AP Foreign Correspondents in Action
World War II to the Present

Based on extended interviews conducted from the Pakistani countryside to Washington, AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: World War II to the Present reveals for the first time what it takes to get the stories that brought the world home to America. It gives new front-line insights into major events from the Japanese surrender in 1945 to the 2010s Syrian civil war, and it helps to understand news impact on international affairs through evolving journalistic practices. Both successes and failures through eight decades of foreign correspondence from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe show that public discourse has been best served by correspondents who, at great risk, challenged accepted narratives, exposed omnipresent lies, gave a voice to the voiceless, and stymied the frequently violent efforts of those who feared truth-telling eyewitnesses.

1. Introduction; 2. Getting ready, getting started, and getting lost in translation; 3. What's the story? News judgment, news pitches; 4. Getting to the sources (and keeping them alive); 5. Being an American abroad – perceptions of journalists; 6. Eyewitness reporting: getting to the scene; 7. The costs of being there to count the bodies; 8. Your byline today, mine tomorrow: teamwork and competition; 9. Access, censorship, and spin: relating with foreign governments; 10. Flacks, spooks, and objective journalists: relating with the US government abroad; 11. Getting it out, getting it edited: filing news and handling editors; 12. The evolving milkmen: writing for an audience; 13. Purpose and influence of foreign correspondence; 14. Eight decades of bearing witness and telling the world's stories: conclusions.

Giovanna Dell'Orto is an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She teaches and researches the interplay between news, journalistic practices, and international affairs, topics she has lectured about to academic and professional audiences from China to Chile. A former newswoman with The Associated Press and fluent in four languages, she is the author of American Journalism and International Relations, also from Cambridge University Press, which analyses foreign correspondence's impact on American foreign policy from 1848 to 2008. She is also the author or editor of three other books on journalism and foreign affairs. Dell'Orto received her PhD in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.