Why Foreign Correspondents Watched The Midterm Elections Closely

Although control of Congress still hangs in the balance, there has thus far been no sign of the “red wave” that Republican legislators and pollsters predicted would happen on Election Night 2022, the most closely watched election in years. At the moment however, it appears that the House of Representatives will fall into Republican hands. Though they are only expected to have a five-seat majority, victories there would effectively end two years of a Democratic trifecta in Washington. Still, it could be days—or even longer—before there’s enough information to determine whether Republicans have won control of the chamber. Democrats are expected to hang onto the Senate, and are even projected to make gains there. All in all, it appears very possible that a split Congress will once again fall into the trap of political stalemate—as was seen during the Obama years—and reports around the country indicate that the partisan divide in the United States is as strong as ever.

Journalists have been on the ground doing an impeccable job reporting on developments in the lead-up to the contentious election, which had been largely perceived as a referendum on how much sway former President Donald Trump still holds over the American electorate. For more than two years, he has continued to dessiminate the falsehood that he won the 2020 general election. He has also embraced the far-right movement that includes those who stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, the day a mob of his supporters attacked the nation’s seat of government on the false premise the election had been stolen. But on Election Night, voters around the country rejected far-right candidates who made election denial a key aspect of their platforms.

Reproductive rights were also on the ballot, particularly since the summer, when the Supreme Court voted to overturn long-established precedent on abortion. Since August, when people in the typically conservative state of Kansas secured a win for reproductive rights activists after voting to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution, Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence have vowed that the GOP would have “pro-life majorities” in both the House and the Senate. That has not materialized despite a tide of misinformation and disinformation on both sides of the political aisle.

Journalists have had to wade through this politically fraught environment to report the facts, which is by no means an easy feat. And foreign correspondents have largely had their work cut out for them, often working with fewer resources and connections than their American-born counterparts. Nonetheless, they have continued to provide their readers in the United States and abroad the information they need to navigate an environment political scientists have said is a powder keg amid a rise in political violence.

Political violence disproportionately affects journalists. Organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have noted that “online abuse and digital threats to journalists have been steadily increasing” in an increasingly polarized political climate and have published safety kits to give journalists the resources they need to assess risk at a time when even election workers themselves have been subjected to violence and intimidation. It would not be untoward to say that journalists around the country—foreign correspondents especially—have wondered if predictions of a “red wave,” propped up by political figures who have capitalized on and regurgitated the talking points furthered by disinformation networks that have made attacks on election integrity and the media their bread and butter, would prove salient. That voters appear to have repudiated these falsehoods is a win for American press freedom, though this by no means suggests that the work of these journalists is over. If anything, it is bound to get much more taxing as politicians on both sides of the aisle rally their key supporters for 2024. But that’s all in a day’s work for those who are committed to facts and the principles of verification, independence, and accountability that characterizes journalism’s relationship with its citizens.

This commitment has been personified by foreign correspondents like Thomas Watkins, the Bureau Chief for The National who works with a team of 12 talented journalists in Washington and elsewhere in the United States, and Pablo Pardo, the U.S. Bureau Chief for El Mundo, who told the team at foreignpress.org about the challenges they face on a daily basis and have expressed, like Pardo, concerns about the nation’s entrance into “a time of protracted civil strife marked by political, racial, and religious violence,” especially when “control of the legislature is at stake.” And while the result of these midterms will not be the “decisive moment” that determines how effective one of the political parties has been in embracing an anti-democratic movement that would have dire consequences for the future of press freedom in America—that will come in 2024—these journalists and their colleagues at news organizations that continue to do their part (whether for larger outlets or smaller ones contending with razor-thin budgets) are the key to preserving the free press and the viability of democratic principles that make this work possible.

Though they often have less to work with, foreign correspondents are undeterred and will continue to form a vital part of the backbone of press freedom in a period when authoritarian leaders have made gains in countries worldwide and global press freedom has been in decline. Their work continues, and the lead-up to the next election cycle, by all accounts a pivotal one, will be richer for their fellow journalists and American citizens alike because of their contributions.