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Wonacott said although there is some arm-twisting in India but he has experienced serious situations in China, where he was detained and his office ransacked for writing against the government. He said the situation in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq is equally alarming.
The journalist related his experiences of writing a story on Amrit Singh, the daughter of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is opposed to the Bush administration’s policies and the Prime Minister inviting the American President to India. “While chasing the story, I got calls from various government officials from India asking me to drop it,” Wonacott said.
He said the age of foreign correspondents is not over yet as many newspapers are employing reporters in various countries. The Wall Street Journal has 10 reporters in China and four in India.
Saying that the situation was not the same a decade ago, Wonacott described the war on terror and global nature of the economy as the prime reasons why newspapers of the West were increasing foreign correspondents in various countries. On American journalists covering terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the senior correspondent remembered Daniel Pearl. “You must have heard about my colleague Daniel Pearl who was killed in Pakistan. When reporting in such places, we must be cautious about our limitations,” he added.
Wonacott warned budding journalists about the challenges of the Internet and the electronic media. He advised students to be fair and balanced in their reporting. “The ethos of being fair makes you reliable and unless you are reliable you cannot be commercially viable,” he added.
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