Frontline Club bloggers
Reality and a story
Last night we were watching and discussing The Russians Are Coming! documentary with Moscow students – which is a quite light and easy film (unlike some other stuff in our “heavy” documentary package) – but nevertheless it provoked some serious thinking. Some viewers said that the impression is that Russians came to the States and are astonished by […]
Iraq still the deadliest place to work
That’s the conclusion of the Committee to Protect Journalists. For the sixth straight year, Iraq has recorded the highest number of deaths among journalists and media workers of anywhere in the world, The 11 deaths recorded in Iraq in 2008, while a sharp drop from prior years, remained among the highest annual tolls in CPJ […]
Talking cobblers
Rival cobblers are claiming they sold Iraqi TV journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi the shoes he hurled at President Bush last weekend, Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak reported Turkish businessman Ramazan Baydan had made the shoes and carried a front page picture of the design, alongside the headline”Made in Turkey.” Baydan said he had designed the style in […]
Ebenezer Viwami under arrest in Ivory Coast
Ebenezer Viwami, editor in chief of Alerte Info, was picked up outside a prison in Abidjan, Ivory Coast at the weekend. The Ivorian Internal Affairs and Justice Ministries, said Viwami falsified the reporting of a prison riot stating that three prisoners were shot dead when the official report said six prisoners were slightly injured prisoners […]
The Pirate Panic Button
The ships that make the two-day run from Mombasa, Kenya, to Somalia carrying vital humanitarian supplies are frequent targets of pirate attacks — and have been for more than a decade. How have ship’s crew adapted? Same way the pirates have adapted over the years: with simple technology and no-nonsense tactics. On Wednesday, the small […]
Greetings season begins
Marianne, the symbol of the French republic and female embodiment of liberty and reason present in all French town halls (and in the New York harbor), got a Khmer makeover on the 2009 New Year’s cards of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh. I am oddly fascinated with this graphic that mixes my two homes, […]
Unemployed, by Pirates
Kennedy Mwale, 32, pictured, is a freelance tour guide in Mombasa’s old port, a claustrophobic melange of Arab and Portuguese architecture with one small stone pier. A week ago Monday, three small cargo ships were tied to the pier. Scores of shirtless stevedores lugged bags of cement and tossed them into the ships’ holds. The […]
Arms race concerns in the South Caucasus
With the verdict still out on whether Armenia and Azerbaijan are any closer to negotiating a peace deal to end the long-running dispute over the mainly Armenian populated self-declared Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, most analysts and observers think that the 1994 ceasefire agreement will hold following the recent war between Russia and Georgia. However, while […]
Finding Peace in Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic
How much time do you give peace negotiations that involve such slippery characters as Joseph Kony and Yoweri Museveni. Or Laurent Nkunda and Joseph Kabila. Or Somalia where the Shabab is not even involved. And don’t get me started on Darfur. Well time has run out for the Ugandan peace process. After two years, numerous […]
Hero or villain?
The Iraqi TV journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi, better known these days as the shoe thrower of Baghdad, continues to make the headlines today. It appears he’s quite the hero in much of the Middle East especially with his family, “I swear to Allah, he is a hero,” said his sister, who goes by the nickname Umm […]
Crilly’s Cool Ones
So my brief guide to African beers appeared in The Times this morning. Crilly’s cool ones… St George: Rich and fruity, packed with hoppy flavour; a fitting taste for a beer that is named after the patron saint of England — and Ethiopia 9/10 Castle: South African beer exported all over the continent. The closest […]
Prominent opposition members face trial
The Guardian reports that seven detained opposition activists, among them a former foreign minister and three MPs, will go on trial this week charged with the "usurpation of state power" following February’s disputed presidential election in the country. Following clashes on 1 March with security services which left at least 10 dead, a 20-day […]
Michael Ware addicted to the story
Michael Ware, a reporter with CNN, talks to Greg Veis in Men’s Journal about the difficulties of reporting from Iraq, getting addicted to the story and life on the road. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to quit the war habit. It’s not a pretty picture, “I’m a war dog,” he says. “After seven […]
The burqa theory of reporting Afghanistan
Soraya Sarhadd Nelson, a reporter with NPR, found out the only way to get to a story about the judiciary in Afghanistan was to don a burqa and head into Kunar province. Even then, things didn’t go smoothly, “Put on your burqa and don’t speak English. They can’t know you are American or we’ll all […]
First Post
Hello, This is my first (test) post here. I’m quite excited about the opportunity to lead a blog on my beloved Frontline website – about my favorite topic on journalism and trauma. Hope my enthusiasm will cover for my mistakes that you have to forgive – I’m not a native English speaker (I’m pretty good […]
Bush takes a size 10
U.S. President George Bush had a close encounter with the footwear of an Iraqi journalist this past weekend. Bush was at a press conference during one of his surprise visits to the Iraqi capital when Muntadar al-Zeidi, a reporter with Al-Baghdadiya TV channel, hurled his size 10’s at the outgoing President, Before guards could wrestle […]
Blurred Edges
This weekend as part of the extended Eid festivities I decided to go on a trip. With some friends and a warm patu, we drove all the way down to the south of Dand district, to the point where the flat plains and cultivatable land meets the desert. You can see where I went on […]
“Berkeley grandma sues over canceled embed”
Nothing much to add to the self explanatory headline, but that has to be the best headline of the last week or so… All the way from San Francisco, Berkeley blogger Jane Stillwater is suing the federal government for the cost of an airplane ticket to Kuwait and the cost of 15 mocha lattes from […]
Throwing Shoes!
Mr. President George W. Bush received a pair of black, size 10 shoes in a Press conference in Iraq, on Sunday. But, sadly he didn’t receive them as gifts, but were thrown at him in extreme anger by an Iraqi TV reporter present in the press conference. Such Awe!! Surely this is not an act […]
Integrating disabled children
One subject that’s been a personal project over the past ten years of living and working in Armenia has been documenting the situation of socially vulnerable families, children deprived of parental care, and those with disabilities. In particular there is an urgent need to reduce the number of children residing in or attending […]
A rating of Azerbaijani universities published
The State Students Admission Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan has announced its rating of Azerbaijani universities. In the rating, based mostly on students’ preferences at admission exams and published in Abituriyent journal, the top ten places have been grabbed by state universities. This rating, as well as students’ preferences, reflects one still strong, but […]
Your African Year
A few days ago I was compiling an 800wd review of 2008 in Africa for one of my papers. I asked for help in finding a good news story to include and was inundated by readers’ ideas for things I should include. I simply didn’t have room for more than one, so I thought we […]
Dawa or Lashkar?
Jamaat- ud- Dawa founder says it’s unjust, that they were labeled terrorists without providing any substantial proofs. He said it was unfair, that soon after the allegation was filed, within next 24 hrs UN declared him as terrorist, without even giving any chance of justifying their stance. The newly listed terrorist was addressing media freely at his house in Lahore, […]
More Twitter conventions would have aided Mumbai coverage
The recent attacks on Mumbai marked a moment when Twitter appeared to reach a critical threshhold. In the UK, various media outlets made use of the 140 character tool to augment their reporting. In fact, a journalist I spoke to today, said: if journalists hadn’t heard of Twitter, then they probably weren’t doing their job […]
New Rebel Group in DRC
Just when you thought you had a handle on what was happening among the myriad militia groupings in the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Independent reports the emergence of a new rebel army The findings of collaboration with the Tutu rebels by the Rwandan government came on the same day that some of its leaders […]
Who’d Have Thought It?
Certainly not Tony Blair, Paul Kagame’s new best friend and adviser, who has said Rwanda does not control Laurent Nkunda and his rebel army. Nor Foreign Office minister Lord Mark Malloch-Brown who told me exactly the same thing in Goma last month Lord Malloch-Brown said the region’s rich tin ore and coltan seams were a […]
Music to my ears
Coming to Cambodia, I expected breaking my back on dirt roads, dealing with reluctant officials and seeing worse poverty than I ever had. I got that, but so much more too. I spent my past two weekends in places I’d never thought I’d be, especially in Cambodia. The weekend before last, I was attending the premiere […]
Newspapers in dire straits
The ever erudite Jon Stewart sums up what has been one of the worst weeks for newspapers ever. The sad thing is, the worst is yet to come. 2009 looks grim, grim, grim. Video link via Sambrook The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c Clusterf#@k to the Poor House – Final […]
Frontline Club Annual Party 2008
We held the Frontline Club annual party and Journalism Awards on Friday 28 November. A great time was had by all. Romain Kedochim very kindly took photographs on the night and you can see in the slideshow above. This year the Frontline Club Journalism Award went to Photojournalist Yuri Kozyrev for his exceptional coverage of […]
Live from Kandahar
Frontline blogger Alex Strick van Linschoten will be experimenting with some live video broadcasts using Kyte.tv from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Although as Alex says in an email, they’ve sped up the GPRS data connection ($20/month for unlimited data!) in Kandahar…so i can now stream live shows (sort of – it’s more like it can […]
