News

North Korea tests a nuclear bomb.

Canadian troops continue the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The gruelling war in Iraq stirs international debate.

And this Friday, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced.

Foreign news affects us all. That's why The Globe and Mail has more foreign bureaus than any other Canadian newspaper.

And that's why we at globeandmail.com asked The Globe's Foreign Editor Stephen Northfield to take your questions in a "roundtable" format earlier today. The questions and Mr. Northfield's answers appear at the bottom of this page.

Stephen Northfield has worked as an editor and reporter at The Globe and Mail for more than a decade. After a long stretch in Report on Business, where he worked as a reporter, columnist, investment editor and bureau editor, he moved to front section of the paper, worked as deputy national editor and was then appointed foreign editor in 2005 .

Prior to working at The Globe, Mr. Northfield held positions with Dow Jones in Toronto and with The London Free Press.

Mr. Northfield, who holds degrees in economics and journalism from the University of Western Ontario, lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.

Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length, clarity or relevance. HTML is not allowed. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.

Tenille Bonoguore, globeandmail.com: Hi Stephen, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer readers' questions about the global news beat. Big news breaks every minute around the world - How many reporters does the Globe have overseas to keep on top of it all, and where are they?

Stephen Northfield:Thanks for having me on, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the foreign operation with our readers. The Globe has a very robust network of foreign correspondents - easily the most extensive among Canadian newspapers. We have Geoffrey York in Beijing, Mark MacKinnon in Jerusalem, Stephanie Nolen in Johannesburg, Graeme Smith in Moscow, though he has spent much of the last year in Afghanistan, Doug Saunders in London, and three correspondents in Washington - Alan Freeman, Paul Koring and Barrie McKenna. Our New York bureau will soon be occupied by Sinclair Stewart, and we also have one general assignment reporter - former China correspondent Stan Oziewicz - writing for the foreign section from Toronto.

This very talented group of people form the core of the Globe's daily foreign coverage, either writing the top foreign news of the day, providing analysis, or filling our pages with the wonderful feature stories that have long been a staple of the Globe's foreign coverage.

globeandmail.com: Besides your full time correspondents, where else do you get your stories from?

Stephen Northfield: There are two other key sources: our network of stringers and wire services. We have a deep bench of freelance writers all around the world. Some we work with only occassionally, with others we have developed long and fruitful relationships. Typically, we commission these writers on a story by story basis, and you can distinguish a freelanced article by the 'Special to the Globe' tag at the end.

The other key source is the wire services - Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, as well as the New York Times, whose material is available to us on a daily basis. The wires cover most parts of the world, though service can get pretty spotty in some places. North Korea is a bit of a black hole for instance.

Generally, we like to work a story ourselves. By collaborating with a stringer, we can develop the story in the direction we want, push for angles and specific information and adopt an approach that we believe suits the story. With the wires, you pretty much get what you get - good, typically, but often not quite what you'd want if it was made to order. A good recent example was the Canadian killed in a terrorist attack in southern Thailand - that detail is a line in a wire service story, for us it's the story, and we need a freelancer for that.

globeandmail.com:It must be tough to adequately cover issues that are extremely important in their local zone, but may not directly affect Canadian readers. How do you decide what to include in the Globe? How do you decide what weight to give each region?

Stephen Northfield: The question pretty much captures the essence of what we, as editors, struggle with on a daily basis. The physical limitation is obviously space. Real estate in the paper is both limited and valuable. On a typical day, foreign is alloted about a little less than two clear pages. Once you toss in photos, graphics and briefs, we're really talking about six, perhaps eight stories at most. Often, in the midst of a major world crisis, we'll have multiple stories on a single topic - like recently with North Korea or the Lebanon war in the summer - which means there may be little or no room for much else.

There are some obvious considerations, like the direct connection to Canada. As far as a regional weighting is concerned, it depends on the story. Iraq is a huge story because that conflict is central to the biggest and most urgent story of our time - the global battle against terrorism, the missteps made in that effort, and how the conflict has reverberated globally. Regional emphasis is a continually evolving thing, and some places - the United States in particular - get a lot of attention in our pages, not simply because of its dominance as a global player, but because of our historic and economic ties.

globeandmail.com: When big news breaks in broad but isolated regions - like the 2004 tsunami, or the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir - how do you organize your coverage from Toronto?

Stephen Northfield: First consideration is: Do we need to move someone to the region? It's often hard to tell as an event is unfolding how significant it is, so we often have spend tense moments debating whether to fly or wait. The danger is if we wait too long, we may miss a day, or two of the story; at the same time we have to be careful not to go off half-cocked and run around all over the place everytime news breaks out.

Sometimes, for reasons of logistics and remoteness, it takes an agonizing amount off time to get where we need to be. It took us four days to get Graeme Smith from Moscow to the remote Kashmir region most affected by the earthquake, but it was worth it, generating weeks of gripping coverage.

Sometimes it's a wild scramble: When Fidel Castro was reported to be at death's door in the summer, we had to scramble to get our Washington correspondent Alan Freeman out of Detroit to Mexico and on to Havana. I think I first talked to Alan around 7 a.m. in Detroit, and he filed his story at 11 p.m. that night, two countries, two flights and a few thousand miles under his belt. It's not always that crazy, but it can be.

The advantage is our staff have encountered every permuatation and combination of madness in the pursuit of stories, so they know how to get things done and improvise in a pinch. There's a rush that comes from the first flush of a huge, breaking story, and I have to confess it's a little addictive for all of us. Modern telecommunciations and technology has made story management far easier - e-mail, blackberrys and satellite technology allow us to keep in touch with writers in a ways not possible in the past.

globeandmail.com: While we realize that The Globe reacts to breaking news when it occurs, can you tell us what are your coverage priorities as Foreign Editor?

Stephen Northfield: If I was looking for a single word, it would be relevance. It's not enough to simply inform these days - it's a cliché to drone on about the 24/7 news cycle, but that's the reality we live in. News is ubiquitous, and the currency of basic information has been debased. What our readers want is context.

A good example was our first-day coverage of the North Korea crisis. We not only reported the basic news, but provided timely and sharp analysis of the diplomatic options facing the world and the concerns about proliferation. We have to start from the assumption that readers have the basic facts and our job is to tell them what these facts mean, why they matter and how these events affect their lives. Graphics and other non-narrative approaches are becoming an increasingly important part of the mix.

Timeliness is also a huge priority too. Our readers expect us to be their eyes and ears in the world, and the more often they read it in the Globe first, the more we're doing our job.

As for specific priorities, we need to be comprehensive on what I call the tectonic issues - the critical, world-altering trends and events. The confronation with terrorism is the biggest, most important issue of our time. Like the Cold War for much of the last half of the 20th century, this showdown may very well define this generation. That story, in all its manifestations, is urgently important to our readers - that means everything from tracing the arc of the Bush administation's fortunes to delving into the psyche of suburban Canadian kids alleged to have reached the conclusion that the only way to express their sense of dislocation was to blow buildings up.

China is a huge story. It's emergence as an economic powerhouse has altered the structure of the world economy - no single Canadian has been left untouched by that. The political ramifications of China's rise, its growing importance as a world power are as signifcant as the ecomomic impact.

The AIDs epidemic in Africa demands attention for its sheer epic scale and what it tells us about the inability - despite the best of intentions - to respond collectively to pressing human needs.

And finally, another priority, quite frankly, is just to tell some great stories. I'm a big believer in the idea that, besides all the "important" things a newspaper should be, it should be entertaining as well. There's always room for a good yarn in the Globe.

globeandmail.com: How difficult is it to report on North Korea, an incredibly isolated country that is the world's last remaining Stalinist regime?

Stephen Northfield: There are fewer places more difficult to penetrate than North Korea. It is the most closed, isolated society on earth. There's no free press to speak of; foreign journalists aren't welcomed in the country except in the most rare and controlled circumstances. So, it's a challenge.

There are places I like to describe as black boxes - you just can't see what's happening inside them - and North Korea is the darkest of them all. Little emerges from North Korea, except limited statements from officials and snippets of information from state-controlled media. Much of this is staged propaganda, a mixture of truth and spin that, without third-party confirmation, is difficult to assess. For a story like this, you are often left reading the tea leaves and relying on experts and academics. We have the advantage of having correspondents - like Paul Koring in Washington and Geoff York in Beijing - who have experience on the file and can bring an expert eye to the story.

Amil Khan from Toronto: Stephen, with worry over the economic future of newspapers, do you feel editors will come to rely on user-generated content or 'citizen journalism' from around the world to supplement foreign news bureaus that are no longer financially feasible, especially online?

Stephen Northfield: That's an interesting question. The rise of 'citizen journalism' is a great example of how galloping technological change is altering the media landscape. I'd say first that there's no specific plans in the works to open up the pages to these types of correspondents. That could change, it's just not a step that we've contemplated yet.

My main concern with that approach is editorial control. We have very strict standards of accuracy and fairness and comprehensiveness. It's the bedrock upon which the integrity of the Globe (and all papers) rests. Tapping the world of citizen journalism presents a challenge on that front - who is the contributor, where is he or she getting the information, is it acccurate and balanced? Is there a hidden agenda, or a bias at work? It can be a bit of a minefield.

We're very careful when working with freelancers to ensure that they meet all these standards. I'm not sure exactly how you define 'citizen' journalists, but I do see a role for spontaneous contributions. There's a strong documentary role for citizens in breaking news events - we see this most commonly with cell phone pictures and videos of breaking events. The UK subway bombings of 2005 was a good example of the power of this form. We also see it in blog entries and websites which create communities of people to comment on and, in some cases, provide specific information about events. We can tap some of that to capture a wider range of voices, or mood, in reaction to events - in some ways these are the modern day equivalent of the 'man in the street' interview.

R. M., Regina: My question is related to North Korea. How serious do you take their recent "bomb"-rattling and how likely do you think an alliance would happen with al Qaeda and North Korea in terms of North Korea giving them a nuclear weapon?

Stephen Northfield: First off, no one should disregard the threat from North Korea.

If, as appears to be the case, the North Koreans have successfully tested a nuclear weapon, it opens a dangerous new chapter in the troubling proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The regime in Pyongyang has show little reluctance to dabble in the black market. They are believed to have sold nearly two tonnes of uranium hexafluoride to Libya, for instance. And they have a clear economic incentive. They're both desperately poor and likely to get even more so.

Japan has already effectively shut down all trade with North Korea and its likely that the net result of deliberations among the major world powers over how to punish North Korea for the nuclear test will, in some way, hurt them further economically. If they see an opening to generate some hard currency from this technological "breakthrough," I doubt we can rely on their good faith to prevent them from doing so.

Having said all that, there are reasons to hold off from panicking just yet.

It's clear from the types of proposals that are on the table over how to respond to North Korea's test that preventing the exportation of any nuclear technology is at the top of the world's agenda — and that will limit the ability of the North Koreans to get their goods to market.,/P>

There are also open questions about how far down the road they are in the development of weapons. The blast was very small by nuclear test standards, and some have actually suggested it was a "failed" test. Even if they have advanced the technology, they still need to figure out how to make it smaller and mount it on a warhead (let alone address the weaknesses of their missile technology itself).

And as far as al-Qaeda is concerned, what would more likely suit the purposes of a terrorist organization like that would be a so-called dirty bomb, something much more modest in size and portable, but still potentially devastating in an urban context — not exactly the road the North Koreans appear to be marching down.

S. Simard from Canada: How are Canadian soldiers/NATO forces seen abroad? Are we seen as 'just American pawns'? I'm seeing a lot of dissent, but I think Canada chooses its own battles. So does NATO. What is the perception of this abroad?

Stephen Northfield: I'm a little reluctant to make generalizations about how Canadian troops are perceived abroad. I'm not over there, so don't have a first hand sense of it. I'm guessing that you're thinking mainly here about the Afghanistan mission, and it's an interesting issue in that context. First, it's a different sort of mission for the military than we've seen for quite some time - something well beyond what had come to be thought of as "peace keeping" but falling short of a full-scale military engagement. It's a security enhancing, nation-building exercise under extremely trying conditions, one that has called for a far more robust military response than perhaps anticipated. So we, and the world, are seeing Canadian soldiers in a different sort of role than what we've been conditioned for. That alone is going to change perceptions.

The roots of the Afghanistan mission trace back, obviously, to the American-led invasion to root out al-Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks. If there's a sense of Canadians being American "pawns" that's probably where it comes from. But you're right, Canada does choose its own battles. We chose not to go into Iraq despite intense pressure. And, we decided that the cause of Afghanistan - rebuilding a shattered country and helping to create a functioning democracy - was a worthy goal, and have spent millions and spilt blood in the pursuit of that.

It's clear that the mandate of the provincial reconstruction teams is to give Afghanistan a leg up - the softer side off our role there may get overshadowed by the drama of battling the Taliban, but that's a key part of what they are doing. I think there is some ambivalence among the Afghan people: there's still some support in the country of the Taliban for one, and some residents in the volatile south - especially those who have been touched personally by violence - put part of the blame on the presence of foreign soldiers. As miserable as they may have been under the Taliban, some believe that the foreign troops are drawing the insurgents into their backyard and turning it into a battlefield, a natural enough response to the difficult conditions they find themselves in. The question, for them at least, is what the alternative would be?