Foreign Correspondents Report From Africa

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting in African countries by American journalists has been a latecomer within the award category for international coverage. It took close to two decades after the establishment of the awards that reporting about the Italian-Ethiopian crisis was declared prize-worthy by the Pulitzer Prize jurors. During World War II, prizes were given for the coverage of the North African battlefields. Since the 1960s, inner-African conflicts, like unrest in the Congo, impressed the jurors, as well as writings on the Apartheid system in South Africa. This book contains a selection of the Pulitzer Prize-winning articles and photographs by news journalists in Africa. (Series: Pulitzer Prize Panorama - Vol. 8)

Though African Americans have served as foreign reporters for almost two centuries, their work remains virtually unstudied. In this seminal volume, Jinx Coleman Broussard traces the history of black participation in international newsgathering. Beginning in the mid-1800s with Frederick Douglass and Mary Ann Shadd Cary -- the first black woman to edit a North American newspaper -- African American Foreign Correspondents highlights the remarkable individuals and publications that brought an often-overlooked black perspective to world reporting. Broussard focuses on correspondents from 1840 to the present, including reporters such as William Worthy Jr., who helped transform the role of modern foreign correspondence by gaining the right for journalists to report from anywhere in the world unimpeded; Leon Dash, a professor of journalism and African American studies at the University of Illinois, who reported from Africa for the Washington Post in the 1970s and 1980s; and Howard French, a professor in Columbia University's journalism school and a globetrotting foreign correspondent. African American Foreign Correspondents provides insight into how and why African Americans reported the experiences of blacks worldwide. In many ways, black correspondents upheld a tradition of filing objective stories on world events, yet some African American journalists in the mainstream media, like their predecessors in the black press, had a different mission and perspective. They adhered primarily to a civil rights agenda, grounded in advocacy, protest, and pride. Accordingly, some of these correspondents -- not all of them professional journalists -- worked to spur social reform in the United States and force policy changes that would eliminate oppression globally. Giving visibility and voice to the marginalized, correspondents championed an image of people of color that combatted the negative and racially construed stereotypes common in the American media. By examining how and why blacks reported information and perspectives from abroad, African American Foreign Correspondents contributes to a broader conversation about navigating racial, societal, and global problems, many of which we continue to contend with today.

Foreign News gives us a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look into the practices of the global tribe we call foreign correspondents. Exploring how they work, Ulf Hannerz also compares the ways correspondents and anthropologists report from one part of the world to another. Hannerz draws on extensive interviews with correspondents in cities as diverse as Jerusalem, Tokyo, and Johannesburg. He shows not only how different story lines evolve in different correspondent beats, but also how the correspondents' home country and personal interests influence the stories they write. Reporting can go well beyond coverage of a specific event, using the news instead to reveal deeper insights into a country or a people to link them to long-term trends or structures of global significance. Ultimately, Hannerz argues that both anthropologists and foreign correspondents can learn from each other in their efforts to educate a public about events and peoples far beyond our homelands. The result of nearly a decade's worth of work, Foreign News is a provocative study that will appeal to both general readers and those concerned with globalization.

This book is the first to address the tenor of the journalistic coverage of Africa, using multiple case studies of news production processes conducted in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mali and South Sudan.

In all of journalism, nowhere are the stakes higher than in foreign news-gathering. For media owners, it is the most difficult type of reporting to finance; for editors, the hardest to oversee. Correspondents, roaming large swaths of the planet, must acquire expertise that home-based reporters take for granted—facility with the local language, for instance, or an understanding of local cultures. Adding further to the challenges, they must put news of the world in context for an audience with little experience and often limited interest in foreign affairs—a task made all the more daunting because of the consequence to national security. In Journalism’s Roving Eye, John Maxwell Hamilton—a historian and former foreign correspondent—provides a sweeping and definitive history of American foreign news reporting from its inception to the present day and chronicles the economic and technological advances that have influenced overseas coverage, as well as the cavalcade of colorful personalities who shaped readers’ perceptions of the world across two centuries. From the colonial era—when newspaper printers hustled down to wharfs to collect mail and periodicals from incoming ships—to the ongoing multimedia press coverage of the Iraq War, Hamilton explores journalism’s constant—and not always successful—efforts at “dishing the foreign news,” as James Gordon Bennett put it in the mid-nineteenth century to describe his approach in the New York Herald. He details the highly partisan coverage of the French Revolution, the early emergence of “special correspondents” and the challenges of organizing their efforts, the profound impact of the non-yellow press in the run-up to the Spanish-American War, the increasingly sophisticated machinery of propaganda and censorship that surfaced during World War I, and the “golden age” of foreign correspondence during the interwar period, when outlets for foreign news swelled and a large number of experienced, independent journalists circled the globe. From the Nazis’ intimidation of reporters to the ways in which American popular opinion shaped coverage of Communist revolution and the Vietnam War, Hamilton covers every aspect of delivering foreign news to American doorsteps. Along the way, Hamilton singles out a fascinating cast of characters, among them Victor Lawson, the overlooked proprietor of the Chicago Daily News, who pioneered the concept of a foreign news service geared to American interests; Henry Morton Stanley, one of the first reporters to generate news on his own with his 1871 expedition to East Africa to “find Livingstone”; and Jack Belden, a forgotten brooding figure who exemplified the best in combat reporting. Hamilton details the experiences of correspondents, editors, owners, publishers, and network executives, as well as the political leaders who made the news and the technicians who invented ways to transmit it. Their stories bring the narrative to life in arresting detail and make this an indispensable book for anyone wanting to understand the evolution of foreign news-gathering. Amid the steep drop in the number of correspondents stationed abroad and the recent decline of the newspaper industry, many fear that foreign reporting will soon no longer exist. But as Hamilton shows in this magisterial work, traditional correspondence survives alongside a new type of reporting. Journalism’s Roving Eye offers a keen understanding of the vicissitudes in foreign news, an understanding imperative to better seeing what lies ahead.

Michael Holman's eye-witness reports on the state of sub-Saharan Africa for the Financial Times and other media provide rare insights into the region’s post-independence successes and setbacks. From his accounts of the atrocities committed by Rhodesian forces in the 1960s to his interviews with those who would lead Africa into its own future and assessments of how they actually performed—often in obituaries—Postmark Africa brings together a lifetime of running commentaries on a continent he grew up in, knows acutely and loves dearly. Written with the benefit of unique access, Holman’s writings still hold out hope for Africa, in spite of decades of disappointment at the structural mismanagement of the nations themselves, the destructive policies of donor countries and other funders, and the hateful legacy of colonialism.

Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century is the first book in over twenty years to examine the international media’s coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together leading researchers and prominent journalists to explore representation of the continent, and the production of that image, especially by international news media. The book highlights factors that have transformed the global media system, changing whose perspectives are told and the forms of media that empower new voices. Case studies consider questions such as: how has new media changed whose views are represented? Does Chinese or diaspora media offer alternative perspectives for viewing the continent? How do foreign correspondents interact with their audiences in a social media age? What is the contemporary role of charity groups and PR firms in shaping news content? They also examine how recent high profile events and issues been covered by the international media, from the Ebola crisis, and Boko Haram to debates surrounding the "Africa Rising" narrative and neo-imperialism. The book makes a substantial contribution by moving the academic discussion beyond the traditional critiques of journalistic stereotyping, Afro-pessimism, and ‘darkest Africa’ news coverage. It explores the news outlets, international power dynamics, and technologies that shape and reshape the contemporary image of Africa and Africans in journalism and global culture.

This book systematically examines the challenges that confront foreign correspondents in covering Africa for an international audience in the digital era. It explores factors that influence how Africa is reported in international news and the challenges of journalism practice in Africa, including how foreign correspondents carry out their job. The book takes a thematic approach to understanding the contemporary international news environment in context and in flux, and addresses international journalism practices in Africa, particularly the factors that influence how the continent is reported. The book is inclusive and truly international in scope because it looks at issues that are rarely considered when examining how Africa is reported.