Is foreign reporting down to cost?

There was a discussion on Radio 4's start the week on Monday between John Simpson and Max Hastings.It concerned the resources that the media uses to report from abroad.Both were in agreement that the slow death of the foriegn correspondent at its replacement by agency reporters and citizen journalists was bad news for foreign reporting.
Simpson said that part of the job of a foriegn correspondent was to keep his/her ear to the ground and get to know local issues on a day to day basis.He continues that flying in journalists as and when the situation arose was no substitute.

Follow the media reports today from an American prospective

One of the most common complaints visitors to the US have about American media is the dearth of international news. Watch a network newscast and there are many days when it is all domestic news. Most newspapers except for the really big ones have eliminated their foreign bureaus so whatever foreign news there is almost entirely agency reports cut down to a few paragraphs.

The article argues that today that for global networks the cost of employing full time corresponds is so much lower thanks to technology.There is no excuse for organisations not to cover foreign news if they choose to.

In the past the big cost was the body on location and the office. The days of sending your own people overseas with huge added benefits are long gone for most news organizations. There’s nothing wrong with hiring a professional local, and if there is a fear the local doesn’t know or understand the “ways” of the organization, then with trans-Atlantic plane tickets as cheap as they are these days if booked far enough ahead of time, it doesn’t cost more than a couple of New York City dinners for two to bring the correspondent to home base for a week to immerse the writer in how things are done, meet editors personally etc.

However the real constraint amy well no be the cost.In the case of the American media it is a lackl of interest.