Question: This month your awards will be honouring excellence in journalism - that comes at a time when there is an impression that journalistic standards are slipping, at least in the UK and possibly internationally. Is that something you'd recognise?

Catherine Mayer: I think it's way too simplistic to say that overall journalistic standards are slipping. I think one of the things that you'll be able to see from the awards is that excellence is tested and proved in tougher conditions than journalists have had to face for a long time.

And the reason for the tough conditions - well, they are several fold. You have obviously in the case of conflict reporting, which is, by the way, not all of the awards by any means are going to reflect that kind of subject matter, but it will be one of the central themes of the evening.

And in conflict reporting you have situations where it's becoming more dangerous to report because the neutrality of journalists is no longer respected and not to mention all the friendly fire incidents.

You also - both in that subject area and in all others - are aware of the fact that the economic downturn is causing all sorts of cheese-pairing measures. You have people going out to research stories with resources that are really not adequate.

In economic times you are much more likely to get pressure from proprietors to toe particular lines as well, because they're much more sensitive about advertising revenues.

And you also have the emergence of all of this new media, so you have various kinds of adjustments going on which have not had time to settle.

So all of these things are impacting on journalism and in spite of all of these difficult circumstances you'll see at the awards that people have done absolutely brilliant work this year.

Question: Has the 24-hour news media actually damaged the traditional print media?

Catherine Mayer: I don't think it's damaged it but I think that the print press is having to reassess what its function is.

I think what's true for all of the media is that the emergence of 24-hour news and also online news services just means that you have to think, "well, we can't compete on that level, so what is it that we're providing and why?".

Question: In terms of looking at the work of the FPA, domestically it's taken on higher visibility through the decision to base the Number 10 lobby briefings there. But there still does seem be a division between UK based and foreign press - in a sense, do you think that that barrier is now coming down?

Catherine Mayer:Well, it depends what you mean. Certainly when the lobby briefings were first moved to the Foreign Press Association, there was some disquiet in the lobby.

And the reason for that disquiet was partly just physical laziness, they didn't like the idea of having to walk across the park.

Some of them may have enjoyed health benefits as a result and have changed their mind on that.

But more seriously, there was concern about what the motives were for the move of the lobby briefings over to us.

There was a fear that we were in some way being used to dilute the power of the lobby to hold the government to account.

I always thought that that was complete nonsense and that whatever motives there may have been, that there was no way that we would dilute that power.

Moreover, there are so many very, very strong arguments for why we should have more access, which are all to do with an improvement in the quality of information available and analysis, and it's just very short-sighted and little-Englander not to see that.

That said don't you think the kind of information the government puts out at the lobby is not very relevant to the foreign press. Generally the number of foreign press is not very high. There are legitimate questions as to why the two have been brought together?

Catherine Mayer: Well, it varies. It's not that it's not relevant to us. You will find that there are greatly fluctuating numbers attending the lobby.

What I would absolutely disagree with is that it means in some way it's not of interest to us. It has made a huge difference to our ability to report things well. But it's not just the lobby briefings that we are continually pressing for access to.

We all need better access and the reason for that is if we don't have it, we're reduced to covering all sorts of Westminster events by basically doing clippings jobs - and that has never been known to produce good journalism.

What we write... helps to form the view that the outside world has of this country. It can affect everything from the political scene to investment decisions to tourism.

So it's in nobody's interest that we should get this sort of distorted and inaccurate view you would get if you were reliant solely on clippings.

As far as the numbers of foreign press attending lobbies, as I say it fluctuates

If you think what we as foreign correspondents do, it is not that what the lobby briefings are about is not relevant to us, it's that we're covering 800 topics a week.

And so sometimes we all pile in there because we're all covering it. Then you get political stories which are huge here, like the current Tory leadership struggles, most of the FPA members are not particularly interested in that. There are a large number of us who are not covering it at all, because that's seen as a sideshow.

Question: Do you think the British government is now giving the foreign press additional importance as a way of communicating Tony Blair's international message on the war on terror to key audiences around the world, particularly in the Muslim world?

Catherine Mayer: Well, that was clearly the case. The reason that we have enjoyed better access may be partly that governments always take a while to learn how the press really works.

And when they were, in 1997, just focused on getting elections, they in a very stupid, short-sighted way, saw us as the no votes press, and that continued actually for another three years.

We were really, really badly treated by the Labour government for its first years in power.

What changed their minds was not only 9/11 and then Afghanistan and then Iraq, though that's obviously been a huge influence, but also BSE and then foot and mouth.

So there have been various stories with international dimensions where they've suddenly been forced to sit up and realise what happens if they don't give us proper information.

Finally, do you think there is still a degree of resentment within the British press towards their foreign counterparts? There's still a lot of harrumphing when "Johnny Foreigner" takes up time with a question on foreign policy?

Catherine Mayer: I imagine that there are some people who are foolish enough to think that way but I'm not particularly aware of them anymore.

I think quite the contrary, that a lot of the lobby have now got to know some of us, have got to in fact realise that we can be useful to them and they to us, and there's actually quite a lot of rather civilised interchange between us nowadays.