Frontline Club bloggers
Aid Workers Forced From Camps
Foreign aid workers have been ordered out of key locations across Darfur as the Sudanese Government flexes its muscles before a decision today by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on whether to charge President al-Bashir with war crimes. The six NGOs are: Oxfam, CHF, Solidarites, MSF-France, MSF-Holland, Care International. The locations are: Abu Shouk, Gereida, […]
Pirate Attacks Decline … but for How Long?
After a year of escalating piracy off the Somali coast, during which pirates seized more than 100 large vessels, in early 2009 the rate of attacks decreased markedly. On Feb. 22, pirates captured a Greek-owned vessel carrying coal. Despite this, the first two months of the new year represented a “lull” in piracy, according to […]
The View From The Camps
We’re all set. My email inbox is filling up with contact details of Darfur activists available for interview, NGOs are being booted out of camps and I have stocked up on provisions (Maryland cookies, Laughing Cow cheese triangles, and water, since you asked). All we need now is tomorrow’s decision from the International Criminal Court […]
Counterinsurgency and new media
The Small Wars Journal has put together a collection of thoughts on the impact of new media on the way the US military has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well worth bookmarking, reading, and re-reading. I was going to pick out a ‘best of’, but I was struggling. It’s all very interesting. It includes thoughts […]
Paranoid or Prepared? What’s in my bag.
Some people may be shocked by the things I carry. In addition to crucial items like, you know, my phone and camera and notebook and stuff, I always throw this small floral pouch into my bag when heading out to snap photos and do some reporting. 1) Handkerchief: essential for whipping excessive sweat off my […]
Bracing for impact
Juba, the capital of the semi-autonomous region of South Sudan, is currently extremely tense, awaiting the reaction of national president Omar al-Bashir to tomorrow’s International Criminal Court decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant against him. Should the ICC go ahead with the indictment – for ten counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity […]
The crime, the landless and the media
Today the president of Brazil Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, spoke for the first time about a recent event that has created huge polemic in the national media. On 21st February, four security guards were killed during a conflict with the internationally known landless movement, or MST, in São Joaquim do Monte, in the state […]
So dusty you can taste it
I think I’ve swallowed half of the Sahara since I arrived in Kano in northern Nigeria on Sunday afternoon. It’s the harmattan haze. Fine sand and dust hangs thick in the air over the city along with air pollution. Poor visibility led to my flight on Saturday being diverted back to Abuja, then a few […]
1 March anniversary passes without incident
Despite some concern that yesterday’s first anniversary of the deadly post-election clashes between opposition supporters and security forces might end in trouble, the day passed peacefully. Although the event to mourn the deaths of 8 civilians and 2 policemen had not been authorized by the municipality, the authorities did not intervene to prevent the gathering. Given […]
(Not) contacting the IDF through social media
In my post about the Israeli Defence Force and their use of social media during the Gaza conflict, I said I was trying to chase up the IDF for a comment or response to it. I, for one, would be interested to hear their take on it. Several emails have met with no response, so […]
Philippine press attacks
In the latest attack on a journalist in the Philippines, Ronaldo Doong was attacked by two armed men while travelling on a highway in Colorado village in Digos City in the southern Philippines on Saturday. The brodcast journalist, who works for University of Mindanao’s Radyo Ukay, sustained bruises and cuts during the assault. The attackers […]
22 attacks on journalists in Cambodia
A report by the Club of Cambodian Journalists (CCJ) catalogues a series of 22 attacks against journalists in the south-east Asian country between 2008-2009. In addition the report slates unethical practices among journalists including bribery and corruption and those pretending to be journalists who are not, The press release urges the Ministry of Information to […]
Finbarr O’ Reilly in Congo
Reuters photographer Finbarr O’Reilly has been travelling through the Democratic Republic of Congo taking some incredible photographs along the way. The Boston Herald showcases 38 images as a part of their excellent Big Picture series. Reuters recently held a live chat with Finbarr in Liberia which we hosted on this blog. Photo by Finbarr O’Reilly […]
Blood Trail at True/False film festival
Blood Trail, the documentary film produced by club member Richard Parry along with club founder Vaughan Smith, is showing at the True/False film festival in Columbia, Missouri until March 1. The film documents 15 years in the life of war photographer Robert King – from naive beginner to accomplished professional. Robert and Richard are in […]
Concerns emerging over May municipal election
Residents of Yerevan will for the first time vote to elect a Mayor in May. Fearful that an elected Mayor would rival the power of the presidency, the municipal head had previously been officially appointed until the constitution was amended by a referendum held in November 2005. The 31 May election will also be the first […]
Broke without fixers
Jonathan Miller writes about the "secret weapon" of television news on the Channel 4 World News blog. He’s talking about the fixers he’s worked with in the DRC, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Pakistan, Serbia and Sudan. "When fixers deliver," Miller says, "We make good telly," Fixers are all-too-often the unsung heros of our business. They work long […]
Cars inspire Mexican artist’s show with a green message
Mexico visual artist Betsabee Romero used cars to create installations for “A vuelta de rueda (driving slowly),” an outdoor exhibition in downtown Mexico City that has a decidedly green feel to it.
Romero’s installations in the Atrio de San Francisco, an open-air plaza in the heart of downtown Mexico City, include an old VW combi covered in green plants and a car coated with traditional Mexican tiles. Watch the artist explain the motives behinds her work in the video above. — Deborah Bonello in Mexico City Video by Deborah Bonello.
Stop Press
My favorite all-time movie moment about journalism takes place at the end of the Humphrey Bogart 1952 film Deadline USA. Bogart as the grizzled editor defies a gangster’s threat and order not to print a story about him. He orders the press to roll and holds the phone up so the gangster can hear it. […]
Damning human rights reports on eve of 1 March post-election clash anniversary
Having narrowly escaped sanctions from the Council of Europe, and following controversy surrounding the trial of seven senior opposition figures arrested after last year’s post-election violence, come two damning reports on the human rights and political situation in Armenia. Just 4 days before the first anniversary of the 1 March 2008 clashes which left at […]
Digital War Reporting
Just flagging up a book to watch out for later this year. Digital War Reporting is being written by Stuart Allan and Donald Matheson, two authors I’ve already cited on numerous occasions in my PhD. In the book they explore ‘how new technologies open up innovative ways for journalists to convey the horrors of warfare […]
The golden age of foreign correspondence
I’m reading Christina Lamb’s Small Wars Permitting these days, a thoughtful Christmas gift from a friend and colleague here who’s a Lamb fan herself. I’m enjoying the book, which mixes personal recollections with the stories she wrote at the time for the Financial Times. I’m only just starting, reading about her start as a 20-something […]
The changing image of Brazilian immigrants
Last week pictures of 26-year-old Brazilian Paula Oliveira, with the initials of Switzerland’s main right-wing party cut into her body were printed all over the world. She claimed to have been attacked by skinheads in Zurich, but later reportedly confessed to self-mutilating. Now she is being investigated for misleading the police. The fact is that […]
Lockdown in Darfur
It’s business as usual, according to pretty much anyone you ask in Khartoum when the issue of next week’s International Criminal Court indictment of Omar al-Bashir comes up. No-one wants to give the Sudanese government an excuse to accuse diplomats or the international community of acting as judge and jury and finding Bashir. So […]
Tamil editor abducted in Sri Lanka
Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, a senior Sri Lankan newspaper editor, was abducted by armed men in police uniform this morning, according to the Tamil Eelam News Services. The editor of both the Uthayan newspaper in Jaffna and the Colombo based Sudar Oli was attending the funeral of a friend on the Galle Road in Colombo when the […]
Photo exhibition rewards Mexican artists
Albinos in Mexico and the “human tragedy” of Mexican society were focuses of the winning entries in one the country’s longest-running photography competitions, the results of which are now on display in Mexico City’s impressive Centro de Imagen.
Demonstration outside Georgian Embassy
To be honest, I hadn’t particularly planned on attending today’s demonstration staged outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan to protest the detention of two ethnic Armenian activists in Georgia’s Samtskhe Javakheti region – or rather, I was in two minds about doing so. To begin with, a friend in town from Tbilisi told […]
Working as a journalist in Iraq
The excellent Alive in Baghdad talks to Hassan Fadhel Allah al-Hussaini, the editor of the Rayat al-Arab newspaper, at his office in Baghdad. He talks about his newspaper, the assasination of former colleague Saad Mehdi Shalash, press freedom and the "miracle" of working life in Baghdad. Click the video above to play the interview, "All […]
How the IDF fell off the social media bandwagon
I’ve been thinking for a while about how the Israeli Defence Force used social media during the conflict in Gaza and I’m not at all convinced the campaign was successful. Yes, the IDF was right to engage with the Internet and social media. But the way they went about it was questionable. I have two […]
Somali Was First American Suicide Bomber
In October, a suicide bomber killed 30 people in northern Somalia, a region once considered fairly safe compared to rest of the war-torn country. Now it appears the bomber was an American, making him the first suicide jihadist to come from this country. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has more: "It appears that this individual was radicalized […]
Mexico’s media under scrutiny in documentary
Violence against journalists in Mexico is, sadly, nothing new and has been followed closely by the press and nonprofits alike for the last few years. But "Voces Silenciadas" (Silenced Voices), a documentary film that was part of the Ambulante film festival here, broadens the debate around the persecution of journalists to encompass the bigger issues […]
