Reporters produce uniform clichés because none can speak the local language

Evidence

Not knowing the language is only part of a much greater ignorance, for often enough the reporter is sent to a strange country with no preparation or experience, just because he or she is canny at picking up things quickly or happens already to be in the general vicinity of where front-page news is happening. So instead of trying to find out more about the country, the reporter takes hold of what is nearest at hand, usually a cliché or some bit of journalistic wisdom that readers at home are unlikely to challenge. With approximately three hundred reporters in Teheran during the first days of the hostage crisis, and without a Persian-speaker among them, it was no wonder that all the media reports coming out of Iran repeated essentially the same threadbare accounts of what was taking place — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 71

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘three hundred reporters, zero Persian-speakers’ anecdote is a ready article hook about language coverage in crisis journalism.
• SHARE: Send to anyone who covers foreign news or teaches journalism — the hostage-crisis numbers are striking.
• CANDY: Approximately 300 reporters in Tehran during the hostage crisis, not one of them a Persian speaker — a funny-sad tidbit.
• XREF: connects to: Local reporting’s avoidance of debate and analysis makes journalism nearly superfluous. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1612

Related

• Local reporting’s avoidance of debate and analysis makes journalism nearly superfluous. (similarity 0.80)