The Project for Excellence in Journalism has just released a study on “The New Washington Press Corps.”
One of its major findings is that there has been amazing growth in the number of foreign media outlets now covering the U.S. capital.
“When the U.S. State Department first opened a Foreign Press Center for representatives of non-U.S. media in 1968, there were about 160 foreign correspondents reporting from Washington. In October, 2008, there were nearly ten times as many.”
According to the report, 1,490 foreign correspondents were accredited to the Foreign Press Center in Washington as of last October. They represent nearly 800 media outlets from 113 countries and territories. Much of the growth in recent years has come from media from China, the Middle East and Africa. All are regions where U.S. policies and actions have taken on increased importance over the past decade.
The study finds the foreign presence in such large numbers “has changed the way the world gets its news from Washington, and the implications of their presence for America’s image in the world are considerable.”
As a long-time communicator to the rest of the world from Washington, VOA welcomes the presence of so many reporters from so many countries. We hope they share our commitment to delivering news that is consistently reliable and authoritative as well as accurate, objective, and comprehensive. We know their audiences will appreciate it.
2 comments:
Congratulations on this wonderful blog! It truly is helping my students and trainees improve their reading skills in English. We are located in Costa Rica where the government is continually fostering bilingual education and promotes websites such as yours.
It is wonderful to hear about the growing foreign media corps, because we can learn a lot from them and they can learn a lot from us.
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