McGill lecturer supports vitality of newspapers and importance of foreign reporting

By: Ashley Quick

Eight simple words forever changed the life of Hannah Allam. A reporter for Knight Ridder, now McClatchy, Allam’s editor in 2003 asked her, “How would you like to go to Baghdad,” and nothing has been the same ever since.

An audience of around 175 gathered at the 30^th McGill lecture to listen to Allam, a member of the Middle East Bureau Chief for McClatchy Newspapers, give her speech entitled “Bullets, Budget Cuts, and Why We Must Preserve Foreign Reporting,” Wednesday at the Miller Learning Center.

Focusing mostly on the importance of foreign reporting, Allam said, “The world is more interconnected than ever before.” She described the responsibility of the foreign correspondents to show the public how global occurrences affect their daily lives. Allam also identified the two roles of foreign journalists as equal parts watchdog and interpreter.

“The public loses without accurate information,” Allam stated. The watchdog role of a reporter is to keep the Executive branch of the U.S. government in check, while truthfully informing the public of the state of the war. According to Allam, a journalist has a responsibility to ask the hard questions and report the truth, which unfortunately is sometimes unpopular with the general public. We offer the alternative to the official version,” Allam said. She spoke on the importance of reporting the actual truth, not what the U.S. government says is the truth. “This is not always popular or safe, but it’s necessary,” said Allam.

Despite, the lack of funding, Allam said that now is the time to have more journalists watching what is happening in the Middle East. She described the importance of reporting the manner in which the new elected president will handle the way the United States “untangles from Iraq and what kind of country we leave behind.”

“It’s simply condescending for news executives to assume people under the age of 37 do not care about what’s going on in the world,” Allam said. After divulging her guilty pleasure she said, “Even Perez Hilton is posting about more than just hem lines.” According to Allam, foreign reporters have a duty to help American readers understand what happens outside U.S. borders. Thus, the “interpreter” role of the journalist encompasses more than just linguistics, but also helping the public understand what is happening in the world, because people are clearly interested.

Beginning at age 25, Allam has helped transform foreign journalism. She is fluent in English, French, and Arabic. During the question and answer section, Allam admitted that being a female actually worked to her advantage, despite the unfair restrictions women experience in the Middle East, because she played on the stereotypes of women in those countries. She said she was seen as less threatening and actually received good information from sources because she was not suspected as being a spy.

Allam, now taking a break to study at Harvard, said she plans to return as long as her bureau remains after a year. She also said she would prefer to work in a well-funded second tier news organization versus a less funded top tier newspaper, because her belief in the significance of foreign reporting. When discussing the importance of newspapers and especially foreign reporting, Allam said, “The business we love is still there, and it’s still necessary.”