The traveler is ever more necessary as a witness and reporter

“1,000 people died in a rural village in Ivory Coast; this was a small news item in the western press, though when one person is injured in Jerusalem it’s on the front page as an outrage. I’d like to know why this is so. The fact that there are far fewer foreign correspondents makes the traveler more necessary as a witness and a reporter.”
Paul Theroux, “The places in between“, FT.com, May 27 2011