From today's "Daily Nightly" blog by Brian Williams:
It was frustrating to read a blogger yesterday accuse the American media of "moving on" after an initial burst of coverage of the Myanmar story. I wanted to write him and tell him that our correspondent Ian Williams was, at that very moment, risking his life by trying to secretly cross the border into the former Burma to get a story out of there. Now that he's successfully been able to do that, I can say what I couldn't say before. Its a dangerous business — and of course we'll continue to cover this story.
NBC correspondent Ian Williams, for the past week reporting live in via shaky sat feed against the pitch-black real-time sky outside Myanmar, did indeed file a report from inside that country tonight. Meanwhile, ABC's Dana Hughes reported this evening from Johannesburg — one of their just-announced mobile foreign "bureaus", armed with digital videocameras and the mandate to go get the story.
Last week, I had the good fortune to attend the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, and the single most striking thing was how they lauded and celebrated foreign reporting. NBC Nightly News received two Emmys for foreign reporting (a team of correspondents covering the Israel-Lebanon conflict and Ann Curry's report from Sudan); CBS's Lara Logan spoke movingly about her Emmy-winning report from Ramadi, Iraq; "60 Minutes" picked up two of its four Emmys for foreign reporting (Scott Pelley's report from Sudan and Mike Wallace's interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad); lifetime achievement award winner Ted Koppel was honored, too, for his report on Iran; PBS' won a slew of Emmys (10), five of which were for foreign reports (Iraq; Libya; human trafficking in the middle east); other awards went to documentaries about Rwanda (two), China (one), and Iraq (foreign coverage as well as Iraq-related stories based domestically). PBS' documentary series Frontline and POV were also both honored with special Emmys. Boldfaced names aside, there was no doubt about it: Foreign reporting was the star of that show.
Earlier this week, I was interviewed about the media for a current-events comedy show called "Shoot The Messenger" — a hilarious and cutting satirical take on today's news culture which caps off with an interview with a "serious" news person (they couldn't find one so they asked me). The first question I was asked: How did I think our corporate media had most recently and most egregiously dropped the ball? I immediately flashed back to those Emmys and thought of the people who accepted those awards talking about what they went through to create their reports, like Logan talking about wading through waist-deep waste in Ramadi, or staying with a bunch of U.S. soldiers so hungry they retrieved moldy bread from the garbage because "Dude, you can still eat that," and I said that actually, I was glad the so-called corporate media was out there, funding this kind of work and in some cases risking their lives to get these stories so I could blog about them from the comfort of my NYC apartment. ABC's announcement yesterday and Brian Williams' blog post today reminded me of that again.
It's too easy these days to accuse news orgs of falling down on the job when it comes to reporting outside the U.S., too easy to dismiss the nets and cablers as being Britney and Paris obsessed (disproportionate airtime for those stories notwithstanding). The fact is, these news orgs — networks and newspapers and newsweeklies — do good work, and lots of it . I see it all the time. Does it mean that things are not sometimes overlooked, glossed over, with points missed? Of course not. All I am saying is, it's a lot easier to tear something down than it is to build something up.
I'm obviously batting cleanup on Emmy coverage here — just pretend I'm the Observer! — but if you missed the bigger picture it came last week courtesy of my tablemates Brian Stelter from TV Decoder, Matea Gold from the LAT, Michelle Greppi from TV Week and Josh Stein from Gawker (also the man who zipped my dress, poured my wine, and let me pay for our cab).* But that week and a half (and, er, bottle and a half) notwithstanding, it's what my takeaway from that evening was, and I'm glad to have had such a good reason to have written of it today.
*Clarification seems to actually be warranted - he's my neighbor. The zip help happened on the street where we met to hail the cab. I may have exaggerated my wine intake, though the waiter did give us an extra bottle for free. ETP remains as PG as it always was, notwithstanding Lara Logan's plunging neckline. We admit, we had a moment of real worry.