The limits of foreign news coverage

International news coverage may be declining in much of the Western media but at least people are talking about the trend, and what it might mean for news consumers.

The respected Media Standards Trust is publishing a timely report, Shrinking World, which charts an extraordinary drop in the press coverage of foreign places since 1979.

Some papers like the Mirror and the Express no longer have a foreign news desk at all and most of the others have withdrawn correspondents and steadily reduced the space they give to international stories of any kind.

Maybe that was understandable in the period following the Cold War. It was perhaps simply a manifestation of the so-called 'peace dividend'. The argument goes that when we had an empire, and later when we were part of a terrifying global stand-off with the East, knowing about foreign places was vital.

But surely today the need to comprehend what is going on in remote parts of the world is once again important - or is it? For many viewers and readers, foreign news has slipped off the agenda.

How much reporting has there been of crucial stories such as the probable new Chinese leader Xi Jinping or the Brazilian elections? Both of those are key emerging nations but the average newspaper reader is told remarkably little about them. Has consuming foreign news become the preserve of the elite - evident only in the pages of the Financial Times or the Economist?

This evidence follows The Great Global Switch-Off report by Phil Harding, formerly a BBC executive, last year which looked critically at the wider question of media coverage of foreign news. Of course, arguably, detailed news about the wider world is there for those who want to look for it - especially on the web. But the point remains that it is missing from the average news diet.

One foreign story which does make the news is, of course, the Middle East conflict. Many more people die in other wars - in the Congo, northern Uganda, Sudan, or in Kashmir or Sri Lanka - but the Middle East still scoops the jackpot when it comes to coverage.

There was an Ambassadors Round Table event at the Foreign Office this week which discussed media reporting of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It was under Chatham House rules, so I cannot say more - except that the BBC's excellent World News editor, Jon Williams, gave a robust defence of the way that the BBC reports these matters.

And on the subject of the vital role of robust journalism in holding power to account in all societies, John Lloyd of the FT and the Reuters Institute is leading a team of researchers to investigate and compare the relationship between journalism and democracy in a changing media landscape.

The study is hosted by the Sweden-based Axess Foundation and makes a fascinating comparison between a range of countries, including some where the position of independent journalism is indeed both a fragile and hotly contested area - Italy, for instance, as well as more obvious locations.

At a conference last week devoted to the findings of this project, there were disturbing presentations from journalists and academics from South Africa, outlining the new attempt at curbing press freedoms there. And participants from China gave an unusually frank and illuminating account of the daily pressures of doing serious investigative stories under a semi-authoritarian regime. In picking subjects, they spoke of the intersection between 'forbidden zones', 'permitted or encouraged zones' and 'contested zones'.

The BBC knows only too well the delicate balancing act that goes on within the limited public sphere in China. Once again, Jon Williams bears the scars from encounters with the Chinese on the question of open and honest reporting!

In recent weeks, topics such as the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the dissident Liu Xiaobo were of course definitely in the 'forbidden' area. A web search for his name in China brought up zero results and the story was invisible in the mainstream media. But what was fascinating is that social media had spread the news far and wide within minutes of the announcement. The young journalist who spoke at the conference said she picked the news up straightaway on her mobile and Twitter was alive with comment and information about the award. The role of new media as a force for democratic enlightenment is a subject of controversy and debate in some circles, but in this kind of case social media can play an invaluable role.