News
Welsh fears for Philip Jones Griffiths collection
According to The Western Mail Frontline Club Honorary member Philip Jones Griffiths spent the last seven years of his life trying to find a permanent home for his photos. However it appears he failed to reach an agreement with a number of Welsh institutions including Bangor, Aberystwyth and Newport Universities and the National Library of […]
Don’t Call It Cattle Rustling
While the love-in between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga continues, so too does the killing. Another 25 deaths in “cattle rustling” incidents in the Rift Valley this week underlining the fact that a political deal between Kenya’s rivals for president has had little impact on long-standing tribal resentments over land and power. As François Grignon, […]
‘La Misma Luna’ splits critics
La Misma Luna, or Under the Same Moon, made its Mexico City debut last week to a full house. The movie, which is the first Latino-centric feature from Fox Searchlight, tells the story of the separation of mother and son against the backdrop of thorny issue of immigration between Mexico and the United States. The […]
Nomination call for 2008 Kurt Schork Awards
The nomination phase for the Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism is now open and the deadline for receipt of entries is June 1, 2008. Local reporters from non OECD or EU countries and freelancers are eligible to enter, Two $5,000 prizes are awarded each year, one to a local reporter covering local stories in […]
Terry Lloyd’s widow demands truth
In an interview to be broadcast tonight on ITV Lynn Lloyd, the widow of ITN war reporter Terry Lloyd who was killed by American troops in March 2003, says she wants to know the name of the man who killed her husband, A coroner recorded a verdict of unlawful killing at the inquest into his […]
The old crusty reporter is not appearing any more
[video:youtube:E7Zj_dNwOdk] Now, here’s a really tough assignment for a group of journalists. Go find some bars full of journalists and report on them… The Wall Street Journal goes coast to coast across the United States and over to Fleet Street in London to look at some famed journalist drinking dens and how things have changed […]
Dateline Iraq
[video:youtube:NhHjwOU_mOA] Three journalists speak about working in Iraq for Dateline Iraq, a production by the Committee to Protect journalists. TIME Magazine’s Bobby Ghosh, New York Times reporter James Glanz and freelancer Jehad Nga all feature and compare notes about how things were back in 2003 and how things are in 2008, Obtaining reliable information is […]
Mexico: Impunity and Collusion
Threats to reporters from government and criminals are making investigative journalism impossible, writes Deborah Bonello In February this year, the car of Mexican journalist Estrada Zamora was found empty on the side of the road in the southern state of Michoacán with its engine running. Zamora was not inside and has not been seen since. […]
Interest in Africa Suspended
The best thing about writing from Africa is that editors leave you to your own devices. In Washington, Baghdad or Moscow you can bet on a phone call each morning asking what that day’s line will be. In Nairobi, there is no daily grind. You can disappear for a week. Maybe work on a feature, […]
Philip Jones Griffiths (1936 – 2008)
[video:brightcove:1394647866] After a lengthy battle with cancer, Philip Jones Griffiths sadly passed away on Wednesday 19 March. Philip was a Frontline Club member and was widely considered to be one of the greatest war photographers of the twentieth century. He is best remembered for his work on the war in Vietnam – his seminal book […]
Getting into Lhasa
On the MSNBC World blog Bo Gu, an Assistant News Producer at NBC, describes how she managed to get into Lhasa last Sunday, “The House of Shambala? No way, I’m not going there,” said the Tibetan taxi driver, his wrinkled, tanned face looking nervous. “It’s really chaotic in Lhasa now,” another taxi driver said as […]
Change? What change?
When the editor of The Times, John Delane, decided back in 1854 to send a reporter, William Russell, to the Crimea to cover the war, it was because Delane was fed up with relying on military freelances. The Times had originally engaged Lieutenant Charles Nasmyth, of the Bombay Artillery, to report from the Crimea but […]
Far from over for FARC
They called him Toucan. His hooked nose and gold-teeth smile were menacing but also comical. His partner was stocky with closely cropped hair, neck and arms emblazoned with tattoos of saints and crucifixes. It seems that stereotypes exist for a reason and the Hollywood image of Colombian drug dealers was made real in this remote […]
The Age of Assassins: The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin
Since Dimitri Medvedev’s predictable triumph in Russia’s presidential elections, the future of the Kremlin’s internal power balance has fascinated those who scrutinize events in Moscow. As ever, questions outstrip answers. The central issue is whether the latest choreographed ballot signified a true shift of power away from Vladimir Putin. Since 2000, when Putin came to […]
Reporting on the forbidden
When Georg Blume of Germany and Kristin Kupfer of Austria left from Lhasa train station in the early hours of Thursday March 20 they were the last two foreign journalists to leave Tibet after being forced out by the Chinese authorities. “If they don’t have anything to hide, then why are they making foreign journalists […]
Kill the cliché
You can’t write for toffee? Your sub-editor’s out to lunch and your newspaper style guide’s as old as the hills? A new website called Kill the cliché aims to name, shame and hang, draw and quarter overuse of clichés in newspapers. Currently the world news sections of six major American newspapers get the search engine […]
Can you hear me Baghdad?
[video:youtube:qU1UL0s9qqY] Daniel Finkelstein cranks up the crackly internet videophone and calls fellow Times journalist and blogger Deborah Haynes in Baghdad. You can see and hear the result by clicking the video above. As Daniel says, “Hopefully we’ll have a better line next time.” Amen.
Tired of Iraq
David Bauder at the Associated Press pulls together a few scary stats about the Iraq war and American mainstream media’s coverage of it, For the first 10 weeks of the year, the war accounted for three per cent of television, newspaper and Internet stories in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s survey of news coverage. […]
Bearing Witness
Reuters and MediaStorm have partnered to produce a stunning multimedia production to mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. It’s quite the mammoth undertaking with five chapters profiling three journalists with video, photography and snazzy graphics, The site features profiles of three Reuter’s journalists who have more than 23 years combined experience reporting […]
A short guide to Iraq
In 1943 the American military issued a pamphlet to guide their soldiers in Iraq. The GI Pamphlet blog discovered a copy in an old trunk and has re-published it in full, We found this historical gem in an old trunk which was crammed with my mother’s World War II keepsakes. As a US Marine lieutenant, […]
Going black in China
Marek Pruszewicz, editor of BBC World, describes how BBC reports on the unrest in Tibet were blacked out in China. The BBC’s Beijing-based James Reynolds illustrated the problem with the aid of two televisions, James Reynolds, who is based in Beijing, came up with a very simple but effective means of showing what was happening. […]
Los Angeles Times: La Misma Luna
[video:bliptv:720717] The focus of the latest film from LA-based Mexican director Patricia Riggen is torn from today’s headlines and deals with the issue of families separated by borders. The Los Angeles Times talked with director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, about making the film and Mexicans in LA. This […]
Portrait of Darfur
General Rokero commands Jebel Mara for the Abdul Wahid faction of the Sudan Liberation Army Opheera McDoom, the Reuters correspondent in Khartoum, wrote recently of her frustration at the lack of progress towards peace in Darfur. “I have been writing on Darfur for 4 1/2 years. More than ever, I am wondering how much difference […]
Carsten Thomassen hearing opens
The court hearing into the death of Norwegian journalist Carsten Thomassen opened last week. Thomassen died of injuries he received during an attack at Serena hotel in Kabul in January. Opening the hearing Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere admitted the Foreign Office did not have any emergency plans for the type of attack, Stoere said […]
Three great reasons to…
… listen to this week’s NPR On the Media podcast. First up, Pulitzer prizer winner Seymour Hersh reveals how he broke the My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam war and how he scooped the Abu Grahib story. Second up, a discussion about the life and importance of Robert Capa famed for his Spanish Civil […]
Only the rich report
Rageh Omaar recently returned to Iraq to catch up with people he has know over the last ten years from reporting there. Operating as a journalist there, he says, has never been harder and increasingly, it is only the rich media companies that can afford to send reporters, One of the least reported or acknowledged […]
From Skid Row to the Suburbs
I admit it was an impetuous and poorly-judged decision. I had just arrived in Anchorage for my annual teaching assignment at the University of Alaska and the temperature was twenty-plus degrees below freezing. I spent the first night at a sleazy motel not far from the airport. The walls were thin, the carpets reeked of […]
Off to the frontline
This guy got his marching orders today and is setting off to join his unit in an operational zone near Rumangabo in North Kivu, eastern Congo. Transport is not provided, so he’ll probably flag down vehicles along the way. He won’t have to pay… Interesting that he’s taking the stereo too. The army is officially […]
Does Qik change everything?
If you’re not already familiar with it, check out Qik. It’s an application and web service that lets you stream video from a mobile phone to the web, live. Why is this important? For me it’s one of these wow-this-could-revolutionise-journalism moments. It’s similar to the widespread adoption of cameraphones during the past few years – […]
Severe human rights problems persist in Mexico: US State Department
The headline might be stating the obvious, but for the record, according to the 2007 country report from the US State department, released this week: ‘The [Mexican] government generally respected and promoted human rights at the national level by investigating, prosecuting, and sentencing public officials and members of the security forces. However, impunity and corruption […]
