Getting The Foreign Angle

By Laurence Zuckerman

It was Day 2 of the Republican National Convention, and Luis Carlos Azenha, a correspondent for Brazil's TV Manchete network, and his crew of two were trolling for stories outside the New Orleans Superdome. They headed for Lafayette Square, where they hoped to get pictures of men kissing each other at a rally protesting the Republicans' stand on AIDS. The square, however, was deserted except for a sprinkling of mounted police and a handful of journalists with the same idea as the Brazilians. No story there.

The team moved on to the Hilton hotel, where the National Education Association was holding a luncheon for Maureen Reagan. Azenha had heard that some of the vice-presidential contenders might be at the lunch, and he was hoping to interview them. But there was no sign of Bob Dole or Jack Kemp in the cavernous hall. Azenha managed to collar the President's daughter, who provided a few remarks. Later in the day, he interviewed Shirley Temple Black, a delegate from California, and Actor Charlton Heston.

What Azenha and other foreign journalists who attended last week's Republican Convention painfully discovered was that finding a story they could break in New Orleans was about as likely as encountering a flood of the drought-stricken Mississippi River. Even when controversy arose over George Bush's running mate, Senator Dan Quayle, many reporters from abroad had trouble developing fresh leads on the story, lacking as they did the facilities and long-standing contacts of their American colleagues.

Yet the foreign journalists made up in enthusiasm and numbers whatever they lacked in resources. A record 1,300 of them, representing more than 300 news organizations in 51 countries, covered both party conventions this year, exposing more television viewers and newspaper readers around the world to the U.S. presidential contest than ever before. Britain and Canada dispatched large contingents from 15 print and broadcasting organizations each, but the Japanese outdid them in New Orleans with six networks and twelve newspapers. "It shows one thing," said Toshio Mizushima, a correspondent for the Tokyo-based daily Yomiuri Shimbun, "that the Japanese viewers and readers are very eager to know what is really going on in this election." So are the Europeans. The C-SPAN network's video verite coverage of the podium in Atlanta was beamed by satellite to 22 European countries, prompting hundreds of viewers in those countries to write to the C-SPAN offices in Washington. Interest in President Reagan's farewell speech was so high in Britain that the BBC broadcast it live from New Orleans in a 3 1/2-hour special beginning at 1:10 a.m. in London.

The one big story of the U.S. presidential race is really many stories to foreign journalists, depending on which aspect of the candidates' views or the parties' platforms is of greatest concern to their own countries. The Japanese press has concentrated on trade and economic issues, while the South Africans are almost single-mindedly focused on the question of American sanctions. This year's campaign has received unusually wide coverage in the Philippines because of George Bush's now famous 1981 toast commending President Ferdinand Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principles and to democratic processes."

For all the attention lavished on the two party conventions, most foreign reporters regarded them as anachronisms, heavier on rhetoric and glitz than substance, keyed more to the TV audience than to give-and-take among the delegates. "It's more a prime-time TV show than a convention," said John Wiseman of Network Ten Australia about the event in New Orleans. "Compared with Australian party conventions, which involve wheeling and dealing and political disputes, I find these conventions lacking in hard politics."

Most of the foreign journalists preferred covering the Democrats to the Republicans. "Jesse Jackson saved the whole convention in Atlanta," said Turkish Reporter Turan Yavuz. "If Bush would have announced his vice- presidential choice earlier, we'd all be walking around the French Quarter."

What turned out to be the most popular convention feature broadcast by West Germany's ZDF network was about itself. Assigned a trailer in the bowels of a garage near Atlanta's Omni Coliseum, ZDF staffers soon realized that a railway line ran right by their side of the building. When freights rumbled past, they had to hang blankets over the trailer's windows to dampen the noise while correspondents recorded their voice-overs. After a few days, the ZDF staff put together a lighthearted story comparing the dark netherworld of their trailer with the bright lights and glamour of the Omni Coliseum, where the Democrats were meeting. The story was a hit in West Germany and ran twice in translation on CNN; the ZDF home office ordered a similar story from the Republican Convention.

Most other foreign reporters could identify with ZDF's plight. Many complained that they were barred from certain briefings and often could not get an audience with political heavyweights. But the most consistent gripe concerned hotel accommodations. In Atlanta the Democrats assigned many foreign journalists to hotels 25 to 30 miles from the convention center. They were closer to the action in New Orleans, but many complained that the hotels assigned by the Republicans were second-rate and sometimes downright seedy. Alejandro Rodrigo, an Argentine working for Italy's ANSA news agency, described them as "below Third World standards."

Yo'av Karny, correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, was promised a hotel in New Orleans with room service and cable TV so he could follow the convention on CNN while he was writing. He arrived to discover that the hotel offered neither. Within two hours, the toilet in his room had flooded. And because he was made to pay for his entire stay in advance, he could not move. "American journalists expect to be treated imperially when they go abroad, and they are," said Karny. "I do understand priorities, but I expect some sort of reciprocity."

While Karny and other sole representatives of foreign newspapers will probably cover the 1992 conventions the same way they covered 1988's, some of the foreign television networks are already considering scaling back. "It's becoming too expensive, and all the debate is over before we get here," asserted Tony Naets, bureau chief of the European Broadcasting Union, an association of European broadcasters. Said Martin Bell of the BBC: "People back home are beginning to realize that these are not nominating conventions."

Nevertheless, the journalists agreed that America's selection of presidential candidates would remain a story that the foreign media could hardly ignore. "The U.S. is the most powerful country in the world," said Zevi Ghivelder, a TV Manchete commentator. "Don't you think that in the days of ancient Rome all the world worried as to who was going to be the next Caesar?"

With reporting by Naushad S. Mehta/New Orleans