Journalism
The glamorous life of a foreign correspondent
Bed sharing, fried ants, yak’s milk and dodged bullets… Carol J. Williams writes in the Los Angeles Times about her time as a foreign correspondent. It isn’t always this grim, is it? Only weeks into the Bosnian war that began in 1992, shellfire had blasted out the windows at the Sarajevo Holiday Inn. We referred […]
How do you track Russian language news from South Ossetia without reading Russian?
Here’s one way to try and follow the South Ossetia story in Russian if you can’t read Russian. I touch on these methods when I teach the Track Breaking News Online courses each month in London. We’ll do all this by using a combination of online translation tools and RSS feeds. Firstly, find a number […]
Spinning the war in Iraq?
“Back to Iraq” is a trip organised Vets for Freedom (VFF), an American pro-war group. A band of ex-servicemen with some journalism experience are heading “Back to Iraq” to areas in which they served to report on what they find. But is it journalism? Alex Koppelman on Salon.com has more, VFF leaders say they chose […]
More on the death of foreign news reporting
One of the least favourite (yet most common) topics of this blog since we started has been the decline in foreign news coverage and the various attempts to try and rescue it. The New York Times, quoting the latest Pew Research report today, suggests the grim tidings are only set to get grimmer, “It’s really […]
Hostile environments for journalists
The Independent today looks at survival training for journalists working in hostile environments. The Frontline Club’s John Owen adds his wise tuppence to the article, “I do not accept any justification for not getting safety training to journalists. If they cannot afford paying for training, they should not send people,” he says. “If newspapers can […]
Frank Gardner on getting back to work
[video:youtube:vIYF6rg5uPQ] Frank Gardner, the BBC journalist who was shot by Al-Qaeda gunmen and left for dead in Saudi Arabia in June 2004, talks to Attitude TV about getting back to work, the Saudi shooting and about his recent assignment to Afghanistan.
Belfast Post does a week in Helmand
Is everybody going to Afghanistan this week?? Maybe it has something to do with someone else’s arrival there at the weekend. In addition to Liz Perkins from the South Wales Evening Post, Lesley-Anne Henry will be in Helmand all week for the Belfast Telegraph.
Editorial preferences
[video:youtube:L5XIhIpVUfI] Photo District News has more on the disembedding of photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller, “The official reason which they chose to use for disembedding me was that I had supplied the enemy with information on the effectiveness of attack,” he said. “I told the public affairs officer, listen, I really have to disagree with […]
One year on: Reuters still waiting for US Army video
The U.S. military said on Friday it was still processing a request by Reuters for video footage from U.S. helicopters and other materials relating to the killing of two Iraqi staff in Baghdad a year ago. Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in a U.S. helicopter air strike in […]
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
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
Lara Logan and the death of foreign news coverage
It’s desperately ironic that one week Lara Logan bemoans the abysmal state of the US media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. While, one week later, she finds herself the target of more media coverage than both wars combined. But Why? She didn’t start another war, did she? No, well not really. She is […]
Breaking Burma
nargis77_g, originally uploaded by TZA. When Cyclone Nargis hit Burma on May 2 the BBC managed to get a succession of journalists into the country despite a ban on the broadcasting corporation from entering the country. The BBC World Service talk to the journalists who made it into the country and asks them how they […]
Frontline Club live – Making it pay
Live tonight from the Frontline Club, 7.30pm UK time. A debate about the economic model for online newspapers. Follow the livestream here. More information below, UPDATE: Here’s the recording of this event. And here are some images. As the internet fast becomes the dominant medium for news delivery, we look at the relationships between print […]
War reporting is too expensive
[video:youtube:CT-Hq117w8s] Following on from Lara Logan’s broadside on the American media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – the CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent said she would “blow her brains out” if she had to watch what passed for news in the US – The New York Times follows up with a round up of […]
Shooting the messenger
Shooting the Messenger, Al Jazeera’s documentary on the deliberate killing and intimidation of journalists in conflict zones, investigates how international reporters became targets. In the past, members of the media were considered to be neutral in time of war. They were much like paramedics in the sense that their main concern was not victory, but […]
Mapping media deaths
MSN have created an interactive map of journalists killed in 2008, Plotted according to where they were killed, the map shows 31 deaths this year, according to figures from the International News Safety Institute. link via journalism.co.uk
Video diary from Burma
Dr Chris van Tulleken, from the aid agency Merlin and a Frontline Club member, reports from Burma on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Chris is the first aid worker allowed free access to film wherever he wanted in the Irrawaddy Delta since the cyclone wrecked this region, Finally we were on our way. I looked […]
Are we just numb?
[video:youtube:zh2A_SYuhls] That’s the question Jon Stewart, presenter of the Daily Show, asked Lara Logan, chief correspondent for CBS News, on the show he presents last night, I mean, there were 51 people killed today in a Shia neighborhood in Iraq. Are we just numb? Have we lost our humanity with this entire situation? Yeah, we […]
Live tonight: Philip Gourevitch on Iraq
Download this episode View in iTunes You can now view the event here. Philip Gourevitch, author, journalist and longtime staff writer of the New Yorker will be talking about Iraq, Abu Ghraib and his most recent book, Standard Operating Procedure, with the journalist Nick Fielding at the Frontline Club tonight. More details on the event […]
Misha Glenny wants less pressure, more informed hacks
Blogging from the International Press Institute world congress in Belgrade, Roy Greenslade reports on a talk by former BBC correspondent Misha Glenny on the changing work pattern for BBC foreign correspondents. Misha calls for more informed journalists and less pressure to report on multiple platforms, “When I started at BBC, the model of a foreign […]
War reporting cost me my marriage
Richard Engel talks to VOA News about his work as a war reporter for NBC and the toll it has taken on his personal life. Engel says his job cost him his marriage. He was recently promoted to the position of NBC Chief Foreign correspondent and he is based in Beirut. He also released a […]
Interview with Lara Marlowe
Lara Marlowe, Irish Times foreign correspondent, has reported from Algeria, Serbia, Iraq and the wider Middle East. She talks to the Media Channel about how she became a foreign correspondent and about that dreaded 21st century term “embedding”, The only embedded journalists I came across were in the accreditation service inside the Green Zone. There […]
Cameras not guns
David Schlesinger, Reuters editor-in-chief, writes on the Reuters Editors blog about journalism safety and the case of Fadel Shana – the Reuters cameraman who was killed by an Israeli tank shell, A military that has sophisticated intelligence and identification methods can learn to tell a camera from a gun. A military that works hard to […]
In memoriam
BBC Radio 4 newsreader Harriet Cass reads a poem in honour of murdered journalists. Click the image above to listen. For more on the memorial to murdered journalists see this post. via sambrook UPDATE: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon gives a speech at the opening ceremony.
