James Reynolds made his career as a BBC foreign correspondent by reporting from bullet-strewn war zones and tear-gassed streets. The one thing Reynolds did not expect was a legion of men with umbrellas, sent by the Chinese government to walk in front of his cameraman as he reported from China.
Reynolds shared his experience as a foreign correspondent with students in the lecture, “Stuff Them or Shoot Them? The Future of the Foreign Correspondent,” at Dartmouth on Thursday. In spite of the challenges foreign correspondents face — ranging from the life-threatening to the merely annoying — Reynolds said he saw a future for the field.
Reynolds acknowledged that all but four news organizations in the United States have dropped their foreign bureaus to cut costs, but added that he remains hopeful there will be a place for aspiring, multi-skilled foreign correspondents in the Internet age.
“We need foreign correspondents for the same reason that we need journalists in general — so that we don’t live in the dark,” he said.
In his lecture, Reynolds highlighted three groups he said could sustain foreign correspondence in the future — local reporters, freelance writers and “multi-skilled reporters” — while discussing the potential drawbacks of each group. There will still be a need for foreign correspondence in the Internet age, he said.
People aspiring to be foreign correspondents should “learn all the skills [they] can” if they want to be competitive in the ever-evolving field, Reynolds said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
News organizations rely increasingly on local reporters for foreign correspondence, Reynolds said, which is a “welcome step towards a post-colonial reporting world.” He noted, however, that an outside perspective remains a vital part of thorough and balanced reporting.
Reynolds pointed to the example of the recent earthquake in China, where local reporters were forbidden from reporting on the mourning of parents who lost children to the faulty construction of a local school.
“A foreign passport is the only way to be free to tell the story in some places” he said.
An outsider’s perspective also provides essential insight into events and customs of foreign nations, Reynolds said, citing the example of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” which explored the system of government in early America.
Reynolds said he was concerned about news organizations’ increased reliance on freelance writers, noting that they lack the training and support of staff correspondents. He mentioned journalists from the BBC and The New York Times who have been kidnapped and have relied on their respective news organizations to ensure their safe return.
As a BBC correspondent, Reynolds received a hostile environment training course prior to being deployed to a war zone — training that freelance writers working in high-risk areas would not receive, he said.
Although Reynolds said he believes there is a place for young freelance journalists seeking to make a name for themselves, he cautioned that the safety and welfare of journalists should be “a primary concern of all news organizations.”
Reynolds was recently stationed in China as the BBC China correspondent. Prior to his work in China, he served as the BBC Middle East Foreign correspondent from 2001 to 2006 and the BBC South America correspondent from 1998 to 2001.
During his time in South America, Reynolds covered the overthrow of President Alberto Fujimori in Peru. This was one of the most interesting topics Reynolds has covered, he said in an interview, as it allowed him to “witness in real time the collapse of the government”.
Reynolds is a 2010 International Nieman fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard U. After he finishes his year at Harvard he will head to Washington, D.C., to continue to report for the BBC, he said.