On Dan Halton's Review of Foreign News Coverage

Abstract

ANYONE WHO SAT IN A FOREIGN EDITOR'S CHAIR during the 1990s will recognize the decline of foreign news coverage by Canadian media as described by Dan Halton. He suggests that it was part of a trend across North America and predicts that Canada will follow the United States in further deterioration. However, it could be argued that Canada's experience in the 1990s was slightly different from that of its southern neighbour and that the trend for the future is more positive.Halton cites the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as one of the reasons for Canadian media preoccupation with domestic events. This is certainly true, but Canada was also rocked by the near victory by separatists in the Quebec Referendum in 1995 and by the gradual realization that government deficits were bringing the country to the verge of bankruptcy. Complacency turned to concern, and the media, quite rightly, reflected that concern with more domestic coverage.Of course, anyone interested in the rest of the world would argue that understanding conditions abroad would give a fresh perspective to solving domestic problems, but that argument was drowned out in the babble of voices screaming for attention on the domestic scene. Print and radio were affected, but television news suffered the most, especially after cutbacks at CBC and CTV.Halton argues that this preoccupation with domestic news will only worsen with the advent of corporate convergence in the media. He paints a gloomy and convincing picture of what happened in the United States, but his presumption that this pattern will repeat itself in Canada doesn't appear to hold up under initial scrutiny.Convergence in this country clearly raises questions about editorial independence and the control of the national news agenda in the hands of a few huge corporations, but some recent developments at CTV suggest convergence may have some positive effects on foreign coverage. And, curiously, these developments are driven by the same market forces that resulted in cutbacks in the United States.Shortly after being taken over by BCE, CTV News announced plans for new bureaus in Mexico City, Nairobi, Los Angeles, and Sydney to augment existing bureaus in London, Washington, Jerusalem, Moscow, and Beijing. It will also re-open the bureau in India that was shut down for two years.Of the new bureaus, Mexico City will be a full bureau, operated jointly with the American network, ABC. A similar arrangement has been in place for almost 20 years in Beijing where ABC provides logistical support for the CTV correspondent. In a rather ironic reversal of roles, ABC relies on CTV to provide reports on breaking news. This sometimes results in a Canadian point of view leading the coverage. ABC viewers may not have realized that Christine Nielsen worked for CTV when she described the demonstrations outside the United States embassy in Beijing in 1999 after NATO accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the crisis in Kosovo.The other four bureaus will consist of reporters who will shoot most of their own material with small digital cameras. When big stories break (Indian or Pakistani nuclear tests, for example), the reporter will hire a local crew and feed stories to Canada by satellite. However, most stories will be sent to Toronto by airfreight at a cost of a few hundred dollars compared to two or three thousand for satellite transmission. …