ABC News reduces its presence in Iraq, turns to BBC for daily reports

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ABC News is scaling back its presence in Iraq and will rely on BBC News for daily coverage of developments there.

“By working more closely with the BBC, we will increase our capabilities in Iraq and the region, while at the same time freeing our people and resources to concentrate on the unique reporting that our audiences value so highly,” ABC News President David Westin wrote in a memo to employees today.

The move, which takes effect Feb. 1, is an expansion of a long-standing relationship between the two networks, which share reporting and video. The arrangement was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter.

ABC will maintain a bureau in Baghdad staffed with a bureau chief and still plans to send reporters to the country to cover major news stories. But it will no longer have a permanent correspondent based in Iraq, as it did up through the November election, when Terry McCarthy was stationed there.

Covering the war has had a particularly personal impact on ABC News, which suffered a searing blow when a roadside bomb seriously wounded then-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt in January 2006.

“Iraq will continue to be an important story for ABC News and our audiences, and we will devote all the resources necessary to do the story justice,” Westin wrote in his memo.

ABC plans to produce more installments of its Emmy award-winning “Iraq: Where Things Stand” series, which first began airing in November 2003.

But as the war heads into its sixth year, all of the networks have reduced their manpower in Iraq as the costs of covering the conflict have mounted. Neither NBC nor CBS has a permanent correspondent based in Baghdad anymore, although NBC reporters rotate through Iraq regularly and CBS frequently sends correspondents there.

The networks’ flagship evening news programs devoted just 434 minutes to covering Iraq in 2008, down from 1,888 minutes the year before, according to analyst Andrew Tyndall.

-- Matea Gold