Journal of Turkish Weekly
March 21 2009
The Foreign Desk at the New York Tımes: Maintaining Balance in
Turbulent Times
written by
By Aydogan Vatandas
Greg Fabian Winter is a Foreign Desk Editor at the New York Times,
responsible for Latin America and Africa coverage. He previously
worked as a reporter, covering education and business. In the
following interview, Winter discussess the challenges of providing
foreign news coverage in these pressing times, when newspapers are
cutting back budgets and the internet is replacing traditional
mainstream media. A staunch believer in the power of truth telling,
Fabian says The Times will continue to stick to its mission of
delivering global news, at a time when the public may prefer celebrity
gossip soundbites.
Winter takes us through the inside process of deciding the daily news
and shares his insights on reporting such events as the
Israel-Palestenian conflict.
How long have you been working as a journalist and how and when did
you decide to be a journalist?
I actually have an untraditional, unorthodox path into journalism. I
worked as a homeless advocate and public policy director in San
Francisco after collage for a number of years building houses for
homeless families and trying to develop a coordinated strategy for the
city of San Francisco in terms of dealing with issues of poverty,
substance abuse, homelessness, welfare things of that nature and I
decided that I was tired of smashing my head against a very very solid
brick wall. It was not moving at all. So I am very interested in
writing and obviously interested in social issues so I transitioned to
journalism about 10 years ago and what I did not expect actually is
how much you can actually change things and move the ball within
journalism. I was not always working as a foreign editor, I was a
writer for five years of The Times and I wrote about education,
business and national news. You know one story can spark legislation
in congress and really change the major issues. It teaches you to be
very careful about what you say and teaches you to be very, very
attentive to details, what you write because people really watch them.
How many correspondents do you have all over the world right now?
Right now probably in the order of 40 correspondents working around
the world in various bureaus and then those correspondents work also
with a number of stringers, so for example, any given country (for
example my area that I supervise is Latin America, Africa and UN) but
we all have to dabble pretty much in everything because they are not
enough of us in terms of editors. And one of my correspondents, for
example, is based in Nairobi and he covers all of East Africa. It is
impossible for one person to be in upwards of 20 countries at any
given time, so he has a network of journalists that he works with who
we pay locally in places like Somali, Uganda, Ruwanda, Congo- all over
the place who can feed him information when things are developing so
that he can know what is occurring around the region.
Do you think the quality for the coverage has been impacted by the
recent cutbacks in the news industry?
Generally, around the country with regard to American media there has
been major closure of bureaus around the world. For example just look
at Iraq, if you are talking about the time of invasion you probably
have upwards of 100 organizations that have permanent presence or some
kind of continuing presence in Iraq. Now you have about five news
agencies in the US that have a permanent presences in Iraq. The Times,
like any news paper, has had major financial constrains, everybody
probably read about, it has not yet impacted foreign coverage. There
has been a very concerted effort on the part of the paper to maintain
foreign bureaus not cut them back sometimes we trade one bureau for
another. So for example we closed one in Jakarta but we are going to
open additional slots in India for example. We may do some of that
trading but we haven’t reduced the number of over all
correspondents. I hope that doesn’t change. It is still very very
expensive to cover foreign news. Our bureau in Bagdad for example
costs more than three million dollars a year. It costs a hundred Iraqi
journalists, as well as security guards, as well as translators who we
hire, so these things are extremely expensive to maintain that is why
there is a lot of pressure on Wall Street to especially for public
companies to reduce your spending on news gathering. Locally at the
Times we have a strange stock situation where the publisher, the
family actually owns the controlling stock so while Wall Street always
is calling on us to severely cut the newsroom the family resists. So I
hope that maintains a balance quite a while.
When you send correspondents throughout the world how important is it
that they speak the local language and have some in depth knowledge of
the region they are covering?
It depends. Obviously it is always important as far as language
training it depends on where they are going. If they are going to
China for example we typically put the correspondent in a year
language training before they go. Some people who are going to China
have been experts in China for a long time they speak Chinese before
they sign up for the post. Some people are neutral it is usually a
mix. If you are going to Paris there are people who speak French
already. We don’t have to put them into language training probably
just insist person who knows French before hiring. So it depends on
where you are going. But generally there is always primacy on the
correspondent speaking a language but that doesn’t mean that they
won’t rely on translators as well. Often times a correspondent will
learn to be able to conduct all of their interviews in the local
language within a relatively short time being there. Let’s say, after
the first year and then they have a few more years where they can
pretty much go on their own.
How do you go about covering a story like Israel-Palestine situation
for example? And how do you maintain balance in covering something
that is this sensitive?
Well, in truth nobody is happy with the coverage of the Middle East,
you know nobody is happy. And sometimes that is a major sign that you
are doing a good job because you are heading extremely angry responses
from readers who are favoring the Palestinians and from readers who
favor Israelis. Amazingly there is a balance in terms of angry
response of them. And they are extremely vociferous. Personally I
would hate to be the Jerusalem bureau chief. That is a very tough
job. The strategy for covering something like Gaza is multiple,
manifold. First of all, you have problem of not getting into Gaza
yourself. So that is a very difficult problem luckily the Times has a
correspondent who is Palestinian and who lives in Gaza. We had
somebody there from day one. In fact, the moment the air strikes
started, people were fleeing away from the buildings , she ran toward
them. She has been there for a long time. She covered the Second
Intifada, she covered the battle between Hamas and Fatah, so she
started going straight toward the missiles, straight toward the
hospital and she was there throughout the entire time and she wrote a
number of front page stories from there. Now, she was very endangered
by her coverage. First of all, she lived in Gaza she lived in an
apartment building. She lived near various important sites that were
constantly being bombed. She had a very difficult time of sleeping at
night. She slept with the windows open since the bombs could shatter
the glass. She slept under a table because of air strikes. In a
situation like that I may know my neighbors a little bit but I don’t
know who lives in the apartment down the way. I don’t know if that
person is wanted by Israel or suspected by Israel to be some kind of a
militant. I don’t know the family next door, maybe they are nice but I
don’t know what is the status of their son. There is constant fear
when she is reporting and she is going around to the various areas
alone. She could not obviously do it alone. Later as the conflict
started to wane we were actually able to also get Sabrina Tavernise
who is the Istanbul bureau chief. She was able to come and she was a
very experienced war correspondent she covered the Hezbollah War, she
was in Iraq for a long time so she is very good in those situations
but in addition to that we had two of our Jerusalem correspondents who
were writing every day. We also had our Paris correspondent who used
to be the Jerusalem bureau chief, he was going to the border of Gaza
through Rafah after Egypt. Now how do you make sure that everything is
fair? Now, first of all, any journalist has to apply the measures of
fair journalism. You know, this really angers a lot of
readers. Because Israel would say things and reporters would report
it. Reporters might offer evidence or an assertion. Let’s take a
specific example, the shelling of the UN school, outside of the UN
school, innocent people were killed. Israel says fire was coming
outside of the school, they were responding to the warfire and other
types of militants there. So the story will include the assertion by
Israel. The story will also include the assertion by the UN, saying
`look, that is not true, we had no knowledge of any activity in the
area. We have no reason to believe there are any militants there’. The
story also found somebody who was in the area;’yes, I think, there was
somebody who is known to be militant, but he was several hundred yards
away¦’ These are all things that you do as a journalist. You try to
report what each side says as well as you try find whatever
independent confirmation you can. But all three of those things angers
the readers depending upon where you are coming from. You will hear
one side that says the U.N. especially INRA!(the organization working
in Gaza) has historically had a bias so anything they say will be
against Israel. You cannot possibly include anything they said. The
problem you have as a journalist is that by doing your job you will be
open to very vociferous criticism on both sides. The only thing you
can really do is to try to be consistent in what you do. You do a
story about Palestinians mourning the deaths of many civilians in
Gaza. We did several of those and you make sure that at some point you
are also doing a story about Israelis’ mourning deaths, when they
occur as well. The question then becomes should you do more stories on
the Palestinians’ dying than you do on Israelis’ dying. Of course you
end up doing it that way because news drives in that way but many
pro-Palestinian readers would say `Why would you even include any
stories on Israelis’ dying when they were such a small proportion of
those who die’. It is a very difficult balance in the end. It includes
not only the articles that you write because each day you might have
four or five articles on the conflict itself so you try to include the
right mix each day as well as the right mix of pictures as well as the
right mix of headlines but whatever you do you are going to be
criticized very angrily. That is fine, that is part of democracy. I am
not saying that you should not be criticized.
What kinds of measures do you take to guarantee the safety of your
correspondents in these kinds of conflict regions?
Well, we give them flak jackets and helmets and body armor in Iraq,
Bagdad we provide them armored cars secured with body guards.
Do they have bodyguards?
Yes, sure. Lots of bodyguards it used to be that you could go into
Gaza when things were getting very heavy they sometimes would go
around with a team of bodyguards. In some places you can’t operate
without that. Three million dollars spent, a lot of it is security. It
is over hundred people strong, the Iraqi staff and about a quarter of
Iraqi journalists and translators but there are a lot of body guards,
drivers, translators, security consultants. Ultimately however, if you
are in a war, if you are going to a country like Zimbabwe, where may
reporters often go, there is always so much you can do. I have many
reporters arrested and held, sometimes by the government sometimes by
separate agents who have a political ax to grind. We had reporters
held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the end, it is the choice of
the reporter whether they want to go. We do not force a reporter to go
into that type of situation in which their life is going to be in
danger. That is their choice. It turns out that most reporters who are
foreign correspondents are motivated by an intense interest and desire
to get the story. So we often times have to hold them back. I say
maybe this is not the best time to go into Zimbabwe, given they have
arrested reporters. Have you considered the security measures that you
have to take? But it is very difficult to be the boss of somebody who
is deciding to go risk their life. And people do get killed, we
actually had two Iraqi correspondents killed in the past seven
years. Sometimes just working for a news agency makes you a target. We
had one person just recently killed in the past year in Bagdad who was
clearly assassinated and the only reason is he worked for The New York
Times.
Can you please give some details about the process of putting a story
in the paper? For example how do you decide which foreign photos land
on the front page?
We actually don’t decide which foreign photos land on the front
page. Front page is its own entity, if you will. The front page web
site is a separate entity. But I will talk about the paper. There are
obviously multiple sections in The New York Times. There is foreign
news which is obviously a very critical one. There is business and
these days business is very important, obviously. There is national
news, there is metro. There is sports. There is culture. There is
dining. There are a million different sections. Some of them are never
going to be in the front page. But everyday all of main news sections
go to a meeting twice a day with the top editors of the paper,
including the executive editor, the managing editors and the people
who decide hear pitches from us, just like our reporters pitch stories
to us and say I want to do this and we say that sounds good or I don’t
know I would skip that focus and on something else. The heads of each
of these news sections go to the front page and say `yesterday we had
multiple foreign stories that we think you should consider’ we had the
story about an investigation. There was a story about Hamad Karzais
brother, the entrepreneur. There were further stories about the
attacks on the cricket team in Pakistan. There was the international
criminal court issue for President Basir of Sudan. These are a number
of stories and these are foreign stories. So the front page editors
have to decide which of all those they are going to put on front
page. We don’t control that, we try to influence its best we can. But
in the end the decision is not ours. The same thing is for the
photo. Photo editors go and show the pictures. Sometimes it is a
compromise. For example in today’s paper you notice that the picture
of president of Sudan is on the front page but the article is inside
the paper. You get half what you are looking for. So we don’t really
control the front page. As far as the inside foreign section, however,
we can have more control over that there is a separate picture editor
but she will show us in the course of the day the kinds of pictures
that she is looking at various stories. If we have a problem with one
of the pictures because it does not match the story then we would say
so. That becomes particularly important in issues like you are saying
covering the Gaza war because we have a ton of pictures of dead
Palestinians which we did and ran everyday. Then we might also say ok
well in the next day let’s make sure we have a picture of funeral in
Israel from a rocket attack. Again, it is a judgment- there is no
science to it. It is all a judgment call.
So we can say that The New York Times isn’t just influential in the
U.S. but all over the world. When The New York Times gives a certain
story attention, the world will pay attention.
We would like to think so but I don’t know¦
I am curious if American readers are really interested in what is
happening in Sudan?
A lot of the stories that we put on the front page are not things that
American readers necessarily are interested in. And we are aware of
that.
What is the reason?
Because the people don’t necessarily want to take their medicine
either but you have to give it to them just because Americans might be
more interested in Britney Spears than in Omar Bashir. That does not
mean we are going to change our approach to covering, what we think
are the most important stories of the day. If you would govern by that
then we would be a very different news paper. There is some attention
to try to get what we might call a light story on the front
page. Obviously the front page is dominated by bad news most days,
most a lot of are news is dominated by bad news. So the front page is
conscious of trying to get some kind of light feature, sometimes on
the front page something that maybe a little bit more entertaining
than just sad but that only sort of reinforces the notion that their
primary job is to designate what we think that the most important
stories of the day the most important occurrences and to signal that
to the readers.
Can we say that NYT is an `agenda setter’ of the world?
It depends. I think that honestly the hegemony of the mainstream press
has definitely lessened in recent years. My own personal theory (this
is not the theory of NYT) is that while the proliferation of news
outlets on the internet has been beneficial in many ways, it actually
detracts from people’s understanding of what is going on the
world. There was a time period in which you had a great powerful
mainstream press and as a result you had a greater common
understanding and focus of whats going on in the world. Now I am not
saying that the picture of the world was always accurate or always
perfect, but you did have a greater solidification or common set of
understanding in principles of what was happening in the
world. Currently what you have is if you are a believer of a right
wing agenda or if you have right wing sympathies you have no reason to
pay attention to what is necessarily in the mainstream press. You can
go straightly to FOX news. And your view of the world will be entirely
shaped according to your personal political preferences. So the same
goes on the left you could read a blog or you could read a particular
outlet that is suited to your own ideological preferences. As a
result, the two readers that we are talking about have wildly
different conceptions on what is going on in the world, what is
actually happening people are operating not only from a different
political perspective but from a wildly different set of facts. And I
don’t actually think that that is necessarily a great service to
public debate. You have a very scattered conception on what is
actually happening in this country and in this world. And it does not
necessarily serve political discourse because people end up being
unable to talk to each other about the same issue.
Do you sometimes question the reliability of the stories sent to you
from your correspondents and what kind of measures do you have for the
accuracy of the stories?
You have to challenge if any time a correspondent is making an
assertion in a story. First of all, if they are making an assertion in
the story as a matter of a fact, as an assertion of fact. lf it is not
understood to be a mutually accepted fact it needs to have attribution
it needs to have a source. You have to say `where did you get that
fact, is it coming from this particular government or agency? That is
just basic journalism, it has to have attribution. If you feel like
the reporter is making an assertion, for example, of a trend that is
occurring or some other assertion that is not merely a fact, but an
assessment. There are issues of fact and then there is `how did you
bring these facts together’ to say what is the story that were
actually telling provides some analysis on what is going on. If the
person is making an analysis you don’t think that substantiated by the
fact. Then that is your job as an editor to make sure that any
assertion or analysis is going to be substantiated by fact. That
should be spelled out in the story more or less. Not every single
attribution is going to be listed in the story because there is
somethings we may have reported multiple times that we may know
already to be fact. But for the most part everything should be well
substantiated. As far as the agendas, is your question also is
somebody is pushing a particular personal agenda? I think that most of
the reporters you know over time and you know sort of what they think
about `x’ and `y’, so you are able to police them. You are able to say
`ok, I know you don’t like this person very much’ because you think
that he is bad guy. But really you don’t need to call them a dictator;
you can call them an authoritarian president. I think everybody would
agree. So there are some ways of policing people over time just
because they are human beings they have natural preferences. For the
most part I don’t really feel like there are strong agendas on the
part of the correspondents. Correspondent never let their personal
biases getting in the way of a good story. For example, my own
personal background is, I was an education writer for a long time as
well as a business writer. I am personally in favor of affirmative
action. In terms of an educational policy I probably should not be
saying that but I am saying `I believe that affirmative action has
been an important tool to rectify educational discrimination over the
years’. But as an educational writer I certainly had to write stories
in which new social science findings came out saying that affirmative
action did not work for one reason or another or there is a new
research study coming out debunking the affirmative action for this or
another. So as a journalist you don’t let your personal feelings get
in the way of a story. That is why you are there you are there to be
deliverer the information and to provide an analysis, so the
correspondents. They are seasoned journalists. They are not there
because they are pushing an agenda.
I remember the story of your Istanbul bureau chief about the Gulen
Schools. She is based in Istanbul and wrote about the schools in
Pakistan. So how did the Pakistan reporter contribute? How did they
cooperate?
This was a story about how the Turkish schools movement was actually
quite moderate even though in Turkey it was a big controversial
issue. But when you look at these schools they are actually quite
moderate and they are nothing like necessarily the more religious
schools, hard line schools you might find in much of Pakistan. First
of all she is writing about a line of schools which are relevant in
Turkey. And have been an issue in Turkey. When you are a correspondent
you can travel all over the world. You don’t have to just stay in your
area. While she is reporting the story in the course of her reporting
leads her to Pakistan to illustrate a point about Turkey then it is
just simple. First of all it is logical to do that. Secondly, she can
tell the correspondents in Pakistan do you mind if I come and work on
this topic as it relates to Turkey?
How would you characterize the importance of foreign news to NYT and
its impact on the readers in the US and do you think American readers
care enough about the issues out of the borders. Because sometimes it
is said that before September 11 American people were not necessarily
interested in foreign news, do you think that was true and if so, do
you think September 11 has changed that?
I think that there was probably a lot more interest in foreign news
immediately after September 11 than we could expect to be sustained
certainly they are not interested in Iraq any longer certainly people
probably their eyes glaze over when they hear the words Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan you know what I mean. I think there is
substantial numbers of American readers who are very interested in
foreign news. Certainly the paper believes that it would not continue
to spend so much money on foreign news coverage at a time when
everybody is telling to cut back and spend less money. But as far as
the Times is concerned they consider the foreign news one of the
essential elements of its trade mark. If you are interested in foreign
news you come to the NYT, you don’t go to USA Today. That is not only
part of its identity but also its marketing strategy. I would say that
it will continue for a long time as long as the paper stays in
business, hopefully that is a long time.
It is very amazing that the news about Turkey takes place in the
Europe section in NYT in the web site.
I think there is a strange quandary about Turkey in terms of how it is
categorized. Geographically it is categorized in Europe or Asia or
Middle East. I think that we generally categorize it in terms of
technicality as Europe. I don’t know how that decision was made.
Where do you think Turkey is?
I guess if there was a quasi category that you could say spanning the
bridge of the continents. But personally I think it is not terrible to
list it as part of the Europe. But I am sure there is a plenty of room
for debate over that.
Do you think that one day Turkey will be a member of EU?
It is hard to tell. It depends as much on the EU and what happens in
the EU and anything that Turkey does. It seems like obviously the
thrust for the EU in recent years to add the Eastern European
members. The war in Georgia seemed like it will slow that process. The
financial crisis exposed a lot of tensions within the EU even the
referendum on the EU constitution did not exposed. So I actually don’t
know.
Do you think that the image of Turkey changed in the US when the
Turkish Parliament did not allow the American troops to use their
territory to invade Iraq.
I don’t know if people were paying a close attention honestly. I don’t
know what the American image of Turkey is right now. I know, we have
read about Turkey and I think Turkey is in a very interesting moment
politically, culturally with the tension between political power of
religious groups and traditional seculars. I think it is a very
fascinating time for Turkey. I would guess that most Americans have
not paid attention to that.
Do you think that during Obama’s presidency the foreign policy for
Turkey would change, considering the Armenian issue or Cyprus ?
I would be surprised if the Armenian issue changes under the
presidency of Obama. I don’t think Turkey is its highest priority at
this time. He clearly made Afghanistan is his primary priority.
Why is that?
First of all he is responding to intense pressure from generals there
and the military establishment there who have been calling for more
troops for Afghanistan. He seems to indicate that Afghanistan is a war
he thinks he can wage and make a significant difference. Where in Iraq
he has indicated that he wants to remove the emphasis there. I think
in Afghanistan it’s clear that things are spinning out of control
there and Afghanistan is in tremendous flux. So I don’t think it is
an improper assessment to say that the war in Afghanistan has not been
going very well for Americans and that if anything, destabilizing
Pakistan to a significant degree. I am guessing he thinks Afghanistan
is a big enough issue that it requires immediate attention. I won’t
make any statement on whether or not it is right to send more
troops. I am not even a military expert.
Saturday, 21 March 2009