Coverage of foreign news in the British press – once vaunted for its international reportage - has fallen dramatically, along with declining numbers of foreign correspondents.
A study by the Media Standards Trust reported in the Press Gazette found 40 per cent fewer foreign news stories in four leading national newspapers compared with 30 years ago – even though today’s papers have many more pages.
The author of the report, Martin Moore compared coverage in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror in the first week of March 1979, with the same weeks in 1989, 1999 and 2009. Foreign news claimed 20 per cent of the papers in 1979 but only 11 per cent last year.
In the first week studied, the Daily Telegraph carried over 225 foreign news stories, but by 2009 the number had fallen to 120. The Guardian dropped from 175 to 125 and the Mail and Mirror both fell from 50 to 30.
Not only are there far fewer foreign stories reported but those that are carried today are given much less prominence, compared with 1979. This is partly attributed to the decline of foreign-based staff correspondents.
Foreign coverage is also more reactive, Moore reports. “Without people on the ground, sniffing out the news before it happens, news organisations are always going to be reacting to events and playing catch up. Journalists, parachuted in to a disaster or conflict zones will be ‘boxing blind’ – unaware of where the story started, who the best people to speak to are, or how it is likely to play out.”
Moore cites as an example of reactive reporting the British media’s coverage of Israel’s attack on the aid convoy ship Mavi Marmara as it tried to breach the blockade of Gaza last May. The breaking story seemed to take most of the UK media by surprise, even though “as soon as the flotilla set off it must have been apparent to any seasoned observer that it would not dock in Gaza without some action by the Israelis."
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