You have to know what it all means. To lose sight of the meaning of things is much worse than spelling a name wrong. Marlowe is not alone in her criticism of American media abroad, and the criticism isn't only limited to the Middle East coverage. Kimmo Pasenen, a reporter for Helsinki-based Helsingin Sanomat, said that Americans commonly miss the big picture in their reporting in many foreign countries. Mundil, a reporter with the Czech Press Agency, said reporters in the recent Balkan conflicts are also deserving of criticism.
Students share a few laughs after the day's seminars.
The comments by Marlowe and Mundil gave me a flashback to earlier in the week when NPR correspondent Sarah Chayes talked about her coverage of the NATO bombings of Serbia and the Serbian aggression towards ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. When I asked her how she researched an area like Yugoslavia, a country she knew little about before leaving Paris, she said she relied on a her collection of old French newspapers to help get a background on what was going on. Right away, I saw something wrong. Imagine trying to cover news in the United States with little background beyond some old French newspapers. It was clear she covered an issue that needed to be covered, and she did it well.