International Journalism Quotes

The greatest promotion I ever had on a newspaper was when 'The Washington Post' suddenly promoted me from city-side general assignment reporter to Latin American correspondent and sent me off to Cuba. Fidel Castro had just come to power. It was a very exciting assignment, but also very serious.

I've always been very enamored of European newsmagazines - the 'Spiegel' kind of magazine, which has an energetic, high-low approach to news.

In so many countries, Western journalists are viewed simply as dollar signs. We're ransom objects.

I trained as a journalist in America where paying sources is frowned upon. Now I work in the U.K. where there is a more flexible attitude.

I have been a journalist, off and on, since I was 17. I was a copy boy for the 'New York Times,' when it had an edition in Paris, in 1963. I sold the paper in the streets by day and tore wire copy off the tele-printer for the editors making up the edition by night.

I did think that it'd be truly cool to be a foreign correspondent, and it was. There is a degree of freedom - and the right to roam the earth on somebody else's nickel.

I worked both as a Russian journalist and an American journalist and ran a bunch of magazines in Moscow over the course of about 20 years.

I view Al Jazeera as a very serious journalistic outfit. They have proven to observers around the world that they are serious and objective. They will have to, at a P.R. level, prove to the American public that that is the case. And I think that over time they will succeed at doing that.

I have had no contact with the Chinese government. I only work with journalists.

If China were to explode, I'd want to be there in a flash. If there's a big story, I want to be there.

Though Mohyeldin's journalistic reputation continues to grow - born in Egypt, raised in Michigan, started as a gofer for NBC News, reared as a producer at CNN, first appeared on-camera for Al Jazeera in 2006 - his is hardly a household name, not in America at least.

The idea of being a foreign correspondent and wandering the world and witnessing great events, having adventures and covering the activities of world leaders, appealed to me greatly. It was a very glamorous life in those days.

Paris is a Roach Motel for top American journalists: They check in, having won the plum foreign posting, but never leave.

I'm a big fan of British journalists like 'The Independent's Robert Fisk, but it's hard to find voices like his in the U.S.

I would like to see every newspaper and every magazine have a network of bureaus all over the world, gathering news.

My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, 'Hey, we want you in Brazil,' and the same happened for Somalia.

Whereas with foreign coverage there's a much broader disconnect between you and your audience.

The dirty little secret of foreign correspondents is that 90 per cent of it is showing up. If you can find a way to get there, the story, the reporting, it's the easiest you'll ever do. 'Cause the drama's everywhere.

I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Geneve, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe.

Jason Rezaian, held for 544 days in Iran, was not a spy but rather a 'Washington Post' journalist whose work aimed to increase cultural understanding between Iran and the world.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.

From Public Radio International, there's 'PRI's The World', which is the States looking out at the rest of the globe. Elsewhere, the 'Global News Podcast' from the BBC World Service offers something similar.

One of the things that I have my students do is to take a look at English-language newspapers from all around the world in order to see the different ways in which the same story might be told.

Foreign journalists have to have an approved interpreter assigned them, which they have to pay for, who also acts as guide. As an Iranian, even writing for foreign media, I've been mercifully unrestricted.

Before journalism, I had worked doing medical aid work in conflict zones. Then, as a journalist, I had written about hospitals in war zones.