Over two dozen foreign and international editors from leading news agencies and print, broadcast and online news media organisations in the U.S. and Canada gathered on May 12 in Washington, D.C. for a meeting of the International Press Institute (IPI) Foreign Editors’ Circle. This year’s discussion focused on the Trump administration’s effect on international relations and America’s place in the world.

The meeting was organised by IPI’s North American Committee and The Associated Press, in partnership with The Washington Post. It was the fifth gathering of the Foreign Editors’ Circle, a forum begun by IPI in 2013 to provide a place for foreign editors from the U.S. and Canada to discuss their common problems, issues of safety, and best practices for gathering international news. The most recent forum, in May 2016 in Boston, focused on issues of cyber-security.

The meeting on May 12 was held at the new offices of The Washington Post and was addressed by Post Executive Editor Marty Baron. Topics of discussion included the rise of populist political movements and the expansion of authoritarian governments in much of the world, and tools to cover terrorist incidents such as the recent London Bridge and Westminster attack.

Guest speakers at the event included Peter Wittig, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States, and Jonathan Pollack, a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution who will lead the session “The Threat of North Korea – A Briefing for Journalists”.

In addition, Professor Gary LaFree, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, together with Dr. Anthony Feinstein of the Sunnybrook Research Institute and Hannah Storm, director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), highlighted new research on stress and safety issues for journalists in the field.