A look back at the importance of foreign correspondents is more relevant than ever — because the work they do to promote the truth globally is more important than ever. I recently discussed this with Stephen Bloom on the Foreign Press Podcast for the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA. Bloom is a journalism professor and author of a new book about his correspondent days as a young man in Rio called The Brazil Chronicles, available November 17.
The Brazil Chronicles by Stephen Bloom
What a political earthquake.
Donald Trump didn't just win the election, he won it commandingly, and this time with the popular vote, too, along with the electoral college. Not even close. The Democrats will be doing postmortems and analyses on what went wrong, what they need to change next time, and what Kamala Harris should have done differently.
I think it is well-documented that Kamala Harris ran an excellent campaign, given that she only had 107 days to prove herself and establish her pitches, policies and promises with the American people. But the hyperpartisan nation showed itself to be every bit as closely divided as the polls predicted.
As I said in class, “It's about time we had a woman president, but maybe the country is just not there yet.”
This proves that for sure, but also I think it had to do mainly with people's economic anxiety, white grievance, dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, the desire for change and to blame the party in power, the hateful rhetoric aimed at immigrants and the populist appeal of a wanna-be dictator on day one. And yes, the nation may still not be ready for a woman president, sad to say, and misogyny is still a thing.
For a free press this is a perilous time as some media and business leaders start to self-censor their reporting and writing in anticipation of the rise of a would-be fascist leader coming back to power more determined than ever to be a dictator who will punish his enemies, attack the press and shred the Constitution.
— Storer Rowley