News
Yuri Bagrov profiled
Former Chechen war reporter Yuri Bagrov is profiled in the New York Times today. Bagrov worked in Grozny disguising himself as a Russian soldier at one point so that he could report from the frontline in Grozny. His reports didn’t go down well with Russian authorities and he was stripped of citizenship in 2005. Now, […]
Citizen Cameramen
By the time the members of the original Frontline TV agency hit Grozny in the mid-90s to report on the Chechen war, it became clear that the market for pictures and video was changing. Newer, lighter, cheaper cameras meant it was easier than ever to become a film maker. This fact, coupled with the diminishing […]
Congolese Cliches
Always use the word ‘Africa or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Binyavanga Wainaina, How to Write About Africa (Granta 92) The going rate for a […]
“We are going to have to detain you for a little while, sirâ€
Writing in The Times Jonathan Clayton talks about his ordeal at the hands of Zimbabwean authorities as he tried to enter the country through the second city of Bulawayo posing as a golfing tourist. An old passport stamp aroused the suspicion of an immigration officer, [The Senior Immigration Officer Godfrey Kondo’s] meticulous attention to detail […]
Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism
In this provocative analysis of the West and its relationship, or lack thereof, with Islam, George Weigel, the biographer of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, drafts what he describes as a call to action to address jihadism. Weigel, a conservative Catholic theologian based in Washington, rejects the commonly used term “Islamic fundamentalism” in […]
Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy
Nuclear weapons and weapons-systems are never politically-neutral. Nor have they ever been developed openly or debated in democratically-elected parliaments. The Los Alamos project in New Mexico was a top-secret operation. In Britain, the decision was kept secret even from the Labour Cabinet. Likewise the French. The Israelis were so angered by Mordechai Vanunu revealing some […]
Kevin Sites sewing workshops
Kevin Sites is moving on from the Yahoo funded Hot Zone war reporting project he is most well known for. He is working on what sounds like a gimmicky show called People of the web. Sites believes war reporters need to focus on people and not combat, “The combat, which may only last a couple […]
Richard Engel to NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent
Richard Engel will now serve as NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent. He previously worked as the channel’s Senior Middle East Correspondent and Beirut Bureau Chief since May 2006. According to the press release, he was also “one of the only western journalists to cover the entire war in Iraq”, “There aren’t enough superlatives to describe […]
Digital war reporting
Three very interesting links come our way this week. First up, Kings of War leads us to the New Media and the Warfighter report from a Center for Strategic leadership workshop. The report concludes, New media as a means to achieve strategic information effects is an integral part of today’s military operating environment. link Meanwhile, […]
Mexicans spending more on bribes
The fact that there exist official statistics on the amount and size of bribes paid in Mexico is perhaps indicative of the level to which corruption and the ‘informal economy’ is ingrained in Mexican Society. The latest figures from Transperencia Mexico show that Mexicans spent 42% more on bribes last year than in 2005, splashing […]
John D McHugh blogging from Afghanistan
Frontline Club member John D McHugh is heading back to Afghanistan. This will be the third April he’s spent over there. The first almost killed him, the second went an awful lot smoother. He talked at length about his first trip, along with his photographs at the club in 2007. This time John has a […]
Seamus Murphy snapping the Taliban
[video:brightcove:1498976068] Seamus Murphy photographed the effects of the Taliban regime between 1994 and 2006. The “poet with a camera” recently talked about his work at the Frontline Club with Jocelyn Bain-Hogg. Well worth a watch.
Stephen Bevan is back
Stephen Bevan, freelancer for the Telegraph and Barry Bearak from the New York Times left Zimbabwe yesterday. The duo were arrested some two weeks ago, however the law they were arrested under had been scrapped earlier in 2008. The charges didn’t stick. Bevan is now back home in South Africa. He tells of his time […]
Pre-emptive war reporting
Syria and Israel are at war. Well… they’re not exactly, but if conflict commences – the Iranian media will have it covered. In fact, they’ll also have have it covered if it’s Lebanon at war with Israel, according to the Iranian news agency ‘A’sr Iran. 20 Iranian TV and radio reporters are going through a […]
Kebabs in a Circle
Agache – or chicken and beef kebabs with peanut sauce The Friday before I left for El Fasher found me at a soiree on the banks of the Nile, just outside Khartoum. We lounged around on carpets set beside a mango grove and surrounded by candles. Our food was a sort of kebab – chicken […]
Threats against journos continue through April
The month of April started off badly, and it doesn’t look like letting up anytime soon. Two journalists received menacing phone calls this week as a result of reports they’ve written.
Fadel Shana buried in Gaza
Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was buried today in Gaza City. The 23 year old was one of three killed yesterday near the Bureij refugee camp when an Israeli tank fired upon the car they were in, Reuters released the final video taken by Mr Shana in the seconds before his death. The footage shows a […]
Warriors by Gerald Hanley
When Gerald Hanley left Somalia after serving there during World War Two he was optimistic about its future. A new movement was emerging that put Somali identity ahead of tribal loyalty along with a hunger to improve their lot with independence. “There cannot be anywhere in Africa such ready and hungry people, with such swift […]
Travel alert issued for Mexico
The U.S State Department issued a travel warning for Mexico yesterday, prompted by the increasing violence on the U.S – Mexico border. ‘Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade continues along the U.S.-Mexico border. Attacks are aimed primarily at members of drug trafficking organizations, […]
The world’s worst road
… is between Chengdu to the city of Mianyang in China. At least according to Reuters men David Gray and Chris Buckley. The duo were following up on reports “that buildings had been damaged, thousands of riot police and soliders had been deployed, hundreds of local Tibetans had been arrested and Buddhist temples were surrounded”, […]
Richard Butler rescued
[video:youtube:fvMB0cOHW4s] Freelance photographer Richard Butler was rescued by Iraqi soldiers. He was working for CBS News when he was kidnapped on February 10. Iraqi soldiers found him by chance when they happened to be searching the house he was being kept in, “The Iraqi army stormed the house and overcame my guards,” Butler said. “They […]
April update: Violence against journalists continues
April is shaping up to be a bad month for journalists in Mexico.
Travelling Trolleys
Trolleys in El Fasher So that’s what happens to luggage trolleys at Heathrow once their wheels are deemed too wonky. They end up at El Fasher airport, North Darfur, where they are wheeled up and down approximately 10 metres of paving before they get stuck in the sand.
Burt Glinn dies age 82
Cold war photographer Burt Glinn has died age 82. He’s most well known for his work in Cuba during Castro’s revolution. The Moscow Times remembers this highlight in his career on New Year’s Eve in 1958 when the young photographer arrived in Havana looking for the revolution, When he was in New York and got […]
Olympic Dreams
Abubaker Kaki is world indoor 800m champion. He trains with blocks of concrete for weights There can’t be many Olympic medal prospects who use bits of rubble for weights and train on a track with gaping holes. Yet Abubaker Kaki Khamis, a genuine hope for Sudan in the 800m, has to make do with the […]
From the Frontline clubroom
The Frontline Club is profiled in The Independent newspaper today. Chris Green heads into the clubroom and rummages through the glass cabinets full of memorabilia left by the foreign correspondents and war reporters who make up the club’s membership. Among the bits and pieces he finds is Vaughan Smith‘s mobile phone, “We heard there was […]
Dealing with trauma
Jackie Cameron writes about the trauma suffered by journalists reporting war in the Sunday Herald today. Cameron is a former journalist who retrained as an occupational psychologist when she decided to look into the effect of trauma on frontline journalists, As Dr Jo Rick, a leading trauma researcher based at the IWP, explains, war is […]
Pidgeons in Zimbabwe
Peter Cave in Johannesburg talks on Correspondents Report, an ABC Radio National programme, about how journalists get the story out of difficult spots like Zimbabwe. Pidgeons appear to be the key, Often the only way to get a story out of a difficult spot was to use a Pidgeon – a tourist, diplomat or even […]
$4.6m… for, erm, what?
Citizen journalism outfit CJReport.com is suitably chuffed to raise $4.6m in funding from Sequoia Capital, an a+ venture capital company. So what does CJReport.com do? On CJReport, anyone can edit (even anonymously) and start contributing to stories in the usual categories (business, technology, entertainment, …). Users can write their own stories and upload their own […]
MSM moves qik-ly for once
In an earlier post, I echoed Steve Outing’s assumption that mainstream media would be characteristically slow to adapt to and adopt the potential of live video from mobile phones. So it was a surprise and a pleasure to read about the Sacramento Bee using Qik to capture the procession of the Olympic torch through San […]
