THE CHALLENGES OF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS

1. FCs are responsible for proposing their subject. Most of the stories cover economics, financial and monetary issues
2. How FCs report EU news is largely dependent on public opinion in the countries where the media outlets are based.
3. The problem facing FCs is that more and more they’re reproducing the EU’s own communication. There is too much factual reporting and not enough analysis, commentary and investigation.
4. There is an overdose of information from the EU institutions which drowns journalists.
5. FCs have to grapple with explaining difficult decision-making procedures and constantly changing aims, rules and membership.
6. The main challenge FCs face is trying to make complex, bureaucratic or highly political issues interesting and relevant for the public they serve.
7. The EU struggles to get media coverage because a lot of work that goes on in Brussels is boring but important or important but boring. News desks believe their audiences find stories about Brussels too boring and technical. Brussels lack sufficient drama and well-known personalities to make good copy, especially TV journalists. Popular newspapers rarely have a permanent correspondent in Brussels.
8. Another challenge is that the EU is about finding consensus between 28 often divergent natural viewpoints. But journalism is largely about conflict among ideas, states and people. This makes life difficult for FCs.
9. Other obstacles include deciphering and translating EU jargon into every day speech.
10. FCs who cover the EU concentrate on what its proposals, debates and decisions mean for their country of origin. The EU is less often covered as a centre of European power, more often as an adjunct to national politics.
11. Limited staffing and resources are paired with time and space constraints. The complex nature of the EU does not lend itself to engaging reporting, particularly when there is little time for explanation. In order to keep the audience interested, they have to tell a  human story, more emotional than factual, to avoid viewers switching off. They have to address their audiences’ preferences which leads to focus on the domestic realm and topics they are most interested in.
12. FCs see their role as informers and their duty to scrutinize the EU, a duty that is in conflict with a more consensual EU system. But  this has nothing to do with ‘EU bashing’

Key to making European Stories

The key to making European stories interesting is to get out of Brussels and tell the story from the individual countries and the point of view of the people affected by the EU.