The Foreign Service Journal, March 2005

two common attitudes in the Foreign Service. The first is that the de-emphasis of reporting is natural, even desirable. Almost any discus- sion of how the Foreign Service needs to update and transform itself to meet new challenges prompts dis- paraging remarks about reporting: “It’s not about writing cables any more.” Program activities, public outreach, coordination and negotia- tion are all deemed to be much more exciting and important than doing “detailed analyses that only three people in a cubicle somewhere ever read.” I don’t dismiss the impor- tance of these activities; among other things, they help staff gain knowl- edge and insight that can strengthen both the content and the relevance of reporting. Just because these things are important, however, does not mean that reporting is not. The other attitude is that in these days of CNN and the Internet, offer- ing ubiquitous 24-hour news cover- age, embassy reporting is simply redundant and often passé. I would argue that the opposite is true. The Pew Group, among other organiza- tions, has documented the steady decrease in the amount of both tele- vision and print news coverage of international events. TV coverage 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 5 S P E A K I N G O U T u Almost any discussion of how the Foreign Service needs to transform itself to meet new challenges prompts remarks like: “It’s not about writing cables any more.”