As they have let go of staff, the networks have also shrunken their presence in the world. Each of the networks once had about 15 bureaus abroad. They now have about half a dozen, or less. And in some cases, these bureaus are really just offices or are staffed largely by contract employees or virtually full-time freelancers.5 [1]
According to accounting by American Journalism Review, since the peak in the 1980s, ABC has closed seven foreign bureaus and now has six remaining. NBC has locked the doors in seven as well, also leaving six. CBS has done a bit less, closing only four, but that is because they had fewer to begin with. It, too, had six left, according to AJR, as of the summer of 2003.6 [2]
Other network veterans cite additional bureaus that have closed, including Johannesburg at ABC and Cairo and Beijing at NBC. Given the fact that bureaus open and close over the years, as changes in the news demand coverage from various regions for periods of time (as in Iraq), an exact accounting is difficult.
With the exception of one bureau in Nairobi at ABC, whose correspondent is a freelancer, the networks have no bureaus in Latin America, South America, Africa, India or Pakistan. ABC has no bureau anywhere in Eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union.
Asia is covered from Hong Kong. Europe and Eastern Europe is covered from London. Outside of temporary bureaus in Baghdad, the Middle East is covered from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
| ABC 2003 | ABC Closed | CBS 2003 | CBS Closed | NBC 2003 | NBC Closed |
| London | Rome | London | Paris | London | Beirut |
| Hong Kong | Beirut | Rome | Beijing | Tel Aviv | Johannesburg |
| Jerusalem | Bonn | Tokyo | Bonn | Hong Kong | Paris |
| Baghdad | Moscow | Tel Aviv | Johannesburg | Moscow | Frankfurt |
| Nairobi | Tokyo | Moscow | Baghdad | Berlin | |
| Beijing | Cairo | Baghdad | Havana | Manila | |
| Paris | Rome |
Source: Lucinda Fleeson, "Bureau of missing bureaus," American Journalism Review; PEJ research.
Not all of these bureau closings are purely economic. The closing of ABC's and NBC's Beirut bureau can be easily explained as a function of how the news environment has changed. The same argument could be made about the closing of ABC's and CBS's Bonn bureaus. However, since closing the Bonn bureaus in the capital of the former country of West Germany, neither network opened a bureau in Berlin, the new capital of unified Germany. NBC, which had bureaus in Bonn and Frankfurt, has also left Germany. And even though the Cold War is over, there is no shortage of news coming out of Russia. Still ABC decided to close its Moscow bureau. At the same time, ABC is the only network to have a bureau anywhere in Africa.
What does this say about the networks' international coverage? Basically, the nature of the coverage has fundamentally changed. Much of the network international coverage is actually camera work shot by freelancers mixed with voiceover from a correspondent at the nearest bureau. What is more, the content analysis found that little international coverage aired on the nightly newscasts or morning news in 2003 that was not directly related to U.S. policy. To some extent the same thing occurs in domestic coverage. Bureaus are expensive to run and can be difficult to manage. And networks argue that little is lost in the transition. The model still provides news from around the world, just in a different way.
The question is whether something is lost in the change. While freelancers can provide video footage and even reporting, the bureau system provided more than a reporter and a camera in a remote part of the world when news broke. It gave the networks a feel for the cultures and nations where they had correspondents. It gave them an institutional intelligence and an continuing sense of changing events. Even the choice of where to locate bureaus carried with it some intrinsic bias toward where the "important" international news would come from. Nevertheless, the bureaus at least left the networks more prepared cover news as it was bending, not just when it had broken, and to cover certain parts of the world in a sustained way, not just to parachute in and then leave.
Another factor is that the foreign bureaus were set up primarily to service the evening newscasts, not the morning programs. As the news divisions switched emphasis to the mornings, the domestic-to-overseas mix shifted accordingly.
On one hand, it would be a mistake, some network veterans caution, to give the old networks too much credit for the feel they had for distant cultures. The television networks never had as many bureaus as did The New York Times or even The Los Angeles Times, for instance.
Still, the decline in foreign bureaus raises another question that relates to the agenda-setting power of television. Network executives contend that the withdrawal from covering the globe, at least before September 11, was driven by viewer demand. Americans were no longer so interested in international events after the Cold War ended. The networks could cite ratings figures and, privately, suggested they had market research as well, to prove it. Critics of the networks, on the other hand, charge that the American public's declining interest in international affairs, at least before September 11, was driven in part by the news media, particularly television, pulling back on foreign news to save money. If Americans in the age of globalization were uninterested in events around the world, this sentiment goes, it was only because the news media were failing to make these events as relevant as they really were.
Which argument has more merit? Certainly some decline in interest in foreign affairs was inevitable and logical after the end of the Cold War. Yet the full explanation is probably more complex than that. In most cases, the closing of bureaus was generated by a mandate to cut costs, not simply to redeploy resources. Foreign bureaus are more expensive to run than others, so closing them yields more savings. In addition, it is difficult for journalists to know in advance what audiences want. News by its nature is the unexpected, the unplanned, the new. Journalistic market research by its nature is soft.
Finally, to deny that the media have any agenda-setting power - that it merely reflects viewer interest and does not shape it - flies in the face of nearly all the social science research on the influence of television. The truth, in other words, is probably some combination of these factors. Television's pullback from covering the world before September 11 may have reflected an American impulse. But it doubtless over time reinforced and intensified that impulse. And it had the advantage of helping the bottom line.
One last note: each of the networks lists Baghdad as the site of one of its bureaus. If and when the situation stabilizes in Iraq, one would expect those bureaus to close as well. If they close and no other new bureaus are created, the networks could each be left with five foreign bureaus apiece.