News
Jamie Tarabay on the frontline
NPR reporter Jamie Tarabay talks about being stationed in Baghdad for two years and on her upcoming project about Muslim culture in the United States, What was it like being stationed in these high-conflict areas? It’s hairy. You do sort of have to remind yourself to a certain degree of the danger. You catch yourself […]
Arkady Babchenko on South Ossetia
Arkady Babchenko, military correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and author of One Soldier’s War, took some of the most graphic and memorable footage from the recent war in South Ossetia. He talked to the German publication Neuer Zürcher Zeitung about the assignment. Sign and Sight translate the interview which covers Arkady’s thoughts on […]
The last bunk
Mine was the very last empty bunk – or rack, as my new Canadian friends term it – left on the HMCS Ville de Quebec, a Halifax-class frigate. It’s not so much a bed as a fold-out mattress beneath a communications panel and next to a series of pipes that sounds as if they have […]
Morelia: the aftermath
I spent the day in Morelia yesterday – here are a few photos from the scene. A video and full report to follow…… Yesterday, the public paid their respects at a shrine to the side of the city’s main plaza in Morelia, remembering the seven people killed in Monday night’s bomb attack. A soldier stood […]
Addicted to danger
The Daily Mail publishes extracts from Ann Leslie’s Killing My Own Snakes this week. The veteran foreign correspondent talks about the addiction to danger she sees in other war correspondents and which she has experienced herself, To be a professional war correspondent means, in my view, that you have to be a certain type of […]
Video: Mexico’s Military Marches as Citizens React to Yesterday’s Bombings
Two explosions during Mexican Independence Day celebrations in the western state of Michoacan killed eight people Monday night and injured dozens more, we reported yesterday. I spent the day down on Reforma where, as Mexico’s military marched, people reacted to the bombings.
The view from an embed minder
Lt. Col. Paul Fanning writes on the Daily Gazette blog about working with embedded reporters in Afghanistann. Fanning is the Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix Public Affairs Officer with New York National Guard 27th Brigade Combat Team. He documents how he helped three journalists working in Afghanistan; namely Charles Eckert, an agency photojournalist with Newsday, […]
Hotline for Iraqi journalists
Iraq’s Journalistic Freedom Observatory has agreed with the Interior Ministry to create a hotline for journalists and to provide them with armed protection if needed. The move follows the killing of four Al-Sharqiya TV staff in Mosul last week, “Iraq is not only the most deadly country in the world for the press, it also […]
Channel 4 foreign movers
Channel 4 News international editor, Lyndsey Hilsum, will return from China to London after the 2008 Paralympic games have finished. While foreign correspondent and occasional Frontline Club events chair Nick Paton Walsh moves to the channel’s Beijing bureau to become Asia correspondent. link
Somalia kidnap journalists in Al Jazeera video
Al Jazeera has aired a video that purports to show Australian photographer Nigel Brennan and the Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout. The duo were kidnapped on 23 August – you can see the timeline here – ABC News has more, The video showed Mr Brennan and Ms Lindhout, wearing an Islamic robe, along with armed Islamic […]
WRL: Reporting Afghanistan and the secret service blog
1. ‘Bill-and-Bob’, who describes himself as a ‘citizen soldier with 26 years of service’, comments on US media coverage of the war in Afghanistan: “Wars are expensive. The war became tedious on television news and the sensationalization of the American death toll became a daily litany that constantly reminded the American public that we were […]
Censorship at work in Baghdad
Caesar Ahmad and Tina Susman write about censorship at work in Iraq for the LA Times Babylon and Beyond blog. The duo describe what happened when a bomb exploded on Sunday near the Baghdad bureau of the Los Angeles Times and the photographers headed to the scene, It was about a three-minute walk to the […]
Asra Nomani on tracking down Daniel Pearl suspects
Asra Nomani, a journalist and activist who teaches at Georgetown University, talks to Murali Krishnan at the Indo-Asian News Service about ‘The Pearl Project’. The aim of the project is to track down the estimated 19 suspects still at large in the Daniel Pearl murder case – the Wall Street journalist was killed in Pakistan […]
Foreign news needs real experts
Richard Sambrook, BBC Global News Director and Frontline Club regular, is interviewed in The Guardian this week. He argues for a change in the way international news is covered. He says there’s a need to greater utilize local journalists on the ground “The nature of international coverage is changing. The old model of a western […]
Video: Mexico’s police reform – what do the public think?
Drug violence is Mexico is soaring. Crimes against the public are at a high, with kidnappings increasing and people living in a state of insecurity. But corruption within the Mexican police is rife, and inefficiency is the rule, rather than the exception. This video was made to go with this Los Angeles Times report by […]
Shanty Soundtrack
I’m off on an Indian Ocean cruise for the next few days. It promises to be an interesting voyage along Kenya’s palm-fringed shores to, erm, Somalia. Just me, a couple of books and the crew of a Canadian Halifax-class frigate, the HMCS Ville de Quebec. Naturally I have sought out the right music for the […]
Four Iraqi TV staff gunned down in Mosul
Reuters report that four staff from Iraq’s Sharqia TV station were kidnapped and then shot by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul today. “Today at noon, armed people kidnapped and killed four of our workers in the channel. They were doing their national duty recording an episode in Mosul,” the independent station said in […]
Defense Dept responsible for more OPSEC breaches than milblogs
Ari Melber has written an article for ‘The Nation’ about blogging regulations and the US Army. Not much new here, but some interesting analysis. I found this paragraph particularly enlightening for those that are concerned about the threat from blogs to Operational Security (OPSEC): “Even when the web does expose problematic information about military operations, […]
9/11: “A galvanising point for the blogging world”
In Reporting War, Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan suggest that the attack on the World Trade Center seven years ago was a significant moment in the history of war reporting. As mainstream media servers struggled to cope with the volumes of traffic accessing their websites, bloggers inevitably dropped their usual subjects and began piecing together […]
‘CPT G’ takes up position in Information Operations
Captain Matthew Gallagher, the milblogger behind Kaboom: A Soldier’s War Journal, has been moved away from his frontline duties. According to his fiancée, he’s been given a role in Information Operations at a Forward Operating Base in Iraq. In May, a blog post written by Captain Gallagher about his refusal to accept a role away […]
Beware Yachts in Distress
Andrew Mwangura, who monitors piracy from his base in Mombasa, is warning shipping to look out for the Carre d’As which was snatched a week ago. He believes its French crew have been put ashore and it is now being used as a mother ship to snare other unwitting sailors. Typically, boats like these are […]
Senseless Somalia
The cousin of one of the kidnapped journalists being held in Somalia has spoken of her frustration at trying to stand up snippets of information coming out of the country. “To date, I have received so much conflicting information, it all depends what source I’m looking at as to which variety of the ‘truth’ I’m […]
Al-Arabiya bureau chief escapes car bomb
AFP reports that Jawad Hattab, the Baghdad bureau chief for Al-Arabiya, narrowly escaped a car bomb today, “An explosive device was placed in the car of Al-Arabiya’s bureau chief Jawad Hattab near his home in the Al-Salihyah district of central Baghdad,” the Dubai-based satellite channel said. link Hattab and a number of Al-Arabiya colleagues have […]
Live tonight: Somaliland – Getting it right in Africa
You can now watch the event here. View in iTunes In May 1991 Somaliland declared independence from the rest of Somalia and over the past 17 years the government there has restored law and order to make it one of the must democratic and functioning societies in the Horn of Africa. Tonight’s debate at the […]
Milbloggies 2008: Go vote for your favourite milblog
The 2008 Milblogging Awards have been open for a couple of days now. If you want to nominate a blog you’ll have to head on over to Milblogging.com before Wednesday. Voting will begin on Thursday. There are several categories: U.S. Air Force U.S. Army U.S. Marine Corps U.S. Military (Parent) U.S. Military (Spouse) U.S. Military […]
Stop the War on Journalists in Sri Lanka
The recently launched CPJ blog highlights the plight of Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam. Tissa, as he is known, was detained in March by Terrorist Investigation Division forces and charged in August for "promoting terrorism through a magazine he published for a brief period in 2006". The International Federation of Journalists and Sri Lankan […]
Ugly of war
John D. McHugh, Frontline Club member and regular in these parts, has his latest short film from Afghanistan up on The Guardian website. He to a member of a the US army Medevac team about the day to day job of helping the wounded and the dying. John says he has a lot more footage […]
South Korea filmaker banned from Iraq
Kim Young-me, a South Korean filmaker has been banned from travelling outside South Korea by the South Korean government. She could also go to prison for violating a (slightly bizarre) year-old law banning Koreans from traveling to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, “They don’t want journalists working in Iraq,” she said… “I wanted my own independent […]
Feeding Africa
Julius Njoroge Kinuthia and his biotech bananas The biotech debate has been rumbling along nicely in Africa recently. A couple of days ago William Ruto, Kenya’s agriculture minister, said he planned to allow the planting of genetically modified crops as the best way to improve yields. Then this morning the UK’s former chief scientist, Professor […]
$2.5 million ransom for Somalia hostages
The kidnappers of the three journalists and two drivers kidnapped in Somalia two weeks ago have finally submitted their demands, “The kidnappers demanded 2.5 million dollars and we are trying to secure their release,” said Dahir Farah, who has been participating in negotiations to free the three abducted in Somalia last month. Another person claiming […]
