A must read: International News Reporting by John Owen and Heather Purdey

International journalism is at the heart of the human rights struggle. Among the most famous names in journalism we find crusading editors and daring reporters that have put their life on the line, on the frontlines, in order to denounce mass murder or injustice. The best and the brightest in the profession, like Sydney Schanberg exposing the Cambodian genocide, Mark Danner debunking the official lies on the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador or Christiane Amanpour pursuing stories of ethnic cleansing and mass rape in the Balkans, have devoted a lot of their work to human rights reporting.
Understanding how international journalists work is therefore essential for all those that care about protecting human rights. Some might learn great lessons from memoirs of leading reporters like John Simpson or George Alagiah. But there is nothing like the collection of essays that John Owen, professor of international journalism, and Heather Purdey, senior lecturer, at City University (London), have edited in a groundbreaking book[1] that that vividly describe journalism at its best.
The book starts indeed with a powerful testimony by a brilliant and compassionate reporter, Janine di Giovanni on how she tried to help a wounded person in the lawless streets of Abidjan and nearly lost her life in the middle of a thug-plagued urban jungle.
It continues with a sharp and sober analysis of the shrinking place given to world news in an increasingly shrinking world. And it leads to a succession of essays by leading members of the profession that help understand how the media report international stories, from the changes produced by new technological tools to the risks involved in reporting (trauma, death, censorship, etc.).
A former war reporter for CBC John Owen is very good at restating the fundamental rules and principles of the trade and in restoring its legitimacy to in the field reporting: “Pontificating, so-called experts on 24-hour news channels, he writes, cannot ever replace or should never replace the reporting that is only possible if men and women continue to be assigned or, in the case of freelancers, independently pursue the stories that give us – in renowned investigative reporter Bob Woodward’s definition “the best obtainable version of the truth”.
This book is a must for journalists and students of journalism but it also a great tool for all –government officials, NGO activists, corporate executives, concerned citizens, etc – that want to know the rules and the constraints of a trade that play such a prominent role in shaping our perception of the world..


[1] International News Reporting. Frontlines and Deadlines, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 2008, 280 pages.