In defense of ‘local hires’
Ron Kampeas of JTA and Jeffrey Goldberg weigh in on the debate over Ethan Bronner’s Israeli soldier-son. Both think it would be a horrible idea to reassign Bronner under the pressure of “anti-Israel propagandists.” And they defend the idea that reporters can separate their personal attachment from their coverage of the conflicts to which their assigned. Ron sees another danger:
This initiative is a big fat welcome mat for folks who want to marginalize and even criminalize Palestinian reporting [by which he means reporting by Palestinians for western news outlets -- asc], a phenomenon I addressed here.
Listen up: This is a standard that would essentially kill the concept of the “local hire,” rob us (the global “us”) essential insights into conflicts around the globe, and reduce media credibility just when it needs as much reinforcement as it can get.
This is compelling stuff, and made me think twice about agreeing with the Times’ ombusdman that Bronner should be reassigned. But I responded to Ron’s post with the following comments, which I post while acknowledging that I can be convinced otherwise:
Western news organizations tolerate, as opposed to prefer, “local hires” because they are affordable; they have certain skill sets –language, mostly, and hard-won experience on the ground—that their own home-grown staff do not; and they have access to areas that are hostile or inaccessible to outsiders.
The whole concept of a “foreign correspondent” was for decades based on the idea that we send one of “ours” over “there.” The fact of his or her “otherness,” it was long felt, would only enhance the reporting — they would presumably have the skills to tell the country’s story, but keep a critical distance by dint of their “foreignness” and thus tell their story more objectively and dispassionately than a local hire could be expected to. In fact, it was seen as an occupational hazard were a reporter to “go native.”
Ron, you are suggesting a different model—a globalized newspaper, that instead of sending its own staff overseas outsources its reporting to “local hires.” I’m not sure I see the difference between that and merely carrying dispatches from other foreign news outlets. Why shouldn’t the Times just close its Israel bureau and translate articles from Maariv or Haaretz in some sort of reciprocal arrangement? It would be cheaper, and certainly the average Israeli native reporter has more “essential insights” into the region than a guy who has been imported from outside, even if that guy was there for a number of years.
If media had infinite means and universal access to hotspots, they would certainly eschew the whole notion of local hires, and prefer instead to dispatch correspondents who were hired, trained and promoted according to the same standards of its local and national staffs. Local hires are a capitulation to reality, not a journalistic ideal by any means.
In the case of the Times bureau chief, I don’t think you have to be a “savage partisan,” to use Bill Keller’s phrase, to worry that a transplanted American reporter who has become fully integrated into a society might be in danger of losing his or her critical distance. Or to suggest that local hires may not be the ideal way to cover a conflict.
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 