McGill lecturer reflects on "necessary" role of foreign reporting

By David Mitchell

Hannah Allam is no stranger to the dangers that come with being a journalist in the war-torn Middle East.

As the Middle East Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers, Allam has faced many life-threatening situations that come with reporting in a war-zone.

Associate professor in the University of Georgia Department of Journalism Janice Hume put it best in her introduction of Allam.

“[Baghdad Bureau reporters] learned how to check under cars for bombs without even thinking about it,” Hume said.

In the 30th annual McGill Lecture, however, Allam spoke of an even bigger threat: the diminishing importance placed on foreign correspondence.

Speaking on Wednesday at the Miller Learning Center to more than 150 students, faculty, and members of the news media, Allam described the “dark days of budget cuts” for foreign correspondents in which news media outlets are being forced to cut the budget on employees, lodgings, and security as well as in a number of other areas.

“Foreign correspondents are expected to do much more with much less,” Allam said.

Speaking later on the same issue, Allam described what it is like reporting the news overseas without a big budget.

“When you’re not at the big table,” Allam said, “you go out and find scraps elsewhere, and that’s what we had to do.”

Despite the rampant budget cuts threatening its future, Allam believes that foreign reporting is more important than ever in a time when the world is becoming increasingly interconnected.

“If foreign news isn’t essential now,” Allam said, “then I don’t know when it ever was.”

According to Allam, it is also necessary to preserve the role of foreign reporting during a time the country is electing a new president that will be faced with the job of figuring out how to end the current war in Iraq.

“This is when our watchdog role is more important than ever…This is the time for more eyes in the world, not fewer,” Allam said.

Allam began her foreign correspondence in 2003 at the age of 25 as the Baghdad Bureau Chief for what was then Knight Ridder, now McClatchy Newspapers.

According to Allam, her life changed with one simple phrase.

“How’d you like to go to Baghdad?” she recalls her supervisor asking her, despite her young age.

In professor Hume’s opinion, a decision to go into a dangerous situation like this is difficult no matter how old a person is.

“It takes courage to handle these things at any age,” Hume said.

It was these two things, courage and age, that led John Greenman, Carter Professor of Journalism and chairman of the faculty committee that selects the McGill lecturer, to select Allam as this year’s speaker.

“The McGill lecture reflects the courage that Ralph McGill himself demonstrated as a journalist challenging segregation in the South,” Greenman said. “And we were also eager to recognize a journalist who is younger than the typical lecturer. Someone who started work as a bureau chief at only 25 years old. We thought that would resonate with our students.”

Despite the negative tone of the state of foreign correspondence, Allam had a positive message to those with aspirations of traveling overseas to report on foreign news.

“The business we love is still there,” Allam said, “and it’s still necessary.”