Well said, Christine. And I might add, anytime a writer or editor can get out of his or her own country to work or study, there will be a change of perspective that will make what they do on the homefront wiser and richer for years to come.

Excellent post Christine.   It troubles me to no end to see the state of American Journalism today.   I agree that being busy as well as required turn in work under tight deadlines makes journalism difficult in America today.   However, the more work I see done by journalists covering the issues facing my community today, the more I begin to wonder how much of the problem is a tough schedule, and how much of it is outright laziness.

I've read articles that clearly get the story wrong on occasion.  However, I most often see articles that skim the surface, never bothering to look deeper for the motivations or route causes behind the stories.   Over the years I have come to expect this sort of thing from the TV media.  Yet these days I see it in my local newspapers as well.

When we wonder how many American Journalists are concerned about global press freedom I find myself having to ask, just how many "journalists" are left in America in the first place?

Christine: I believe more American journalists could come to care about their colleagues worldwide if, as Americans, they were reminded of their nation's own history regarding freedom of expression.  We have all become too complacent about our freedoms...citizens and journalists alike. We talk about "freedom" and write country-Western songs about and wear t-shirts endorsing it; but, how much are we willing to put on the line for freedom? I'm an SPJ adviser on a Minnesota college campus and try to instill that sense of privilege in my students. I can only hope they incorporate and never forget it...even when their professional lives become engulfed in the mundane.
Thank you for this forum.

Hi Christine,
My name is Kai Jackson. I'm an anchor/reporter at WJZ-TV in Baltimore and SPJ member.  I just read your blog about American journalists and global press freedom.  I couldn't agree more that American journalists get busy, focus on home or local issues and the like.
And you're right: We have an obligation to interact with our colleagues in other countries to understand their challenges and help us appreciate the freedoms we have.
I'll tell you what I'm going to do: I'm gonna take your Pepsi challenge. My wife and I traveled to Ghana two years ago. We still have friends there, and I'm going to look into forging a journalistic partnership with someone there and perhaps another country.
I think you're right, and I think it's important.
Best Regards,
Kai Jackson

Wow! Kai, please keep us posted on your progress. Maybe your energy and enthusiasm will inspire someone else to take the challenge ...

I really should mention here that SPJ's international journalism committee does tremendous work and could use some help. This year, we're particularly focused on generating resources that help American journalists identify interesting work and study opportunities abroad.

That means we're looking for quick-hit top 10 lists (a la the most important things you need to know before heading abroad), interesting first-person stories, tips about job hunting in other countries, insight into cultural issues journalists should consider before traveling into particular countries, etc. Maybe you've captured video from your recent travels. Feel free to share it with us -- and know that we'll put your name in lights!

I would love nothing more than to post all of this information on spj.org and see it published in a special edition of SPJ's Quill magazine that focuses on international journalism.

Please take a few minutes to chime in. If you've worked abroad, your advice is golden. Feel free to send your submissions -- and ideas -- to Quill editor Joe Skeel at jskeel@spj.org. Copy me, of course, so that I can thank you personally. And while I'm thinking about it: If you haven't already seen the special report by the Chicago Tribune's Paul Salopek (who is arguably one of America's finest journalists -- ever), you must. "A Tank of Gas, A World of Trouble" is an amazing example of how thinking globally can completely transform a local story. I know. I know. No one has invited me to serve on the Pulitzer Prize selection board. But if they did, I'd champion an award for this one.

Hi,
I'm a new member of SPJ (after all these years!) and am particularly interested in this post. I left my job at the Chicago Tribune to move to Europe to work as a journalism trainer in the developing democracies of Eastern Europe. I first started the work as a Knight International Press Fellow in 1995, and it was a life changing event for me. In the spring of 1999, I moved to Europe to pursue the work fulltime.
I'm not so sure I agree that American journalists take their freedom for granted--I think the fact that it is an ingrained part of the work they do and they world they live in, and that they make use of it every day, doesn't mean that it isn't appreciated.
And I'd probably disagree about laziness, at least in the newsrooms I've worked in... if there is any fault--such as it is--it is with the upper management who is not guiding young reporters, or letting reporters fight for good stories.
But in the newsrooms I've worked in abroad---Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Vietnam--I've been deeply moved by the conditions under which they work (Vietnam is a different category, as the papers are well-funded, but no journalistic freedom under communist government). Many work without pay (no money to pay salaries for months on end), many put their lives on the line (one of my dearest friends is an editor in Bosnia who lost his legs when a bomb was placed under his car by those angry at his newspaper)... there are just so many injustices and hardships they face every day.
For example, when they do get paid, it is often per story--so it makes more sense to churn out four stories in a day, than one a day, so they usually just retype press releases and put their byline on it. Who can blame them when they have a family to feed.
And one of the biggest problems they face--aside from the obvious dangers of reporting in less than free societies--is one of resources and education. For instance, the journalism graduate students I worked with in Moldova were working from Stalin-era textbooks. No kidding. Before my class, they had not written one story during their entire college career. One wrote me out of the blue three years later to thank me for the "hard class" in which she had to write and report stories. They learn a lot of theory, but do not learn how to ask questions, or why it is important.
Regarding resources, the BBC has a fantastic and well-funded (well-staffed) training center that works all over developing democracies. Does CNN do the same? No way. Does the New York Times? No way. How about the AP, Hearst or Times-Mirror? No, no contributions to programs that support global journalism.
In fact, I'll take it one step further--it is very hard to get foreign stories covered (and get paid pennies when they finally do go to print), much less cover the plight of journalists or offer a helping hand to our cousins abroad.
There are some excellent organizations: International Center for Journalists, which administers the Knight Fellow program, the Independent Journalism Foundation, founded by NY Times ME Jimmy Greenfield, and run on a shoestring, and others. But most are in need of money, and turning to the same sources for them (USAID, for one).
But here is wwhy this work is so important
Several years ago I began working with a small newspaper in central Romania, called Timisoara (the name of the paper and the city). This was around 1999, and their newsroom consisted of a staff of five ( none of which had been paid in months), three chairs, two of which were missing some legs, and two Apple Mac Classics.
I worked side by side with them, helping them report their stories, lay out their pages, worrying with them over print quality, etc.
I went back for a few years, and also returned in December of 2001.
 We sat at this dive Jazz Club late into the night the first evening and they told me what they did September 11. They told me how they worked through the night, made a special run of extra papers which cost the owner a considerable amount, and then literally ran on foot to the train station to get the papers to commuters as soon as the newspaper was back from the printer in the wee hours the following morning. They distributed each copy for free.
This is a staff of five, unpaid for months, anxious to report one of the biggest story of their lives with the exception of the Romanian coup in 1989.
So whether it's a crackdown of press freedom in Moldova by the police, a Bosnian editor surviving an attempt on his life for exposing war crimes, or Romanian journalists working without pay, their plight needs to be at the forefront, and we need to offer whatever assistance we can to improve their working conditions.
What has happened to our Russian colleague is intolerable.
Anyhow, this is not the most well-organized post I've ever written--not by a long shot--but I think I'd say We as a group probably DO really care, we just need to be shown what the situation is, and given the resources to tackle it.

VERY interesting, Pattii!

Got any suggestions about specific things SPJ could do to make a difference in newsrooms abroad? Press statements are nice, but they're not enough. Giving money is grand, but there's only so much of that to spread around given all of the work we focus on here in the States.

Would love to know of more creative ways to tackle this issue -- ways that highly engage and inspire our members. I have been toying around with a few ideas -- and would love to know what everyone thinks about them:

* We could generate more resources for spj.org that help American journalists more easily identify opportunities to work and study abroad. Snippets about fellowships and scholarships. Contact information for foreign news organizations most interested in hiring Americans. First-person stories. Quick-hit "tip sheets" that would walk someone through the basics of preparing to leave the States, identifying/selling stories and the cultural differences important to respect in specific countries.

* We could, perhaps, invite journalists from around the world to tell us a little more about what it's like to work where they do. I'd love to see something insightful from journalists in Romania (for example) posted on spj.org. How could we go about soliciting submissions?

* Perhaps we could send various training materials/papers/instruction via e-mail and the Web to specific newsrooms. What might those materials look like? Got any ideas about smart and helpful ways to promote and market them?

* Maybe we could identify specific newsrooms with very specific needs and craft some sort of "sister newsroom" program in which we encourage all SPJ chapters to participate.

Look forward to receiving some feedback!

I think everything you've mentioned above is great, and right on track.
There are a couple of things I'd like to add and then I'll get back to your suggestions:
1) It is NOT too early to start training journalists at the high school level--I think most of the journalists I know started at their high school or university newspaper, and the same CAN hold true for young people around the world, except a lack of opportunity and exposure prevents it. The high school journalism workshops carried out in Eastern Europe have proven to be an extremely important motivational and inspirational tool--as well as creating journalists that more quickly achieve a professional standard than their counterparts. It is hard to describe the lack of structure and freedom within the newsrooms (tend to be top heavy and full of high titles), and when 16 or18 y.o.'s become instilled with the value of asking questions, and see journalism as the Fourth Estate, they do, in turn, walk into a newsroom a few years  later and become instant leaders to head the rest of the pack.
So possibly working with SIPA to send teams of two (US high school journalism  teacher and student newspaper leader) into high schools to help institute programs. This or some variant.

2) On a more immediate level, I think setting up an interactive, mentoring website, in which US journalists from all media can help their international counterparts improve their stories... via line editing, suggesting angles, how to generate sources, etc.
This is with a caveat, of course, because the burden is on the volunteer mentors to understand very well the circumstances under which the cousin journalist is working: educationally, politically, financially, etc. The way to tackle this could either be with a seminar (or series of) led by US journalism trainers in these countries, and/or some other type of contributed materials that will give background to the mentor.
This would all be carried out in English, of course, unless there are some reporters with special language skills (for example, Russian).
This could forge relationships, as well as give much-needed guidance on stories that often go unreported, or, at best, are single-sourced. This could be borne of some type of Poynter-type institute for the community of journalists who operate under difficult circumstances.

Regarding your suggestions:
--Generating more resources. An excellent idea. I think that a useful website for you would be www.icfj.org, and specifically, their email newsletter, ijnet. This is a type of clearinghouse for what is going on in the training world. Although it doesn't cover the scope you are looking at, it is one resource.
I'm not sure what was meant by "preparing to leave the States"--that could mean preparing to leave to study in the US. If it means preparing to leave and work elsewhere, I'd hesitate to promote that. There is already a significant brain drain in East European countries, so it would be very nice if good journalists stay in-country to help as leaders in improving professional standards.

--Inviting journos to give their experience--again, I'd work through IJNet. --although I'm sure if I give this more thought I can come up with other avenues. Their is a fellowship called the Friendly Fellowship, named for Alfred Friendly, which sends journalists from Europe to work for a few months in a US newsroom. I'm not sure of others' experience, but I thought it was a shame when we had a Friendly Fellow at the Chicago Tribune from Poland, and we all seemed to find out about it by accident. No one in the upper or mid-management seemed to value her experience as a journalist in Poland. I know a Hungarian journalist who said the same thing about his experience... felt he had something to offer from his experience, but editors at the Phil. Inquirer (where he was placed), weren't interested (according to him).
The Humphrey Fellowship is a similar program.
If you want to solicit submissions from international reporters, I can help with that in terms of contacting local journalism centers (again, I keep referring to ICFJ, but also Internews and IREX---two other journalism training organizations--can help). If it were me, my first stop, though, would be ICFJ.

--Sending training materials--excellent. If it is tailored to the region specifically, though, since they often get stuff that cannot be used. Promoting and marketing materials? I don't have any real ideas on this, unless they are pared with journalism Fulbright Fellows, and used at the university level (to replace those Stalin textbooks). Again, they can be sent to the libraries of the local journalism centers, but that doesn't mean they end up in the newsroom.

Sister-newsroom programs sound great. Can be very effective, I think, and can make these newsroom out in, say, Kazakhstan, feel less isolated and more part of the journalistic community to which they rightfully belong. And, it could work wonders in reverse, by giving our US journalists access to sources --important when US news outlets have the lowest number of foreign correspondents ever. It'd be nice to reach out to places and let them help us understand what is going on in their country--could give us more texture, as well as help our fellow reporters who are working in difficult circumstances.

Maybe the best place to start is to take a look at some of the work that is already being done--so efforts aren't duplicated and resources are shared. I've already mentioned ICFJ, and IJF (Independent Journalism Foundation), Internews. So contacting them should prove worthwhile. I imagine they'd all be thrilled that SPJ is interested in this. IJF might be particularly interested in anything to do with high schools, but I can't be sure. Let me know if there is any way I can help.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Anyone else have any ideas?

After that insightful blog you wrote what happens? Journalist Anna Politkovskaya is murdered in Russia.

I have XM-Sat radio in my car, and as soon as they started to intro the story, I had this weird feeling that they were going to say a journalist was killed.

This kind of thing has to be fought on every level.  And from what I've read, there's concern about Putin's mild reaction to her murder. This reminds me of the murder of Veronica Guerin, you know?

A decade ago, I did time abroad in Indonesia as an undergrad. One of the most important things I learned was the value of the First Amendment, a lesson I still hold close to my heart.

My mail was censored, my email was censored, the news was censored. We were given a lecture about how if we published anything "negative" about the government, we would likely not receive visas again to return. We were warned not to talk about East Timor, along with many other topics. And this was in a democracy.

Many journalists I know have spent time abroad (Peace Corp, as undergrads, etc.) and are not oblivious to the plight of reporters around the world.

Programs like the NPR/Slate radio show Day to Day regularly cover the struggles of international journalists. NPR in general does a very good job covering these stories -- just today I heard about a reporter in Mexico covering a child sex abuse story in Cancun, 11 Iraqis killed at a tv station and a follow up on Anna Politkovskaya. I think American journalists are aware of the problem.

I think improved training is a great idea, though I think as important as improving the work of the journalist is improving the reader.

What good is a journalist when the population can't read? To me, illiteracy is as much -- if not more -- of a problem that global press freedom.

Relative to the rest of the responders on this blog, my experiences are few and far between. I recently graduated from college and started my first full-time position as an editor at a 7,000-circulation southern Vermont paper. I am 22. However, this post attracted my attention for a number of reasons.

In the last few months, events in Nepal have caught my eye. Intrigued by the sheer tenacity that brought the Nepali people to revolt and rightfully demand their democracy back, I got in touch with a few Nepali journalists and started talking to them. I found that they had to go through terrible threats and strains just to do their job. Nepal accounted for a disturbing percentage of the world's censorship cases last year.

Now I'm applying for grants left and right to actually get there and learn about it firsthand. I suddenly feel somehow that, as much as I enjoy the tranquility of the Green Mountains and working as an American journalist, going abroad and experiencing different newsroom conditions will change the course of my career — for the better.

Because some of the topics broached in this thread seem quite monumental and hard to get started on, inviting foreign journalists to share their thoughts (as per your suggestion, Christine) is probably the best way to start. Everyone I've contacted in Nepal is more than happy to give a few words about what's going on.

Might I suggest, though, that a blog or forum of some kind is a good way to do it? This would  allow for a freer exchange than, say, one journalist writing an article for the site.  After all, isn't all this about the exchange of ideas and working together across cultures to become better journalists?

If you were to mention in the SPJ newsletter and home page that the blog is starting up, and invite SPJ members to each contact one foreign journalist they know about it, it might get things rolling. I, for one, know I can put my two cents in.

On a final note, I have to agree with you, Patti, that providing journalism programs for high school and college students seems like a good way to foster stronger journalism in struggling nations. I didn't major in journalism, but I worked at my <a href="http://www.undertheemptyingsky.com/">college newsweekly</a> for four years. School publications have this kind of utopian feel, free of real-world problems, that allows its participants room to flourish and ask questions.

As best as I can determine, the 1995 Goodwin v UK case in Europe has still not been tried out as an alternate US source protection defense despite the erosion of the First Amendment for this purpose in the last couple of years.  The Supreme Court trend of considering foreign rulings (particularly those of the European Court of Human Rights, which heard the Goodwin case) as it weighs its own decisions suggests it could be a viable alternative or supplement to the 1A defense alone.

Here are links to the Goodwin judgment (the good stuff is in Part 39) and an article on the US Supreme Court trend.  Adding the information from these together can make a potent combination.

The judgment:
http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?item=1&portal=hbkm&action=html&highlight=goodwin%20%7C%20v%20%7C%20uk&sessionid=8954965&skin=hudoc-en
(the good stuff is in Part 39)

The Supreme Court trend: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050912fa_fact

Michael Strauss

I think Christine's response was spot on.  

The whole issue reminded me of my time in Poland in the early to mid-1990s.  A Polish friend of mine and I were working at a new journalism center.  The center's financial situation was always in dire straits and we often talked about what we would do next.  At the time, Poland was fighting a losing battle with organized crime. Even blockbuster movie tickets could only be purchased on the black market.  

My Polish friend often talked about forming a "beneficial mafia" of talented people who would work together to do good things.  We formed a loose group of people who to this day still help each other out when we can.  If someone has a good project and a budget, then we get paid. If there is no budget but a good cause we work pro bono.  It has worked pretty well for all these years.

The good mafia also works with good stories reported in bad press environments.  We still bounce stories off one another and challenge each other's reporting to make them better.  If the story is good but the press situation doesn't allow the story to be told, the story is handed off to someone who can get it published (after the usual fact-checking).  

In my view, as long as there is press freedom somewhere, there is the possibility of global press freedom.  Of course, this "beneficial mafia" would never have happened if two journalists from two parts of the world didn't meet and come up with an offer  neither could refuse.

Fascinating story, DrNewzman. Thanks so much for sharing it. Got any ideas about how SPJ could build those "good mafias" for the benefit of journalists around the world?