Page 351 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Parachute Journal sm: Internat onal News Report ng

experience, to undertake the kind of spot reporting that market factors some-
times dictate. Sometimes contract journalists who are based in the region or
who have considerable experience in the type of story being covered can pro-
vide a deeper level of background preparation, or better contacts on the ground;
such stringers or freelancers typically come with references and a track record,
yet they, too, may still be encountering a new situation, and can themselves be
categorized as parachute journalists by dint of having sped to the scene from
the nearest metropole. Whatever the degree of local knowledge the reporter
brings to the situation, to those on the scene who have no experience with that
reporter, the interloper might as well have dropped in from the sky.
Sometimes correspondents flown in from domestic or other foreign postings
work together with such stringers or with local handlers (often called “fixers”).
The image of the solo operator appearing on the scene with phrasebook, maps,
and flak jacket fails to capture the more common reality of the parachute
correspondent. The negative connotations of the term are not without founda-
tion, however. From a local perspective, correspondents arriving from elsewhere
often appear to lack proper contextual understanding and to rely disproportion-
ately upon technology (which, in many instances, does not work properly away
from communications centers; only the best-supported correspondents have
satellite phones, for example).

sTruCTuraL DETErminanTs anD rEsPonsEs
Like much of journalism itself, however, unfavorable views of parachute jour-
nalism focus criticism disproportionately on the individual when it should be
centered on structural factors generated by corporate profit incentives. Main-
taining large—or any—numbers of foreign correspondents is an expensive
venture. Thus some news organizations have found it more profitable to focus
on local, often cheaper reporting: five minutes a day of celebrity gossip, for in-
stance, will likely cost a small fraction of the price tag associated with keeping
open a foreign news bureau. When news is a business, then, the high costs of
international reporting often result in scaled-down coverage. At the same time,
many news organizations regard the costs of high-quality international news
reporting as simply not justified by matching levels of interest from readers or
viewers, whose focus is most often local. Thus, when demand suddenly arises
for coverage of one of the globe’s myriad uncovered locales, some solution is
demanded, and parachute correspondents are summoned to the task. Low in-
terest in international news may, of course, be a function of poor reporting or
a lack of commitment to making international news more interesting, but with
price differentials playing a key role in dictating decisions about coverage, news
organizations have little impetus to approach international news with greater
resources.
Parachute correspondence lacks the organic connection to a story ideally
provided by a journalist experienced in the milieu at the center of the story,
but given the unlikelihood of such situated reportage taking place from many
of the world’s hot spots at a given moment, often the best that can be hoped for