In considering issues of international reporting, cross-cultural communication and global perspectives in journalism, it is worth deliberating on how journalism has been – and is being – transformed dramatically in keeping with the times.

The emergence of the Digital Age placed newspaper, television and radio coverage in the palm of a hand and without any time lag, empowering society to consume news and content instantaneously and in breadth and scope hitherto unimaginable.

The surge of artificial intelligence (AI) models getting integrated into newsrooms has flagged the issue of trust equation in automated journalism, raising the spectre of misinformation and “fake news” and underlining the trade-off between credence and verification.

What these developments underscore is the globalisation of the media that evokes the concept of journalism without frontiers. For an international correspondent, it is vital to maintain a strong global perspective in the coverage of events happening across the world, even as he or she pursues his or her mission of informing his or her readership or viewership.

The journalist needs to be mindful of the fact that though the digitisation of news brings information to a global audience, events and incidents the world over need people to cover them as also people to get the story out.

This increases the responsibility of the journalist in such cross-cultural communication as his or her reportage bears influence on the global community. This form of multicultural communication enables the free exchange of information among people of vastly different backgrounds, empowering everyone to profit from the flow of valuable data.

It is only a well-informed journalist who will be able to purvey the right information through his or her medium. Thus, information is the prerequisite for any journalist, more so if he or she covers global affairs. An international journalist needs to cultivate and retain the right contacts, have an astute understanding of the issues and their implications, and be able to comment in a manner that is comprehensible, informed, balanced and respectful of other cultures.

An uninformed or ill-informed journalist can do more harm than good, in both the coverage of the issues and in bringing that information to his or her audiences.

And with information comes specialisation. It is his or her sphere of interest or education that can determine the sector of preference for the journalist. It would be rare for a sports reporter to cover a World Economic Forum conference, as for a business journalist to cover a war or for a culture columnist to write on wildlife and conservation.

Of course, in a globalised scenario, an industry like construction or automobile can have insidious implications for the environment, and a medical scourge like the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressing challenge of Climate Change or an outbreak of war can have catastrophic effects on the global economy, supply chains and indeed the way people live.

However, international journalism is not just about events and developments taking place across borders, but also about how one relates to these happenings within one’s own borders that would have ramifications in other parts of the world.