From Mao in the Yan'an caves to Nelson Mandela at a rally, from Pope John Paul II on his plane to rebel groups in jungles and desert hideouts, correspondents have interacted with all kinds of foreign leaders and opposition groups. This chapter explores how they obtained access to them around the world, from breaking through opaque bureaucracies to organizing meet-ups with insurgents by following trails of instructions hidden in tree trunks to negotiating the opening of bureaus in such closed regimes as North Korea. Governments have also used the denial of access as retaliation against negative coverage, in a widespread effort to control news. One of the most disturbing findings is the level of surveillance and censorship that correspondents have been, and continue to be, subjected to around the world, sometimes resulting in expulsions and detentions that block stories from reaching the wire, at least temporarily. Correspondents also face the opposite concern – how to avoid spin, staged access, and being manipulated for propaganda purposes, which leaders from Nicolae Ceaușescu to the Khmer Rouge all attempted.

Getting Access to Foreign Leaders

The earliest access conversation between AP and foreign leaders concerned the most basic logistical issue: can a bureau be set up? In Havana in the 1960s as in Pyongyang in the 2010s, correspondents (and executives) worked hard to obtain permission to open an AP office. Bilingual Ike Flores (1–2) was editing on the foreign desk and traveling through the Caribbean in the mid-1960s, shortly after the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis, when he and “the AP brass,” through “much give-and-take” via the Czechoslovakian Embassy in Washington, “succeeded in convincing the Cuban regime … that they needed to speak to the world” – and that “we were objective, that we would give the good as well as the bad of the Cuban Revolution.” Flores’ first short visa kept being extended for almost two and a half years. Both Flores and his successor, John Fenton Wheeler, wrote analytical pieces on Cuba's basic struggles, including food shortages, sometimes juxtaposing the rosy regime predictions with matter-of-fact complaints by a Havana cleaner and a woman in a cattle-producing province.