Year Book.1 The biggest increase was in the number of reporters from Asia, whose share of the press corps rose from 17 to 27 percent. But all regions gained, even underrepresented Africa, whose contingent increased from seven to thirty-three correspondents . Yet Western Europe, with 47 percent, still dominated. Growth was especially robust in the 1990–2000 period, when, ironically, U.S. news organizations were sharply reducing their international coverage.2 (See figure 1, page 30.) New York City—the country’s cultural hub and home to Wall Street and the UN—was reported to be the primary location of foreign journalists in 1998.3 But in 1999, when we had enough information to divide the press corps into full-time and part-time correspondents, we found a different pattern. A larger percentage of the full-timers lived in Washington; a larger percentage of the parttimers lived in New York.4 Ninety-eight countries had correspondents posted in the United States in 1999; fifty-five countries had correspondents in both Washington and New York; thirty-two had correspondents only in Washington, and eleven had correspondents only in New York. Increasingly, it was as a political power that the United States was attracting the world’s media. The expansion of the foreign press corps also reflected television ’s coming of age. While the number of foreign correspondents who were members of the Congressional Press Galleries grew nearly eight times between 1961 and 2002 (from 110 to 860), those reporting for television multiplied twenty-four times (figure 2, page 31). The BBC and Reuters TV opened major bureaus in Washington, German and Japanese television were well represented, and even small countries—Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, Finland—established a permanent television presence in the capital.5 In Washington the downtown center of foreign press activity is the National Press Building, where the government maintains one of its three Foreign Press Centers. There is a private press club on the top floor, and some news organizations are headquartered there, notably Japanese and Korean newspapers and a number of the smaller wire services , such as ANSA (Italy), Notimex (Mexico), and ITAR-TASS (Russia). In New York City there are the UN delegate lounges, where members of the press can meet, and the Foreign Press Center on East 52nd Street. But a spectrogram of foreign correspondents in Washington or New York would show an array of one-person bureaus, with many journalists working out of their homes in Silver Spring, Arlington, Bethesda, and Takoma Park—or Forrest Hills, Woodside, Teaneck, and Brooklyn —or, for the better subsidized, Georgetown or Sutton Place. (See 30 PATTERNS FIGURE 1. Foreign Correspondents in the United States, by Place of Origin, 2000 Source: Editor and Publisher International Year Book. Western Europe 47% Eastern Europe 6% Americas 12% Africa 2% Middle East 6% Asia 27% table 1, page 42, for the number of foreign correspondents accredited by the Foreign Press Centers in 2003). The office of Pierre Steyn, correspondent for National Media of South Africa, was windowless, “a glorified broom closet on the eleventh floor of the National Press Building, just large enough to house a desk and an armchair and little else,” reported my research assistant, Daniel Reilly, in 2002; it was “smaller than my college dormroom .” Moreover, it contained “the oldest computer I had ever seen, and a TV so old it had UHF settings.” In stark contrast, at the office of the Economist (United Kingdom), on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol, there were leather chairs and flatscreen TVs. Here a visitor was immediately impressed with photographs of George H. W. Bush aboard Air Force One (reading the Economist) and George W. Bush aboard Air Force One (reading the Economist). A half-hour taxi ride from the Economist’s office was the apartment complex in suburban Maryland where Tomasz Zalewski of the Polish Press Agency lived and worked. Stacks of newspapers and clippings lined his hallway and walls. CNN was on in every room. His employer paid for the apartment and a car, which, he said, “I don’t so much use...