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I went to an interesting talk with Mohamad Bazzi at Hunter College today.  According to thenation.com he “was Newsday’s Middle East bureau chief for four years” and ‘is currently the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.”He’s won some pretty impressive awards, including: a 2003 Silver Medal from the UN Correspondents Association for his coverage of the UN, the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Print Reporting on South Asia for his coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the 2002 Newsday Publisher’s Award for Specialist Writing for his reporting on militant Islam, and the 2001 Young Reporter of the Year Award from the New York Press Club for his coverage of the Syrian president’s death. Essentially he talked about a his coverage of the Iraq war and conflict, as well as his other Middle East reporting.  One major thing that he brought up is how the market economy, newspapers concern for the bottom line, is now hurting the quality and quantity of international reporting.  Papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer used to have their own foreign correspondents, that might cover Iraq or the current situation in Pakistan for instance.  But covering forgeign news is expensive and it is most cost effective to reprint articles by newswire services like AP and Reuters.  This, in turn, vastly reduces the range of perspectives and greatly reduces the depth of coverage that is available to the majority of readers.  Oh, and I got interviewed by The Word, a Hunter student-produced online newspaper.  We’ll see if it makes it to their site. Here is an interview with Bazzi on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.  The Nation has a number of his articles in their site here.