Insider : Foreign Reporters Get Little Respect in U.S. : Emphasis on domestic issues prompts candidates to snub overseas journalists.

The journalists say that in a year in which domestic issues dominate the campaign, they are receiving second-class treatment by both the major presidential candidates and their handlers. And the campaigners agree.

In some cases, the snubs are painfully direct. Yoav Karny, a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, says he recently was singled out at a press conference by Republican candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, who interrupted Karny in the middle of a question to declare: “This, my friend, is not about the outside world. . . . This is about the U.S.A.”

“Sometimes I get very bitter about the way we’re treated,” says Karny. “Such disrespect ultimately is to the detriment of America’s image around the world . . . but I’m sure the candidate doesn’t really dwell on that.”

With the Cold War off the campaign agenda for the first time in two generations, this year’s presidential candidates are spending little time addressing foreign policy and other international concerns. Instead, they are focusing on home-grown issues that more directly affect Americans worried about losing their jobs, finding affordable health care and keeping their children off drugs.

“It’s not a national chauvinism against the foreign media--it’s that the candidate wants to spend time with those reporters who can reach the voters,” says political consultant Gary Nordlinger. “There is a very definite pecking order among reporters on these campaign trips, and the foreign media come in dead last.”

“I think there is a natural tendency to drift toward the American journalists,” acknowledges Steve Cohen, press aide to Bill Clinton.

Indeed, foreign journalists often are surprised when a candidate actually picks them out of a crowd at a press conference.

Siegesmund von Ilsemann, Washington bureau chief for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, says the “America first” mood of the race has made it difficult to get the candidates or their spokesmen to comment on the new integrated European Community or the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

And when an American politician is rude, he says, it inevitably affects the tone of the resulting story. “After all, it’s hard to do otherwise when he has made you feel like you and your country are unimportant,” Von Ilsemann says.

The Foreign Press Center, an arm of the U.S. Information Agency that assists foreign media in Washington, estimates that more than 1,800 foreign correspondents from 82 countries are now working in the United States. Most are stationed in New York and Washington, though there are also enough in Los Angeles that the center maintains an office there as well.

As many as half of these foreign journalists cover the presidential campaign at least part of the time, USIA officials say. And virtually all of them will be writing about this summer’s nominating conventions in New York and Houston.

From the politician’s perspective, there may be little to gain but much to lose in answering the kinds of questions foreign reporters are most likely to ask, notes Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

Consider, for example, the case of President Gerald R. Ford during a 1976 debate with challenger Jimmy Carter. While it was an American who asked it, Ford--much to his later chagrin--asserted in answer to one question that the countries of Eastern Europe were not living under Soviet domination at the time.

Another obstacle to campaign coverage for foreign reporters is cost. While they may be assigned to seats in the back of a presidential candidate’s chartered bus or plane, they still must pay the going rate for reserving a space. Even under the best of circumstances, the cost of a day on the campaign trail can come to as much as $2,000 in airline vouchers alone when a candidate is scheduled for stops in several cities, says Cohen, the Clinton aide.

To cope, foreign reporters tend to employ the same strategy as smaller American news media, which also lack a large pool of reporters or deep enough pockets to maintain “assigned” seats on the bus. They may travel to states that hold the key primaries, such as New Hampshire and New York, but for lesser events they remain in their Washington or New York bureaus to compile stories from wire services and phone interviews.

But few foreign reporters pass up the opportunity to attend the party nominating conventions, where they say access to candidates is considerably improved.

“The convention is a must. . . . It is pure political theater,” says Ennio Caretto, bureau chief of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and a journalist who has covered U.S. politics for more than 20 years. “I’ve always found good stories at conventions. But I’ve never been put in a hotel anywhere near the site.”