Storied newspaper makes deep cuts, and closes many international bureaus

0:00Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Today on State of the World, international journalists laid off in recent cutbacks include some of the last American and Western reporters working in authoritarian countries.

0:31You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. It's Friday, February 13th. I'm Christine Arismeth. Among the nearly 400 journalists laid off this month at the Washington Post were most of the paper's international correspondents. Now, they were stationed on nearly every continent. They reported from authoritarian countries and covered places almost impossible to access. Here's more from NPR's Daniel Estrin. All of the Washington Post staff reporters in the Middle East were laid off last week. Many of them were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize last year for what the award committee called haunting accountability journalism that documented Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

1:18Miriam Berger, on assignment in Jerusalem, was one of those Pulitzer finalists laid off. These cuts come at such a crucial time for Gaza reporting. First of all, with the sort of ceasefire in place, there's time for retrospective reporting that wasn't possible during the crazy news cycle in the war's first two years. To do that, you need reporters and editors who are deeply familiar with the war and how it was carried out. Claire Parker, Cairo bureau chief for The Washington Post, was one of the last American reporters to be based in Egypt. Many Western reporters had already been kicked out. She's also been laid off from the Post.

1:52And so this will remove another, you know, source of independent reporting on Egypt, which continues to be a major U.S. ally in the region and will also play a huge role in the reconstruction of Gaza moving forward. So this will have an effect on the access to information that people around the world will have about what's going on in Egypt. The Washington Post says its layoffs were for financial reasons. It was struggling with enormous annual losses. It's also owned by one of the world's wealthiest people, Jeff Bezos. Local journalists working as contractors at the Post's foreign bureaus still have their jobs, but their future at the paper is uncertain.

2:32The Ukraine bureau chief was laid off, but plans to stay in the country to report. The Moscow correspondent, Francesca Ebel, was also laid off. She's based in London and made regular reporting trips to Russia. Yeah, I was one of the last few English-language newspaper journalists remaining. I was kind of a small operation that was able to get into these harder parts of society that are harder to access. Like when some of her sources brought her to the Russian border with Ukraine. And then this bus rolls up and the doors open and about 30 soldiers sort of limp out into the mud. and most of them are missing their feet, their legs, their hands.

3:17They spoke to her. Rare testimonies from Russian soldiers critical of the war. It was a front page story in the Washington Post a couple months ago. The result of years of building sources and contacts in Russia. This kind of reporting serves not just readers in the U.S., but also people from countries that restrict their own media's reporting. It is easier to report these stories if you have the backing of a news organization and if you have the backing of a security team who is following your location and is able to provide support if you get in trouble. Ebel says reporting from Russia was at times one of the most terrifying jobs she's ever done.

3:57Sometimes it felt like people weren't responding to the work that you were doing and the sort of risks that you had to take in order to get this information. One of the great things that's happened in this terrible week is that people have written and said that they were reading and that they didn't take the reporting for granted. Including Russians, who depended on her coverage before she and her international correspondent colleagues were laid off from the Washington Post. Daniel Estrin, NPR News.

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