News
Cobbling the story together
Bill Mitchell at Poynter does a great job dissecting the timeline that saw the picture above appear on the front page of the Sunday Times, only to be subsequently debunked At The Sunday Times, managing editor Richard Caseby said the paper’s first account of the baby was cobbled together on deadline when editors slotted the […]
Gonzo
[video:youtube:QT2c3lwidkw] Alex Gibney talks to the BBCs Tom Brook about his latest film Gonzo which portrays the life of the original gonzo journalist and foreign correspndent Hunter S. Thompson
Live tonight: Is this the end for FARC?
View in iTunes You can now watch the event here. With the recent release of Igrid Betancourt, we’ll be discussing the future of the FARC at the Frontline Club tonight. Please come watch, listen and join in live on the Frontline Club live broadcast channel. We go live at 7.30pm GMT. The question up for […]
Web 2.0 for warzones… not there yet
Our man in Chad, David Axe, writes a great post summarizing the strengths and the weaknesses of using a Nokia N95 and live video broadcast software Qik to report from a war zone. It’s not rocket science, if the mobile phone networks are flakey and/or you can’t get to a decent wifi connection live reporting […]
Alive and Qiking in Chad
When Web 2.0 startup Qik offered me a free Nokia N95 camera phone plus their new video-streaming software for my trip to Chad, I jumped. Here was a chance to try out the latest technology in one of the world’s most remote war-zones. The Qik-N95 combo promised to condense the basic capabilities of bulky […]
Darfur and the media attention deficit
Ethan Zuckerman asks some great questions about Darfur and media attention on his blog. I dropped a comment, but it might be worth pulling together a few threads here. The general feeling is that “attention paid to Darfur is unprecedented” – but was it? Is it? If we feed a few keywords through Silobreaker’s Media […]
The Trouble with Kenya
After two years bedding down with rats and cockroaches in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Tom Cholmondeley was finally able to start his defence today. We may even have a verdict next month, although Keriako Tobiko is probably not done with his stalling tactics. Today the session was adjourned at lunch because Kenya’s director of public […]
Arianna Huffington (continued): Surge in Iraq has failed
After her visit to the BBC, when she criticised media coverage of the war in Iraq, Arianna Huffington has decided to write a blog post explaining why she thinks the military surge in Iraq isn’t working: “…while McCain and the Republicans may have been able to win the PR war among the American media, there […]
15 months of reporting
[video:youtube:N3_ZKBwv3V0] Mike Boettcher, ex-CNN, NBC, Peabody award winning journalist, is heading to Iraq and Afghanistan to report on the soldier’s stories. He’ll be out there for 15 months and will file all his work to the web on a site called NoIgnoring. He says he’ll make all the material free for news networks to use […]
James Brabazon on the Wonga coup
James Brabazon, documentary film maker, talks about his part in the downfall of Simon Mann and Mark Thatcher in the so-called Wonga coup in The Independent today. Brabazon was asked to film a private army as it tried and failed to seize power in the small west African nation of Equatorial Guinea in 2004, A […]
Is this the end of the FARC?
Bogotá based Frontline blogger Anastassia picks up the story of the recent escape of French/Colombian kidnap victim Ingrid Betancourt and 14 others, There are still political hostages being held by the Farc (including 27 policemen and 3 politicians). Some families fear that the guerrillas will carry out reprisals against their family members held in jungle […]
Mohammed Omer chronicles his beating
Mohammed Omer, the Gaza-based Palestinian journalist who recently recieved the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, gives a full and frank account of the treatment he received at the hands of Israeli security officers upon his journey home to Gaza, As the beating, scratching and assaults continued, I was sure my body and face must […]
Blogger booted out of Iraq
Zoriah Miller, a photojournalist and blogger whom we’ve featured here previously, has been ordered to leave Iraq for taking photos. Well, one photo in particular appears to have rankled the American military powers that be. The image, of a dead American soldier lying on his back his face unrecognisable due to a bomb blast, was […]
24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Afghanistan
If you want to follow the efforts of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit against the Taliban in Garmsir, Helmand province, there’s various places you can do it. There are a couple of embedded journalists reporting on the activities of the 24th MEU: Michael Phillips for the Wall Street Journal and Daily News Reporter, Jennifer Hlad. […]
Death in Mogadishu
The standard intro to stories about Somalia recently has involved a lot of looking into the abyss, standing on the brink and generally teetering close to catastrophe. Today there’s no way of looking at things without concluding that the crampons of survival – or whatever it was that was going to keep Somalia together – […]
To show or not to show?
Writing on the The BBC Editor’s blog Craig Oliver describes the decision making process behind the broadcast of footage from a street in Jerusalem where a man went amok driving a bulldozer killing and injuring a number of people. After some discussion he decided not to show the moment of death on the Six O’Clock […]
Journalist Victims’ Fund announced
This week in Pakistan, the Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman announced the launch of the Journalist Victims’ Fund to help journalists working on the frontline, “Cameramen and photo journalists on frontline, in particular, those who work in conflict zones have to suffer. Their instruments are insured but their organisations don’t get insurance policy for them,†[…]
Lucha Libre comes to London
For those of my readers in London, this is for you. If you’ve enjoyed the coverage you’ve seen here on the Lucha Libre over the last year, now’s your chance to see the real thing in the flesh because the Lucha Libre is coming to London this weekend, and this weekend only! Lucha Libre London […]
Charles Wheeler dies age 85
Sir Charles Wheeler, has died at the age of 85. He was the BBC’s longest serving foreign correspondent and reported from Spain, Germany and India after the Second World War. Martin Bell writes about his legacy in The Guardian, He was no swashbuckler – quite unlike like his heirs and successors who tend to see […]
John McCain’s great timing
John McCain, the presumptive U.S Republican presidential candidate, couldn’t have timed his trip to Latin America better. Not only does he fly into Colombia a day before 6-year hostage of the FARC Ingrid Betancourt is liberated, he then rides into Mexico City this morning days after the Merida Initiative gets approved in El Norte. Some […]
Justice or Peace in Darfur?
A UN-AU hybrid patrol sets off for Siliea in West Darfur. The helmets have been painted blue but no-one has got around to removing the old Amis logo The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, set the cat among the pigeons last month by accusing the entire Khartoum government of committing war crimes in […]
Those left behind in the jungle
The rescue of 15 hostages from the clutches of Farc guerrillas is probably the most important event in years in Colombia. It’s also probably the biggest political triumph of President Uribe’s six years in power. Colombia is rejoicing and enjoying a rare respite from its ugly and unrelenting conflict. The next couple of weeks will […]
Sun City Rockers Whinge All the Way to the Bank
At the risk of getting boring… Queen guitarist Brian May has hit out a British TV network for not broadcasting the group’s performance at Nelson Mandela’s recent 90th birthday concert in London. The band, along with vocalist Paul Rodgers, were the final act to take the stage at the gig in Hyde Park on Friday, […]
An update on former milblogger LT G of Kaboom
The news of this milblogger’s demise has now reached the virtual pages of Wired.com, and seems to have sparked further debate about the role of military bloggers in the US. (If you want the back story read my post on it or follow the Wired link above.) Before this blog was shut down a number […]
Navigating the counterinsurgency field manual
John D. McHugh’s latest film for The Guardian is up. This is his fourth piece and we find John talking to Charlie Company in Afghanistan about what it’s really like to work as an American soldier trying to follow the guidance in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual Click the image above to watch John’s film.
Mexican police in “torture” class?
A story emerged here in Mexico today surrounding the emergence of a couple of videos which apparently depict the Mexican police, in the city of Leon, being instructed in the art of “torture” by an unidentified, English-speaking foreigner. The videos are linked below – some viewers might find them offensive.
War Reporting Links (WRL): War coverage
Here are some War Reporting Links, a ‘new’ ‘feature’ for the blog (hardly ‘new’, and ‘feature’ rather oversells it). I think I’m going to shorten it to WRL because we all know that anything connected to war or the military needs to be shortened to an acronym that nobody else can understand. 1. In fact, […]
Sean Langan talks after Taliban ordeal
Sean Langan drops by in the comments to say thanks to all those who worried about him during his kidnap ordeal at the hands of the Taliban in the borders area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Just wanted to pass on my deep gratitude to all those in the foreign press corp. I lost my phones […]
Getting ready for Beirut
Ana Maria Luca, a journalist based in Bucharest working for the Antena 3 TV network, is about to become Beirut correspondent for the channel. She’s just back from her ‘war reporter training’ in Romania, Seriously speaking, it was a hell of an experience. Doing the physical exercises, and trying to finish the obstacle course, which […]
