Foreign Correspondence: Barry Petersen On “Better But Tougher” Job In Asia

Let’s summarize the conventional wisdom about foreign correspondents: Their numbers are dwindling. They struggle to get stories on the air. They have trouble staying relevant in today’s news climate.

Barry Petersen, a CBS News correspondent in Tokyo since 1995, is here to disprove some of those assumptions. “What is the state of foreign corresponding on network news, as you see it?,” I ask.

“Better and worse,” the two-time Emmy winner replies:

“In the ‘old’ days the networks were much more aggressive about covering foreign news in areas like plane crashes, coups, floods. I consider this the ‘worse’ time. We chased around a lot doing stories that smelled like news but were not very relevant to either American policy or the lives or normal Americans. Now the bar is higher. To get a foreign story on the air it needs to be interesting or relevant or compelling. We still cover some huge, breaking news stories such as the Asian tsunami. But to get enterprise pieces on, especially from Asia, the stories must be that much more interesting. The CBS Evening News just did a series on caring for the aged, and we did one of the pieces. It was about a program in a southern Chinese city where people volunteered their time working with the very elderly, tracked how many hours they worked, and someday will get those hours back when they are in need of care. That story also gave us a chance to show that China, like America, is a changing society. Families once took care of the elderly, but now younger people are moving away for better jobs and, more and more, the elderly must fend for themselves. This in a country with no real safety net for old people. That was what family was for. So we really did two stories — first about an interesting program of people helping people, and second about how China’s culture and traditions are changing as its economy expands. So these are the BETTER but TOUGHER times for a foreign correspondent: our stories must be far more layered, far better produced from concept to shooting to editing, and that is the challenge of reporting from overseas. You can’t make a career as a foreign correspondent anymore just doing 1:30 on the latest plane crash.”

Petersen first covered Asia from Tokyo in 1986. He moved to Moscow for two years, then was in London for five. He returned to Tokyo in October 1995. On his first stint there, CBS had correspondents in Beijing and Hong Kong, so “I never came to China,” he says. Nowadays, he spends about half his year in the fast-growing country.

“I go away from China for a month and come back and there is a new skyscraper up and three new construction sites,” he says.

CBS has increased its presence in Asia, he notes. In 1995, he was the only correspondent, but “now we have reporters primarily for our Newspath operation in both Tokyo (Lucy Craft) and Beijing (Celia Hatton),” he says.

In addition to pieces for the Evening News and other broadcasts, Petersen files a weekly “Letter from Asia” for Up To The Minute. They are transcribed on CBSNews.com.

“Every day I come to work asking one question: what can we tell America about the changes in Asia, the trends, the serious events and the fun stories,” he says.

And after eleven years in Asia, he still enjoys the assignment.