From an interview on poynter.org with NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell as she reports from the Middle East”:
Andrea Mitchell joined NBC News in 1978 and has established herself as a trusted source on foreign policy and world politics. Her reporting has taken her across the globe, including places such as North Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo and Cuba.
But her most notable foreign coverage, dating back to the 1990s, has come from the Middle East. She has been there countless times to report on summits, the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, the funeral of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat; to interview Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and to travel with U.S. dignitaries on trips overseas….
Tom Jones had a chance to exchange emails with her to talk about her coverage of this critical story.
You’ve been covering this story for much of your career. Is there anything different about this story right now than what we’ve seen in the past and, if so, what is different?
I think what’s different now is the political vacuum on both sides: Israel has a caretaker government after Prime Minister Netanyahu failed in four previous attempts over the last two years to form a new government, and the Palestinian Authority representing Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is weaker than ever, giving the Hamas militants in Gaza more power than before….
Can you explain what it’s like to cover this story objectively and your approach to this very divisive story?
As with all stories, both at home and overseas, the fundamentals are always to dig deep, talk to many people on both sides, present the facts as honestly as possible, provide the context of my decades of experience covering this region in particular, and also in this case (and many others around the world) seeing how powerfully U.S. politics affects the outcomes thousands of miles from home.
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