Framing the U.S. and Russia Coverage: The Limited Agency of Foreign Correspondents and the Reproduction of Bias in the News

ABSTRACT Media representations have long reinforced Russia’s negative impression in the U.S. and that of the U.S. in Russia, shaping public opinion and foreign policy. While content analysts examine stereotypical frames in American and Russian news, questions remain about the relational dynamics steering these journalistic outcomes. This comparative study draws on 20 semi-structured interviews with Russian and American reporters stationed in the U.S. and Russia, respectively, prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Situating journalists in their sociopolitical contexts reveals and explains the extent to and ways in which their relationship with other actors and institutions (re)produces and/or disrupts biases in news production. Foreign correspondents express dissatisfaction with dominant frames and deploy two main strategies to alter and enhance coverage—negotiating the narrative on the two countries and maximizing their purpose “on the ground”—yet their work often fortifies oversimplified and/or distorted messaging. While state regulation and ownership of the media disproportionately affects Russian journalists, both groups lack the agency to refine and rectify representations of Russia and the U.S. because of three shared challenges: the marketization of the news, the complexity of communicating foreign affairs, and the intensification of bilateral tensions.


Introduction
While journalistic ethical codes uphold objectivity, balanced reportage, and "truth-telling" as core traits of the profession (Roudakova 2017, 4; see also Schudson 2001), scholars continue to underline the difficulty of realizing these ideals in practice (Chong 2019;McGoldrick 2006;Schmidt 2018).Far from reporting "just the facts" (Ward 2018, 138), journalists actively construct the news, selectively formulating and disseminating images, discourses, and frames (Baum and Potter 2008;Robinson 1999;Wanta, Golan, and Lee 2004) that reflect biases-both implicit and explicit, individual and structural (Panievsky 2022).While "the ability to shape representations in the mass media bestows considerable power" to media professionals, enabling them to influence public opinion and policy, so too do public opinion and policy inform discourses and frames in the news (Starkey 2017, xi).Indeed, scholars increasingly view public opinion, foreign policy, and media as mutually influential (Baum and Potter 2008).
Coverage of Russia in the United States and of the U.S. in Russia exemplifies journalistic bias and its implications.Despite key institutional differences in the marketization and the politicization of the news, as well as press freedom, both Russian and American media publications continue to reinforce a negative impression of the other country, which contributes to hostile public opinion and antagonistic foreign policy decisions (Bayulgen and Arbatli 2013;Palmer 2019).Since the end of the Cold War, "American media outlets are increasingly returning to the old binary opposition between the morally superior values of Western 'freedom' and those of a backward and 'autocratic' Russia" (Tsygankov 2017, 20).Meanwhile, studies of Russian mass media highlight "a daily ritual of identifying Russia's external and internal enemies," especially the "'duplicitous' and 'degenerate' West" (Roudakova 2017, 217).The increasingly strained relationship between the two countries-particularly since Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022-heightens the prominence and resonance of this rhetoric, justifying framing practices that intensify a binary opposition between the two countries (Kortunov and Oliker 2017).
While content and discourse analysts examine the presence and instrumentalization of these news frames in Russian and American coverage (Hinck, Kluver, and Cooley 2018;Repina et al. 2018;Tsygankov 2017), questions remain about the reproduction of journalistic bias by foreign correspondents.These journalists not only play a "dominant role in informing the public [and] the government about foreign events" (Wu and Hamilton 2004, 519), but their geographic location and regional expertise also suggest that their work offers a relatively authentic, on-the-ground perspective on distant affairs.However, foreign correspondents also produce the news alongside-and in negotiation with-a web of actors both at home and abroad, including the state, media corporations, editors, sources, and news consumers.Critically, the varied sociopolitical and cultural contexts in which journalists operate also pattern these interactions, shaping news frames in the process.
In order to investigate what contributes to the persistence of journalistic bias in news coverage about Russia and the U.S., this study explores the experiences of American foreign correspondents based in Russia and Russian foreign correspondents based in the U.S., exploring three main issues: (1) How do foreign correspondents' personal beliefs and professional practices, as well as the other actors with whom they engage shape their coverage?This comparative study draws on 20 semi-structured interviews with Russian and American foreign correspondents stationed in the U.S. and Russia, respectively, between May 2021 and January 2022-i.e., prior to the escalation of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Findings indicate dissatisfaction with dominant representations of Russia and the U.S. in the news among both cohorts of journalists, who deploy two main strategies in their attempts to alter and enhance coverage: negotiating the narrative on the country they report on and maximizing their purpose "on the ground."However, despite their strategic efforts, American and Russian foreign correspondents often end up fortifying oversimplified and/or distorted representations of Russia or the U.S. Despite their different levels of exposure to state media regulation and ownership, three shared challenges limit the ability of both sets of journalists to refine and rectify messaging, skewing coverage along familiar, prejudiced lines: the marketization of the news, the complexity of communicating foreign affairs, and the intensification of bilateral tensions between the two countries.Though conducted before Russia's 2022 military interventions in Ukraine, which brought about significant changes to foreign correspondence and to journalism more broadly, this study helps indicate the state of journalism in and about both countries in the period immediately preceding the escalation, which can enhance our understanding of the degree to and ways in which the production of journalism has changed since the outbreak of full-scale war.
Notwithstanding the role of individual journalists in shaping news coverage, this article assesses how individual beliefs and practices interact with those of other actors in the media sphere, as well as structural constraints imposed by the state and the media industry.To capture these dynamics, we begin by reviewing the significance of media systems and journalistic autonomy to media framing, paying particular attention to how these factors jointly shape coverage of Russia and the U.S. against the backdrop of strained bilateral relations.The results of the analysis follow in two empirical subsections, which correspond to the main strategies that foreign correspondents from both countries employ in their attempts to modify and improve coverage.Each subsection illuminates and analyzes the ways in which state intervention, which disproportionately affects the work of Russian foreign correspondents, as well as shared commercial, rhetorical, and geopolitical challenges hinder journalistic pursuits to provide new angles to their reporting and upend stereotypes.The conclusion explores the implications of the study's findings for the broader scholarship on news production and points to potential solutions that could reduce hostile coverage on the U.S. and Russia, thereby improving both public opinion and bilateral relations-a project that will become all the more critical as tensions between the two countries continue to intensify.

How Media Systems and Journalistic Autonomy Influence News Frames
While journalists' professional values, role perceptions, and intentions influence news production (Hanitzsch and Vos 2017;Van Gorp 2010;Zhou and Moy 2007), institutional and organizational contexts regulate "the extent to which journalists are free to decide story angles, what sources to use, and what narrative frames to employ" (Sjøvaag 2013, 158; see also Tewksbury and Scheufele 2009;Reich and Hanitzsch 2013).Hallin and Mancini's typology of media systems outlines four key variables-"journalistic professionalism," "the development of media markets," "the role of the state," and "the degrees and forms of political parallelism" (2004)-which constrain the activities of journalists in divergent ways and to varying degrees across time and space.
More recent work moves beyond their sample of liberal democracies in Western Europe and North America, noting that although all journalists confront structural barriers in their work, those operating in non-democratic societies where state intervention in and/or ownership of the media is more pronounced are significantly more likely to face "clear limitations to the freedom they have to make decisions, and to behave according to their own ideals" (Hellmueller and Mellado 2015, 5).Yet even in liberal contexts where the news media tends to fall under private ownership, business interests may undermine the perceived role of journalism as a public service (Sjøvaag 2013).Beyond macro-level state and market forces, organizational characteristics such as the "role, structure, and strategy" of a media outlet create further constraints or opportunities for journalists, enforcing particular logics, editorial standards, and agendas (Örnebring 2012).Organizations, and the journalists they employ, may embrace a "watchdog" role that holds political authorities accountable (Skovsgaard et al. 2013), while newsrooms run or funded by the state can serve as "a tool for marginalizing any potential political opposition or civic movement" (Walker and Orttung 2014, 72).
Despite the shared challenges faced by journalists today, such as declining public trust (Fink 2019), disinformation (Tumber and Zelizer 2019), and uncertain revenue streams (Bebawi and Evans 2019), the political, sociocultural, economic, and historical features underpinning media systems create divergent conditions for reporters working in different countries.American and Russian journalists are a case in point.Whereas the U.S. media remains independent of government intervention and journalists retain relatively high levels of autonomy and freedom, the state continues to wield a heavy hand in the Russian media industry, pressuring media outlets and individual journalists to conform to the official position via intimidation, arrest, and physical attack (Freedom House 2020, Roudakova 2017; Somfalvy and Pleines 2021).Russian political elites who have taken increasing control over the media sphere under President Vladimir Putin continue to restrict media pluralism, cracking down on the dwindling number of independent outlets and amplifying state-sanctioned televised news (Bodrunova, Litvinenko, and Nigmatullina 2021;Kiriya 2019;Lipman, Kachkaeva, and Poyker 2018).In contrast, high levels of commercialization in the U.S. media industry ensure competition between different sets of biased news, helping to propagate a diversity of perspectives even as political polarization in the country intensifies (Hallin and Giles 2005;Rutenberg 2016;Schudson 2019).
Like journalistic practices more broadly, "societal norms and values, organizational pressures and constraints, external pressures from interest groups and other policymakers, professional routines, and ideological or political orientations of journalists" all contribute to the framing of the news (Tewksbury and Scheufele 2009, 22), or the selection process by which "some aspects of a perceived reality [are made] more salient in a communicating text" (Entman 1993, 52).Relative to other reporters, the ways in which foreign correspondents represent issues in news coverage are more consequential for both public opinion and policy-making: Not only do most people rely on journalists to convey international affairs and their significance (Archetti 2012) but "[the] presence of foreign correspondents at the scene of unfolding events [also] gives them special authenticity" (Horsley and Selva 2021, 1).Yet, foreign correspondents may also internalize and reproduce frames that dominate in political discourse back home.For example, after 9/ 11, the "War on Terror" became "a powerful organizing principle" in both policy and journalism, "[creating] a favorable news discourse climate for [U.S.] military action in Iraq" (Reese and Lewis 2009, 792).Likewise, foreign reporters on both sides of the Iron Curtain amplified a "conflict frame" during the Cold War (Bartholomé, Lecheler, and de Vreese 2015), "actively [participating] in their nations' projects of disseminating the truth and exposing their adversary's lies" (Fainberg 2020, 4)-a frame that is revived today in light of eroding Western and Russian relations (Bayulgen and Arbatli 2013;Palmer 2019;Repina et al. 2018).Moreover, foreign correspondents' coverage is shaped not only by their domestic media system but also by that of the host country in which they are based (Kester 2010).Officials may seek to prevent and/or influence coverage by circumscribing access to informants, targeting journalists via intimidation, surveillance, physical attack, detention, or "branding them as threats to state security or spreaders of false information" (Horsley and Selva 2021).
Despite important contributions from previous research about news frames and the reproduction of bias, the vast majority of studies analyze the content of news publications, as opposed to the processes shaping how journalists, situated in particular institutional and organizational contexts, frame the news and why (Raemy and Vos 2021; for a notable exception see Nothias 2020).Like journalism scholarship as a whole, which tends to focus on the experience of Western countries, there is a distinct need for comparative work that "[places] findings in political, social, or cultural contexts," especially in non-democratic states (Willnat and Martin 2020, 504; see also Hanitzsch and Vos 2018;Hellmueller and Mellado 2015).Using the cases of American and Russian foreign correspondents reporting on Russia and the U.S., respectively, this article aims to analyze how journalists, alongside other actors and institutions, shape the coverage of both countries, investigating how reporters perceive biases in the news and the extent to and ways in which they reproduce and/or undermine these biases in their own reporting.

Method
This study draws upon 20 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with ten American and ten Russian journalists reporting on U.S.-Russia relations (see Table 1).The gender distribution (80% men, 20% women) reflects the male-dominated field of international reporting (Deutch 2019).While our sample includes journalists from newsrooms with similar reach in Russia and the U.S. for comparability, it is not a representative portrait of each country's media landscape.We intentionally sampled from a range of national media outlets with different relationships to the state in order to understand how foreign correspondents navigate variable institutional contexts.Twelve (60%) respondents worked for private newsrooms and eight (40%) worked for newsrooms funded by the state.These media organizations included major American and Russian outlets based in the U.S. (50%), Russia (35%), and Europe (15%).We do not provide the full list of media outlets in order to protect study participants' anonymity.
Initial participants were recruited through the authors' existing professional networks established in prior journalism work, supplemented by snowball sampling-a method attuned to locating more vulnerable and less visible populations, such as the one featured in this study (Small 2009).The resulting sample excludes potential respondents who either did not respond to our requests for interviews or declined to participate.Ranging from 45 to 60 minutes, interviews took place between May 2021 and January 2022-prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022on the video platform Zoom or the messaging app Signal, both of which apply endto-end encryption, protecting the identity of respondents.Interviews were conducted in English or Russian, depending on the interviewee's preference; transcripts from Russian-language interviews were translated into English to standardize coding practices.In order to understand how journalists come to (re)produce biases and what forces or structures shape this process, interviews asked about foreign correspondents' approaches to stories, reporting routines, and engagement with a range of actors and institutions, including sources, editors, host states, and audiences.As one author of this article is a Russian citizen and the other an American, we recognize that our own positionality may have affected data collection, though it also may have reduced response bias.
Employing a grounded approach, we began analysis with open coding to identify recurring concepts in the data, springing from interviewees' own perceptions of foreign correspondence and the journalistic process (e.g., truth, newsworthiness, stereotypes, etc.) (Corbin and Strauss 1990).We then employed focused coding (Tavory and Timmermans 2014) to further explore these concepts, concentrating in particular on their relationship to one another and to our respondents' understanding of their work.This revealed foreign correspondents' dissatisfaction with dominant news frames and pointed to two core strategies that journalists deploy to alter and enhance coveragenegotiating the narrative on Russia and the U.S. and maximizing their purpose "on the ground."Data on these core themes highlighted that, despite operating in divergent institutional contexts, both Russian and American foreign correspondents faced a set of shared obstacles to refine or rectify representations of each country in their coverage: the marketization of the news, the complexity of communicating foreign affairs, and the intensification of bilateral tensions.

Results
Drawing upon 20 interviews, this section presents and analyzes two everyday strategies that Russian and American foreign correspondents employed in their attempts to modify and improve coverage of the U.S. and Russia: negotiating the narrative about the country they report on and maximizing their purpose "on the ground."While study participants widely disapproved of the dominant representations of the U.S. and Russia in the media landscape of their home countries, they met several obstacles that hindered their efforts to provide more nuanced, holistic, and accurate portraits of Russian or American affairs.Whereas Russian foreign correspondents remained relatively more susceptible to state intervention vis-à-vis their American counterparts, journalists from both countries confronted common stumbling blocks-commercial, rhetorical, and geopolitical challenges-in their work.Taken together, and despite the heavy hand of the Russian government in the media industry, Russian and American foreign correspondents alike often reproduced overused stereotypes.

Negotiating the Narrative
Frustrated with the dominant and hackneyed discourses on Russia or the U.S., foreign correspondents aimed to negotiate the narrative on the country they covered.In fact, for many journalists, subverting readers' pre-existing frames constituted a professional goal: When I started working as a journalist in Russia, I told my editor, "I want to mention the name of Vladimir Putin as little as possible in my stories."I always look for stories about the other 145 million people who live in this country [R13, American, state-funded nonprofit newsroom].
Further, reporting on a beat outside of international relations and domestic politics occasionally presented an opportunity to challenge tropes.An American journalist noted that while the arts and culture section of their outlet received relatively less engagement, a widely read piece could perform a dual function: disseminating information about the arts and "compensating" for the amount of "bad news" on Russia to provide a fuller picture of life in the country [R10, American, private newsroom].However, the challenges foreign correspondents met during the negotiation process ultimately lowered their individual capacity to upend cliché framing techniques or introduce new forms of messaging.Whereas Russian correspondents faced greater restraints from the state in contrast to their American counterparts, both cohorts of journalists confronted shared barriers to brokering alternative messages on the U.S. and Russia, respectively: the commercial problem of news consumption patterns and the rhetorical problem of distilling complex foreign affairs into content legible to home audiences.With limited agency to overturn the narrative, foreign correspondents remained complicit in disseminating biased representations about their country of focus.
While both Russian and American respondents spoke to the difficulty of countering hackneyed narratives, the experiences of Russian journalists highlighted a more unidirectional, top-down regulation of their journalistic practices, restricting their ability to contest popular frames, particularly for those employed at state-owned or -funded outlets.One respondent noted that their editor required them to elevate Russian actors at the expense of Americans: "What Russian Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov says is a priori great … and at the same time [journalists] have to write that Biden stumbled over the stairs" [R3; Russian; private, state-affiliated newsroom].Another spoke frankly about the "editorial policy" at their place of employment: They sent a letter from Moscow: "Please make us a story about this."And then there are four points to pay attention to … And all these points end up fortifying the idea that it's so bad in the U.S., they are such fools that guns are freely available, see how many people are killed and how Biden can't do anything, he's a weak president, and so on.As such, there is no [editorial] policy, but everyone understands that [what's important is] the main viewer [the state], and not to cause the displeasure of the Kremlin … I try to do as much as possible so that I won't be ashamed to look in the mirror later [R14, Russian, state-owned newsroom].
While American respondents also called attention to the black-and-white, good-versusevil messaging that pervades news about Russia in the U.S., they more often confessed to replicating these narratives themselves rather than at the behest of government mandates or explicit editorial pressure.
We tend to sanctify opposition activists and vilify the governments of countries that are authoritarian.
[Journalists] all do that sometimes.I'm sure I've written articles about people in the opposition that were maybe excessively positive.Just because, as a person, I'd rather see [Alexey] Navalny [a Russian opposition leader] as Russia's president than Putin … I've tried in the past, just like any journalist, to talk to people who are pro-Kremlin activists and it's very hard to actually write an objective story about these people, because you have to check and double-check everything they said [R15, American, statefunded newsroom].
Though this respondent described their relatively futile efforts to produce more balanced coverage, they also emphasized their own decision-making authority over what they reported on and how.Indeed, U.S. foreign correspondents rarely cited the role of news editors or their outlet's editorial stance in influencing their coverage.Instead, they were more likely to acknowledge that many of their stories were driven by their own interests, news developments, and their audiences, as discussed below.
Second, regardless of how actively or frequently individual foreign correspondents would have liked to subvert common stereotypes, news consumption patterns limited the ability of journalists to modify the narratives on Russia or the U.S. that dominated in their home country.Respondents highlighted the discrepancy between the topics in which home-country readers were interested-and which sustained journalism as a business-and those that journalists themselves deemed worthy of coverage.Prioritizing audience interests could drive foreign correspondents to publish simplistic or distorted understandings of Russia or the U.S.: When Biden accepted that Putin is a killer, that kind of news attracted hundreds of thousands of people.But when we write about how Biden wants to make the U.S. economy green, that kind of news will attract maybe 20,000.And we understand that since we have limited resources, we need to set priorities and cover topics that would be more interesting for people who read us [R3; Russian; private, state-affiliated newsroom].
Newsrooms are, for the most part, responding to what I assume to be just reader pressure of what they want to click on.And it's often Putin stuff and kind of panic reporting about the Kremlin's creep across Europe, or its authoritarian rise or whatever is-kind of spooky narratives like that, which are not groundless, but if you only read that, I think you'd walk away with not a full picture of Russia-one that would probably not capture ordinary life on the ground very well [R18, American, private newsroom].
The competitive media environment in which foreign correspondents operated and the industry of journalism thus pushed journalists to cover "sellable" issues that tended to correspond to dominant news frames.Constraints were further defined for Russian journalists working at government-controlled outlets.While these media organizations largely did not face budgetary limitations and could readily allocate resources for maintaining correspondents overseas, their journalists worked with diminished autonomy and were often tasked with reproducing state-driven narratives.
In addition, the complexity of the news itself could discourage more nuanced coverage.For example, journalists maintained that readers simply did not want to read "complicated details that puzzle their previous simplified understanding of Russia.For them, Russia is just one of many other countries, so why should they care so much?" [R15, American, statefunded newsroom].Others decried the simplicity of existing news content but nevertheless lacked the leverage to defy the convenient packaging that their editors desired: Often, the narrative is that the Russians can hack into your brain and decide what you're gonna have for breakfast.Or they simply are just a crumbling country that's going to fall apart … You see things often falling into these two very clean categories, neither of which are really true … And it's important, it's difficult because oftentimes it's a little bit of both … Whenever you do tell a story that fits that narrative, that tells this idea of Russia undermining the United States, you can certainly see the way people attach themselves to that and latch onto that.It confirms that everything [they] know about Russia is true without reading any of the other stuff you write [R4, American, private newsroom].
As this respondent pointed out, the pressure to fit stories into accepted rhetorical templates flattened coverage, unable to encompass two seemingly contradictory notions that would nevertheless present a more accurate image of Russian society.At the same time, ironing out a narrative in this way often reinforced preexisting beliefs about Russia in the minds of American news consumers, perpetuating the cycle.Likewise, some American respondents regretted that a high proportion of their stories featured Moscow and/or the Russian president, bolstering tropes already prominent in the U.S. media; however, they acknowledged that these themes were inevitable when reporting on a highly centralized, authoritarian Russian state.Overall, despite their motivations to contribute nuanced, accurate reports on the U.S. or Russia, the state dictates, business concerns, audience interest, and the ways in which the news itself unfolded overshadowed concerted attempts by foreign correspondents to negotiate alternative angles, images, and frames on the two countries.In the process, their work often reproduced problematic narratives, compromising the desire of many journalists to produce more true or accurate coverage.

Maximizing Purpose
In contrast to other journalists, foreign correspondents are on the 'frontlines' of foreign affairs, which, in an ideal scenario, positions them to produce relatively accurate coverage.
However, most respondents noted numerous hindrances to maximizing their purpose on the ground.Narrow definitions of 'newsworthiness' among editors and audiences, the business orientations of the news industry, and barriers to access-exacerbated by mounting bilateral tensions-all limited the ability of foreign correspondents to refine news representations of Russia and the U.S.
Both Russian and American respondents confronted narrow definitions of "newsworthiness," often tied to national political interests, that steered them to report on issues that either did not exist on the ground or were already extensively covered in the media.For one journalist based in Moscow, these conflicts came to a head with the 2016 Steele dossier, a leaked document that alleged collaboration between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government: We were on the ground, we were the ones who had to find it … And it was extremely frustrating for me, because that's all people in the States were talking about.And I couldn't write anything that wasn't related to the Steele dossier.But I couldn't confirm anything from the Steele dossier.So it was probably about eight or nine months, where I just literally didn't write anything [R4, American, private newsroom].
Whereas the salience of the Steele dossier in the U.S. prevented this journalist from taking full advantage of their post in Russia, another bemoaned the superficiality of topics deemed newsworthy: Journalists are focused on secondary things like trying to figure out where exactly the presidents will meet and how.The best journalistic minds focus on whether it will be Switzerland or Austria.But does it matter?A lot of resources are spent on issues of minor importance … it is better to concentrate on something substantial and find out what are the issues at stake between the two countries [R3; Russian; private, state-affiliated newsroom].
Though in the minority, some journalists learned over time to more effectively capitalize on their unique position.Recalling a period between 2017 and early 2018, one foreign correspondent commented that while other journalists sought to instrumentalize Russia to "bring down Trump," they strove to convey "Russia itself as a country and a place": Rather than have me kind of chase my tail unproductively for another six months, better to let me do a story, where I could do something original that readers weren't going to get elsewhere, right?There are lots of places to get Trump-Russia stories, but nowhere else but [my outlet] were you gonna get a long feature piece about the small town and the doctor-turned-writer who lives there.And so that was the case, I thought, of [my outlet] doing what it does best.And I hope in a way what I can do best, which is tell the nonobvious stories that nonetheless are really instructive and in some way educational about Russia … These are stories that the American reader didn't know he or she was interested in [R12, American, private newsroom].
While the above respondent detached from popular reporting trends, not all reporters had the independence or resources to do so.
In addition, Russian and American respondents spoke to the ways in which the news enterprise as a whole tends to undervalue nuanced foreign reporting, citing financial constraints and the unforgiving 24/7 news cycle.Prior to 2022, most major American newsrooms sent reporters to Moscow, whereas few Russian news organizations sent journalists to the U.S.-and those that did were often news outlets funded by the state.In turn, coverage of the U.S. by Russian foreign correspondents was much more likely to represent the official perspective.This constrained the ability of Russian journalists to move the dial on how the U.S. is framed in their home country to a much greater degree than their American counterparts reporting on Russia.At the same time, despite the greater number of American journalists operating in Russia, resources also stymied American reporters' ability to paint a fuller picture of Russia.One interviewee emphasized the difficulty of "breaking out of the Moscow bubble"; as the outlet's singular reporter for the Eastern European region, it was simply impossible to travel to and report on other parts of the country, which they believed would more accurately depict Russian life [R13, American, state-funded nonprofit newsroom].Further, although most respondents shared their respect for the journalistic standard of impartiality and stated that they did not intend to produce unbalanced accounts of Russia or the U.S., the urgency baked into the industry reduced the amount of time reporters had to find experts that could speak to multiple sides of a given story or the perspectives of individuals outside of government agencies: Recently we wrote a story with just two Russian experts.That happened because there is a significant time difference between Russia and the U.S. and American experts were still sleeping.We couldn't wait, and we had to publish that story without the second side [R3, Russian, private, state-affiliated newsroom].
These logistical challenges underscored the unforgiving tempo of journalism and its problematic effects on news coverage.
Finally, worsening bilateral relations exacerbated foreign reporting challenges.While most foreign correspondents undergo an accreditation process to receive work visas, the once-a-year ordeal for U.S. journalists in Russia grew more complex after 2014, eventually requiring applicants to complete a medical and psychiatric examination and/or include writing samples (following the escalation, foreign journalists must reapply for accreditation every three months) (Hartog 2023).Yet even those who received approval often ran up against additional barriers that cut off access to sources.This undermined their ability to effectively contribute to outsiders' understanding of contemporary Russia, even though they were in many ways best positioned to tackle this challenge.In particular, both Russian and American respondents noted how rising tensions between the two countries had affected their access to respondents: Once I was covering a conference and asked an American expert for an interview and he canceled it in a rude way and called me a propagandist after he learned that I'm from Russia [R2, Russian, state-funded newsroom].
It was a story about a dacha [a country house].Maybe [the potential source] couldn't believe that I wanted to write a story only about a dacha.I was probably trying to do something to hurt Russia.And I have encountered this numerous times, that people just don't want to talk to me, because I am amerikanskoe radio [American radio] [R13, American, state-funded nonprofit newsroom].
Navigating this politicized terrain also limited which stories journalists decided to tell-a form of self-censorship.One American respondent with a record of reporting on contentious topics in Russia-the LGBTQ + community, people with disabilities, and climate change-explained why they abandoned an article about an art exhibition: It struck me as being … There was politics involved.And I just didn't want to touch it.I just didn't want to get involved in it.And I didn't want to inadvertently hurt anybody that we were writing about in that process [R10, American, private newsroom].
In sum, both domestic politics and international relations disrupted foreign correspondence, politicizing journalists, the topics and people they reported on, and the news media as an institution.As the above respondents noted, these strains restricted the ability of foreign journalists to produce coverage that upended biased frames about Russia or the U.S., generating tension between the quest to deliver accurate information to news consumers and restrictions on journalistic autonomy-even as these restrictions often stemmed from different sources for Russian and American foreign correspondents.

Discussion and Conclusion
Our findings indicate that while Russian foreign correspondents confronted an outsized state presence in their work vis-à-vis their American counterparts, both groups faced common obstacles tied to media corporations, news consumers, and geopolitical developments between Russia and the U.S.Although both sets of journalists largely objected to the frames emphasized in the news, these challenges, albeit to varying degrees and in different ways, largely prevented both sets of journalists from adapting news frames concerning their country of focus.In effect, foreign correspondents were often complicit in and expressed shame around reifying stereotypes and biases about Russia and the U.S. or engaging in self-censorship, suggesting a shared journalism culture across both sets of foreign correspondents despite their sociopolitical differences.In fact, limited by the marketization of the news, the complexity of communicating foreign affairs, and the deepening of bilateral tensions, foreign correspondents turned to common practices, endeavoring to negotiate the narrative on the two countries and maximize their purpose "on the ground." The shared obstacles faced by both Russian and American foreign correspondents reflect issues endemic to journalism on a global scale.A fast-paced, 24/7 news cycle, inadequate funding, and conflicting interests between foreign correspondents and news consumers all stand in the way of advancing more balanced and constructive coverage (Bebawi and Evans 2019).These challenges carry implications for the lives of individual foreign correspondents and the media organizations that employ them, as well as for policymaking and public opinion-after all, foreign correspondents act as a main conduit connecting the general public with information about remote events (Aalberg et al. 2013).Though comparatively analyzing foreign correspondents in two specific countries, this research also engages widespread issues in the industry such as media integrity and press freedom.Moreover, by concentrating on relations between foreign correspondents and other actors involved in the processes of news production, this article's findings unearth a more dynamic picture of news production concerning Russia and the U.S. prior to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Despite significant changes to the media sphere after Russia's escalation of the war in Ukraine, especially for journalists based in Russia, the findings in this study are significant for shedding light on the conditions of foreign correspondence prior to the full-scale invasion.Understanding the manner in which foreign correspondents operated during this period can help illuminate the extent to and ways in which the production of journalism has altered since February 2022, and with what consequences.
The study's findings also point to potential steps that foreign correspondents, news organizations, and policymakers can take to begin to address the obstacles faced by foreign correspondents.For example, while editors and news consumers will likely continue to task foreign correspondents with reporting on major stories relevant to national policy interests, journalists located abroad can advocate for producing stories that capitalize on their geographic location, illuminating more nuanced content to readers, listeners, and viewers back home.Establishing more robust and transparent channels of communication between home-country news offices and foreign bureaus can also mitigate conflicting views about the newsworthiness and/or the reportability of a given subject, which sometimes impede foreign correspondents from doing their jobs or lead them to reproduce stereotypical frames.Training programs for foreign correspondents, other journalists, and local fixers (Palmer 2019) may also help these actors develop skills that enhance reflexivity throughout the reporting process so that they remain cognizant of the biases they may (un)intentionally reproduce.Further, while journalists cannot individually change how news consumers engage with the media, strengthening media literacy programs in the U.S. and Russia can help encourage citizens of both countries to read a more diverse set of outlets with a healthy skepticism.However, given its current political climate, Russia is unlikely to enhance this programming for the foreseeable future.
While this study sought to reveal the relational processes by which journalists in different settings come to (re)produce biases in the news, future research might triangulate interviews with a content analysis of journalists' publications in order to match study participants' commentary on journalistic practices with their resulting media publications.Interviewing a wider range of media professionals, from editors and journalists to factcheckers and fixers, can also provide useful comparative insights on how different players contribute to news production.Moreover, this study serves as a fertile foundation for applied research to help international journalists more effectively navigate various institutional and organizational constraints standing in the way of more nuanced and productive coverage.
Finally, sweeping changes to media regulation in Russia (Gessen 2023;Jovanovski 2022) since the escalation of the war in Ukraine have meaningfully altered the landscape of foreign correspondence for those interviewed in this study.In particular, independent reporting on the war has been criminalized in Russia where the state has also implemented more complicated visa renewal procedures and enacted bans on the entry of many U.S. journalists (Grynbaum, Koblin, and Hsu 2022;Ljunggren 2023).Likewise, the U.S. refused to grant entry to two Russian journalists in May 2023 (Forrest 2023).The authors are currently engaged in forthcoming research that explores respondents' attitudes toward foreign correspondence and journalism in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Initial findings suggest the worsening of ongoing issues: further restrictions on information access and journalistic autonomy and heightened censorship, particularly for journalists operating in Russia.Moreover, both American and Russian foreign correspondents perceive a rise in oversimplified and increasingly polarized reporting on Russia and the U.S. A follow-up study with the journalists featured in this study can unearth important insights about the extent to which journalistic practices are evolving in an increasingly constrained field, as well as the extent to which the challenges they faced prior to 2022 are sharpened in a context of war.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
(2) To what extent and in what ways do interactions between foreign correspondents and other actors involved in news production inform the work of journalists from the U.S. compared to those from Russia? (3) To what extent and in what ways do these relationships reify and/or challenge biased representations of the U.S. and Russia in the construction of the news?

Table 1 .
The demographic characteristics of respondents.While not directly funded by the state, these media outlets are owned by a subsidiary of one of Russia's largest energy companies that is majority state-owned.