News
Prepare to be a war correspondent
According to human rights groups and diplomatic sources, Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party intend to hang on to power come what may. In what is something of a scary reflection of the recent post from our Zimbabaloola a member of the ZANU-PF Politburo threatens a journalist with what will happen if Mugabe is not returned to […]
Hostile environment training for hacks
Reuters photographer Vivek Prakash recently spent four days undergoing hostile environment training in Bangkok – although some might say a stroll down Soi Cowboy is hostile environment training enough. But this is Reuters and 14 innocent hacks endured all manner of fear in pursuit of realistic training at the hands of Australian ex-SAS soldiers, For […]
Hello pal
I suppose email scams are as much of a cultural record as anything else. Sgt Jarvis was thoughtful enough to send me this message today: Hello Pal, I do hope my email meet you in good health. I am Staff Sgt. Jarvis Maxwell Reeves Jr. a U.S. helicopter maintenance supervisor in the 3rd Infantry Division, […]
Is Buzzell going back to blogging?
Colby Buzzell served with the US Infantry in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003-4. He’s one of the more successful US milbloggers and in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle he has revealed that he has been called up for a second tour of duty. Back in 2004 Buzzell’s blog, ‘My War: Killing time in […]
Reporting Cyclone Nargis
DSC05551, originally uploaded by Azmil77. Russell Boyce is in charge of the Asia picture desk at Reuters. Yesterday, he says, was a “tough day”. He is, of course, referring to Cyclone Nargis that ripped through Burma with a final death toll that could reach 100,000. Russell talks about the day on the Asia desk on […]
Guest post: John Kelly
John Kelly is an American journalist currently living in Oxford – and on a mission: I’m studying citizen journalism, a buzzword which basically applies to anyone who isn’t like me doing what it is that I do. You can read his blog here [http://voxford.blogspot.com]. Below, he kindly reflects on his progress for the Frontline Club: […]
China’s dust bowl
China’s Dust Bowl – a photo essay of desertification in the provinces of northwestern China. Photographs by Benoit Aquin / Polaris for TIME. The above picture is described thus, “To accommodate refugees displaced by desertification, the authorities have constructed Hongsibao, a town in Ningxia Province that can house 200,000 people.” As you do…
Mushtaq Yusufzai wins inaugural Kate Webb Award
Pakistani journalist Mushtaq Yusufzai has won the naugural Kate Webb Award for his reports from the Pakistans tribal belt areas home to a number of Al-Qaeda loyalists. The award was presented by Agence France-Presse and was announced today. the 32 year old reporter has previously been wounded by the Taliban and arrested during his work. […]
Why Darfur?
[video:youtube:3OWj1ZGn4uM] Charlie Beckett, from the London School of Economics, wonders why the conflict in Darfur, and not North Kivu, Somalia or Chad has so captured the imagination of western media (and to so little effect). Here’s his theory, My theory is that since March 2003 this has been a narrative given legs by a series […]
Why Nairobi is a Hub for Hacks
Interesting views reach me from Sudan where Blake Evans-Pritchard, a teacher and occasional freelance writer, has been casting a critical eye over journalists in general and the Nairobi press pack in particular. Well-known commentators in London and New York write prolifically on the country [Sudan], as though their word is God, whilst only a handful […]
Everyday life at an Iraqi checkpoint
Recently, the Long War Journal published an interview with ‘General Hamed’, who commands a number of Iraqi policemen in Baghdad. In the interview, General Hamed recognises that the effectiveness of both the Iraqi Army (IA) and the Iraqi Police (IP) are severely undermined by elements who are loyal to militias: “Lately, the government of Iraq […]
Crashed U.S. Navy Drone Reveals Somalia Commando Deployment?
“A U.S. military drone crashed in a Somali coastal area south of Mogadishu today,” a local government official and witnesses told AFP last week: “It’s a small unmanned American plane. It’s small and can be carried by three people,” said Mohamed Mohamoud Helmi, the government official in charge of security in the town of Merka. […]
Andrew Harding deported from Burma
He’d only just arrived, but the Burmese authorities weren’t having any of it. Andrew Harding was hoping to report on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, but he was on the next plane out when ‘irregularities’ were spotted at border control. AFP quotes the state run New Light of Mynamar newspaper, “A journalist who is working […]
Group Therapy
Who’d want to be an international aid worker trying to bring peace and stability to Somalia? Chatting to one last night, she told me how meetings on Somalia were coming to resemble group therapy sessions. “One person will start off by explaining how they were running a great little project, getting results and moving things […]
Fact check the media
Following on from the non-reaction that greeted the New York Times’ Pentagon media poodles story, Wired’s Danger Room suggests if journalists don’t fancy digging into the story, readers can do it themselves, You can launch your own investigation, right now. The Defense Department has released thousands of pages of documents related to this outreach effort. […]
Twittering from the frontline
In case you didn’t know… we have a Twitter account. Twitter is a free, easy to update microblogging tool. We use it predominantly to broadcast to subscribers when there are new updates to any of the From the Frontline blogs. You can find out more about how Twitter works here. If you already use Twitter, […]
Kit to the future
Kevin Sites filed text, video, images and audio from twenty wars for the duration of one year between 2005-2006 for the Yahoo HotZone project. Pictured above is the equipment he took with him. It all fitted inside one rucsac. Just a couple of years later and I think it’d be even smaller than it was […]
Somalia’s Only Hope for Peace?
Amnesty’s hard-hitting report on human rights abuses in Somalia should make everyone stop and think. Mogadishu has long been a city of death and destruction (apart from a six-month period of quiet as the Islamic Courts imposed their own brand of security on the city) so there is no great shock to hear that the […]
The dotty old lady school of foreign correspondents
Daily Mail foreign correspondent Dame Ann Leslie talks with the Guardian’s Vicky Frost about her path into life as a foreign correspondent and how playing a ‘dotty old woman’ or a ‘bird brain’ can help get the job done, “When I’m trying to assess a situation, I decide: am I going to be ‘daughter of […]
What no enquiry?
The New York Times published an 8,000-word, front-page article that seemed certain to generate attention. The story, written after the paper sued to gain access to Pentagon records, detailed the close relationship between the Defense Department and some military analysts commenting on the Iraq war for television networks… Despite these revelations, there was virtually no […]
The most dangerous places to work as a journalist
[video:youtube:-lOZtc9zXMA] Last week the Committee to Protect Journalists released a list of the most dangerous spots for journalists. Places where journalists are killed and the killers go free. The ranking was produced in advance of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. It is based on the Impunity Index. CNNs Christiane Amanpour talks about the […]
Reporting from Mogadishu
Apologies for cross posting on Alex’s blog… Alex is back in Nairobi writing up the story he worked on in Somalia and he’s on deadline. Therefore, just a quick post from me to guide you to the BBC Radio 5 Live interview with Alex for the iPM show and, repeated again, for the Pods and […]
On the radio
Just popping in to post for Alex here… He’s back in Nairobi writing up the story he worked on in Somalia and he’s on deadline. Therefore, just a quick post from me to guide you to the BBC Radio 5 Live interview with Alex for the iPM show and, repeated again, for the Pods and […]
Amnesty on Somalia
Amnesty International UK PRESS RELEASE EMBARGOED: TUES 6 MAY 2008, 08:00hrs [for Wednesday’s newspapers] Somalia: Troops killing people ‘like goats’ by slitting throats – new Amnesty report Amnesty International today (6 May) released a report revealing the dire human rights and humanitarian crisis facing the people of Somalia. The report contains first-hand testimony from scores […]
The new live news
[video:youtube:nnffuBGNOfY] Josh Wolf has an interesting idea for a new live internet news network based – surprise surprise seeing as how it’s the internet we’re talking about – in San Francisco. He aims to harness live video broadcasting tools like Qik, Flixwagon and Ustream.tv – which Kyle MacRae has previously discussed around these parts – […]
Is new media (still) killing journalism?
[video:brightcove:1534611482] The World Press Freedom day discussion from the Frontline Club is now available. Is new media really killing journalism? Well, is it?
40 years ago
James Pringle reported from Vietnam for Reuters, Newsweek and the Times during the American War. Writing for the Asia Sentinel he remembers a tragic event in the Cholon district of Saigon 40 years ago today. Pringle was Reuters bureau chief, but was out of the country on May 5, 1968. A day that would claim […]
I lost my love in Baghdad
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reviews Michael Hastings book, I lost my love in Baghdad. Hastings was posted to the Iraqi capital to work out of the Newsweek bureau there. His girlfiend, Andi, was later killed there. Janet Okoben’s review in the Cleveland newspaper is less than complimentary, After his first 10-week reporting stint is up, […]
Mark Urban’s brush with a suicide bomber
Mark Urban talks on the BBC Radio From our own correspondent programme about how he came to meet a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, When we arranged to meet a suicide bomber, we did not expect one wearing his bomb vest, all set to blow himself up outside the building in Kabul where we were filming. […]
Sarwa Abdul-Wahab gunned down
Sarwa Abdul-Wahab was gunned down in the Bakir district of Mosul on Sunday. The 35 year old freelanced for the Kurdistan Reporters News Agency and worked as a lawyer defending journalists’ rights. The IHT has more, “She was a member of our association which is based in Baghdad but has a branch in Mosul,” said […]
