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Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we asked Camille Elhassani, the Deputy Program Editor at Al Jazeera English in Washington, D.C. Previously, she was news director and advisor to Al Iraqiya TV in Baghdad. Prior to that she was at ABC News for six years. She is an Iraqi-American and lives in the Washington, D.C., area. Here, Elhassani argues that saying Americans aren't interested in foreign news is circular logic – the less they know about it, the less they will care. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices.


Other contributors have written on "Outside Voices" about the need for more international news on CBS. But the point is worth saying again.

I spent time this week watching different CBS News programs and came away feeling ill-informed about the world. I learned what’s happening in Congress, the White House, with schools and the Super Bowl… but I didn’t get a sense of what’s happening in the world. Events overseas affect Americans and our interests abroad – economically, politically, and increasingly, militarily.

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Covering Your World Enough?: It's something many a Public Eye Outside Voicer has complained about: the continued lack of investment in foreign coverage by U.S. news outlets. Now Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll (who was held hostage in Iraq for more than 80 days last year) has entered the fray by authoring a report for Harvard's Shorenstein Center. In it, she argues that by closing foreign bureaus and limiting foreign correspondents, news outlets are "making a financial miscalculation and missing an opportunity to capitalize on an asset that they appear to undervalue."

In particular, reports Editor & Publisher, Carroll also "points out that the number of foreign bureaus at the three major networks had 'dropped significantly since 9/11.' ABC, NBC and CBS all had six foreign bureaus by the summer of 2003, according to American Journalism Review, after ABC and NBC cut seven and CBS cut four bureaus since the 1980's." While such cutbacks might save money in the short term, Carroll argues that "higher quality employees, greater credibility and exclusive stories are all a result of having one's own staff providing good quality foreign news coverage. These benefits strengthen the medium as an organization and when factored into a cost-benefit calculation, the costs associated with producing good quality foreign news coverage begin to seem like a bargain."

Courtroom Drama For News Addicts: As the Scooter Libby trial drags on, the New York Times notes this morning that the case has already shaken the unofficial rules of engagement among reporters and confidential sources. One law school dean told the paper that the CIA leak investigation "has undercut the assumptions that existed for several decades that a reporter’s promise of confidentiality is not only sacrosanct as a matter of journalistic ethics but relatively secure as a matter of law."

And with that, the Los Angeles Times reports that two New York Times reporters are being asked to reveal their sources in a trial. Attorneys for the co-defendant in the trial of indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano are asking a U.S. District Court to demand the identity of the reporters' sources for an article published earlier this month.

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While the launch of Al-Jazeera English – the English-language sister network to Al Jazeera – isn’t getting any major U.S. satellite cable distribution, Americans can read plenty about its launch within American newspapers this week. In addition to the fact that it has no major US television distribution, there’s one more element of the new venture that’s getting traction -- the gap that Al-Jazeera is trying to fill. It’s one that many a media critic has griped about in American television news: a lack of foreign news coverage.

Former CBS News correspondent Tom Fenton has discussed the matter in detail here on Public Eye. So did Washingtonian Editor-at-Large Garrett Graff. And when we ask CBS News employees in our weekly “10 Plus 1” feature what they think the network could spend more time covering, one of the most common responses is, you guessed it, foreign news.

In its profile of the network, The Los Angeles Times notes an interesting fact: AJE has “more foreign correspondents in world capitals than all the U.S. networks combined.”

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The lack of coverage of foreign news by U.S. news outlets is a criticism that often comes up around here. When we ask “10 Plus 1” subjects what they’d like to see more of on CBS News, many have mentioned foreign coverage. Our “Outside Voices” subjects, including Charles Bierbauer this week, have often shared that sentiment.

Well, seek and ye shall find. BBC World launched a 24-hour cable news channel in the U.S. yesterday, and it is “aiming to capture audiences hungry for international news.” Chief executive at BBC World in London Richard Sambrook, told The New York Times that the U.S. “‘is the only region in the world where we're not available on a 24-hour basis.’ Until now, he added, the only exposure Americans have had to BBC news was a daily, 30-minute program carried by local PBS stations.”

The channel’s lineup is set to include a morning news program that will launch in July. "What we're not setting out to do is carve a niche that reflects America back to the Americans," said the program’s anchor, George Alagiah. "What we're trying to do is reflect the world back to Americans."

Often one of the arguments against including more foreign coverage is that the audience simply isn’t interested. With that in mind, BBC World’s success in the U.S. cable market should be particularly telling.

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Considering that there are enough news outlets from all over the world available to provide daily fodder about media for this blog (and about a bazillion others) it isn't easy to imagine what it would be like to find out that the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has heretofore “prohibited local TV and radio stations from using international news coverage from foreign news services.” Welcome to China. United Press International reports:

From now on, local broadcasters must restrict their coverage of overseas events to reports generated by state-run China Central Television and China Radio International.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, in a notice on its Web site, warned news broadcasters to "strengthen their political sensitivity" and avoid using footage taken from international satellite services, the South China Morning Post reported Thursday.

"Recently, some overseas news services and media have used various methods to sell international news material to domestic stations, and the reports have a clear political intention," the administration said.

The media watchdog said the rule was designed to "ensure a healthy and orderly development of international TV news reporting and maintain a correct propaganda direction."

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