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Coverage of Terrorism<br />
Freelancers’ Vital Role in International Reporting<br />
With the rise of media conglomerates, foreign news has been shoved aside.<br />
By Nate Thayer<br />
At an annual gathering of the International<br />
Consortium of Investigative<br />
Journalists in July, I sat<br />
with Ahmed Rashid, a renowned Pakistani<br />
journalist, and discussed the decreasing<br />
appetite for international<br />
news. Rashid has spent a lifetime writing<br />
about Afghanistan. He spoke then<br />
of diminishing interest from editors<br />
for his stories. “No one is interested in<br />
Afghanistan anymore,” he concluded.<br />
His brilliant book, “Taliban: Militant<br />
Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central<br />
Asia,” was newly published and<br />
was meeting with a good response from<br />
those who maintained an interest in<br />
this “irrelevant” corner of the world.<br />
Typical for an accomplished and<br />
respected freelance journalist, Rashid<br />
writes for a number of publications,<br />
relying on a core handful of news organizations<br />
to make a living. But, he said<br />
in July, even these were rejecting stories<br />
they once would have published.<br />
The Islamabad-based Rashid said it was<br />
a struggle to get anything published on<br />
Central Asia in the British- and American-owned<br />
publications he relied on.<br />
Only weeks later, after the events of<br />
September 11, I smile as I pass my<br />
small-town bookstore and see Ahmed<br />
Rashid’s “Taliban” prominently placed<br />
on a rack next to the cash register—<br />
number one on The New York Times<br />
bestseller list. I see Rashid regularly on<br />
television and quoted copiously by journalists<br />
now descending on the region—<br />
22 years after he began reporting full<br />
time from and about Afghanistan.<br />
The pleasure is mixed with melancholy<br />
for the state of international reporting.<br />
Hundreds of freshly arriving<br />
foreign correspondents obscure the<br />
fact that they are often dispatched by<br />
major news organizations to cover international<br />
events only after they are<br />
overtaken by them. And their presence<br />
obscures the crucial role that local and<br />
freelance journalists play in ensuring<br />
that these otherwise forgotten places<br />
are properly covered in the absence of<br />
a major media presence.<br />
Further, the key role played by “foreign”<br />
freelance journalists in providing<br />
the backbone of international coverage<br />
highlights the importance of the<br />
principle of a press free from the influence<br />
of any government. Many, if not<br />
most, of those who gather information<br />
for the American-owned press are not<br />
American. And many of those who read<br />
or view the American-owned press are<br />
not American. And for those who are,<br />
so what? The concept that reporters<br />
should have some allegiance to their<br />
government is not only fundamentally<br />
contrary to the role of a credible and<br />
independent press, it presupposes a<br />
false premise: that news organizations<br />
are homogeneously comprised of nationals<br />
of the country of which they<br />
have their primary audience.<br />
It is freelancers and local journalists<br />
who are now playing a crucial role in<br />
Central Asia in ensuring that the world<br />
understands these events as they have<br />
rocketed to the forefront of international<br />
attention. When a story forces<br />
media executives to react to events,<br />
their reporters must turn to those who<br />
are informed and on the ground. Invariably,<br />
those they turn to are freelance<br />
local journalists such as Ahmed Rashid.<br />
At the same time, the events of September<br />
11 should have sent a cautionary<br />
signal to major media conglomerates,<br />
which increasingly are controlled<br />
by people who have demonstrated an<br />
insufficient commitment to the role of<br />
a free press and well informed public<br />
in world affairs. These news outlets are<br />
increasingly driven by their marketing<br />
departments, public relations people<br />
and lawyers, whose values too often<br />
infiltrate the newsrooms and effectively<br />
seize control. Non-journalists are increasingly<br />
determining what is news<br />
and treating it as a commodity, selling<br />
it like shampoo or cars.<br />
The world press has indeed been<br />
absent from Central Asia since the Soviets<br />
and the CIA pulled out a decade<br />
ago. Before September 11, how many<br />
Thayer in a Khmer Rouge controlled area of Cambodia. Photo by Roland Eng.<br />
28 <strong>Nieman</strong> Reports / Winter 2001