Shannon ONeil, a specialist on Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations, speaks with journalist Martin Savidge about President-elect Barack Obama's policies on Latin America on the set of "Worldfocus."

Savidge’s focus is the world
By Kevin Kelley
Westshore
Published Dec. 17, 2008

Despite spending the past several years traveling the globe reporting from numerous war zones and disaster sites, journalist Martin Savidge believed that Americans were being grossly under served when it came to international news.

That’s why in October, the Rocky River native left NBC News, his employer for the past four years, to anchor a new public television program devoted exclusively to international news.

Savidge, who was born in Quebec to British parents who later moved to Rocky River, may be the perfect person for the program, entitled “Worldfocus.” While he was reporting for WJW in the 1980s, he convinced his news director to assign him to a few overseas trips. Those foreign trips caught the eye of CNN, where he spent nine years, many as the network’s first anchor assigned to field reporting.

Martin Savdge

Savidge, whose wife and children still reside in Atlanta, commutes on a weekly basis to New York City, where “Worldfocus” originates. “Worldfocus” can be seen weeknights at 11:30 p.m. on WEAO, Channel 49 in Akron. The program is not carried by WVIZ’s main channel, something that disappoints Savidge. However, it can be seen at 11:30 p.m. weeknights on PBS World, a service carried on one of WVIZ’s digital subchannels — 25.3 for those with digital televisions or converter boxes.

Worldfocus is produced by Creative News Group, a division of WNET.ORG, parent company of New York public television stations WNET and WLIW.

In a phone interview with West Life last week, Savidge explained that several months ago he learned that several former NBC journalists, including former NBC President Neal Shapiro, were creating the new program. Savidge contacted them, intending to work for the broadcast as a field reporter. But the producers convinced him to host the broadcast.

In addition to introducing stories, Savidge conducts studio and telephone interviews with global analysts for “Worldfocus,” which he said strives to give the U.S. audience insight as well as facts about international news.

“The best way to tell a story is to frame it in a way that Americans understand why this matters to them,” Savidge said. For example, he said, Americans may initially not be too concerned about Somali pirates attacking international shipping because it’s so far away. But because 40 percent of oil shipments to the U.S. travel through that region, Americans may be affected by disruptions of those shipments or increases in costs due to the pirates, Savidge said.

“If ships, as they are now doing, are redirected, then it’s going to take you longer to get the things you want, and it’s probably going to cost you more because they’re going to tack that on to the fee,” he said.

The view among some publishers and network executives that Americans don’t care much about international news is changing, Savidge said. Part of the reason is that America’s unilateral approach to the rest of the world hasn’t worked very well in recent years, Savidge said, and now the U.S. will likely need to work more closely with allied nations.

“In order to talk to the world, we have to understand where the world is coming from, and that’s what this program is all about,” said Savidge, a 2004 inductee into the Rocky River High School Hall of Fame.

Savidge said the armed conflict in August between Russia and Georgia is one instance where internation news coverage in the U.S. has been weak.

The conflict took many Americans by surprise, Savidge said. But tensions between the two states had been brewing for two years, Savidge noted; it just hadn’t received any coverage in the U.S.

Unlike the 30-minute “BBC World News” broadcasts shown on numerous public television stations, “Worldfocus” specifically targets an American audience, Savidge said.

Many of the broadcast’s reports come from well established international broadcasters, such as Britain’s ITN and Germany’s Duetsche Welle. Some come from broadcasters with a political bias, even an anti-American point of view.

“We clearly mention that in the introduction of the story if we use one of their reports,” Savidge said. “But just because they have a particular ax to grind doesn’t mean that their insights, or even hearing their perspective, say on the war in Iraq, isn’t of value to the American audience.”

Seeing the news from another viewpoint may give the American audience insight as to why this nation is unpopular in some parts of the world, Savidge said.

On each broadcast, a longer report of six to eight minutes long called the “Signature Story,” is done by a “Worldfocus” reporter and producer.

“They take you to parts of the world you hardly ever get to see,” Savidge said of the longer pieces. Last week, two such reports examined the fate of mountain gorillas in Africa and the lack of adequate medical care in rural Uganda.

“We realize that there are vast areas of the world that really receive no coverage at all,” Savidge said, listing Central and South America as well as Africa among those regions.

Savidge has traveled to Mexico to cover some stories there for the new broadcast, which premiered in October. Once “Worldfocus” becomes more established, he hopes to do more field reporting himself, he told West Life.

How President-elect Barack Obama’s pledge to engage more with the international community pans out remains to be seen, Savidge said. But Savidge believes that Americans, having realized that we can’t “go it alone” in the world, may have a new appetite for international news.

“We have to know more about the world in which we live in order to talk to that world, in order to be a part of that world,” Savidge said.

The current global economic crisis is a prime example of how interdependent the world is today, Savidge said.

“What happens in Asia in the stock market is often the first indicator of how the day’s going to shape up on Wall Street here,” Savidge said.

Like most news broadcasts, “Worldfocus” has it’s own Web site — www.worldfocus.org — where video of the entire broadcast can be seen. But Savidge, who hosts a podcast associated with the program, said the producers really want to hear from viewers through the site’s message boards.

“We truly are serious when we say we want to enjoin people in a conversation about the world,” he said.

On the Web:

• Worldfocus Web site