News
Tobi Cohen recalls Kandahar IED incident
Tobi Cohen, a journalist with The Canadian Press, describes the IED incident she was involved in with Scott Deveau from the National Post in Kandahar this morning, With little else to do on the agonizingly slow journey, we chatted. Two soldiers got out of the vehicle to inspect the road for possible IEDs, or improvised […]
Embedded reporter shaken up in Kandahar IED
Scott Deveau, a journalist with Canwest News Service and the National Post, was travelling in the back of an armoured vehicle with a Canadian Press reporter Tobi Cohen and a group of soldiers when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device (IED) in Kandahar this morning, “The strike hit about five feet from me,” Deveau […]
Wilf Mbanga on journalism in Zimbabwe
Wilf Mbanga, founder and publisher of The Zimbabwean, talks in The Guardian today about how Mugabe’s regime deal with independent journalists. And how they have started threatening their children. Wilf knows all too well the threats journalists face in Zimbabwe. A 14 tonne truck carrying 60,000 copies of his newspaper was attacked in May, 2008, […]
Silver for Sudan
Ismail Ahmed Ismail trains in Khartoum’s decrepit athletics stadium Sudan has been celebrating its first Olympic medal after Ismail Ahmed Ismail battled all the way to the line for an 800m silver. The country’s big hope for a gold, the world number one this year Abubaker Kaki, crashed out in the semis but Ismail’s medal […]
Jill Carroll kidnapper arrested
The alleged mastermind behind the kidnapping in Baghdad of American journalist Jill Carroll in 2006 has been arrested, says Deborah Haynes in Baghdad for The Times today. Salim Abdallah Ashur al-Shujayri, also know as Abu Uthman was captured on August 11 and is also thought to have been involved in the kidnap and murder of […]
Journalists kidnapped in Somalia
As Graham has already noted, 2 foreign journalists were kidnapped yesterday just outside Mogadishu. It’s an interesting story because not only were they working with the fixer I use out there, but also they were working probably with the same interpreter, same security guards, and the same car Philip and I used when we were […]
Foreign journalists abducted in Somalia
Frontline Club on Dipity. Bloomberg is reporting that two foreign journalists are among five people who were kidnapped in Somalia today, The two journalists, an Australian man and Canadian woman, had been staying at the Shamo Hotel and were scheduled to visit a refugee camp at Elasha, 17 kilometers (10 miles) south of Mogadishu, Ahmed […]
Students uncover Daniel Pearl suspects
[video:youtube:9yKsHWZyijA] According to MSNBC a group of Georgetown University students led by a colleague of Daniel Pearl have managed to succeed where the FBI failed. They claim to have discovered the real identities of 15 of the 19 suspects in the killing of Daniel Pearl who are still at large. The relevant segment in the […]
McCain vs. Obama
No, this blog is not getting political… I just ran across something on the Reuters blog about media coverage of the rival candidates for the US presidency. The post concentrates on the seeming disparity between the candidates regards their media coverage, specifically their respective US TV coverage and even the number of jokes made about […]
Daniel Pearl finalists announced
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists announced the finalists for the first “Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting” today. Five judges selected finalists from a rosta of “86 entries from 24 countries, involving reporting in more than 60 countries during 2006 and 2007” The finalists are, Michael Kranish, Peter S. Canellos, Farah Stockman, […]
The Tale of Mullah Omar’s Eye
As the cliché goes, Mullah Omar is the ‘reclusive one-eyed leader of the Taliban’. You can see him in the photo above, one of only a handful that exist, his right eye just a socket. But how did he lose his eye? I’ve been doing some interviews for what I’m calling my idealistic oral history […]
Alive in Baghdad founder detained in China
Brian Conley, who runs the award-winning video blog Alive in Baghdad, has been detained in Beijing whilst documenting pro-Tibet protests in the city running alongside the Olypmics. Conley has been of incredible help to MexicoReporter.com, helping me with video editing and filming tips during the early days, and also helped the Frontline Club promote the […]
Video blogger arrested in Beijing
Friend of Frontline, Brian Conley has been arrested in Beijing. Brian is the brains behind the Alive in Baghdad blog and has helped us promote the Frontline Club live video channel. In an email his wife Eowyn tells us Brian was among 6 people recently arrested in Beijing, China while traveling to cover pro-Tibet demonstrations, […]
Blood Trail – the trailer
[video:youtube:FOeHVsuGzx8] Richard Parry and Vaughan Smith, both original Frontline TV Agency men and Vaughan is of course the founder of the Frontline Club, give us a sneak preview of the trailer to their film Blood Trail. The film was 15 years in the making and follows the career of war photographer Robert King. Richard, the […]
Finding George
Nairobi’s slums are filled with hundreds of thousands of people living cheek-by-jowl in tiny shacks. Each of the muddy streets looks the same and within minutes the visiting mzungu is completely disoriented. So finding Barack Obama’s half-brother George was never going to be easy. Especially as he had made a point of telling no-one but […]
The News finally launches website
Remember the English-language newspaper The News which launched last October, pledging independence? English language newspaper The News hit the streets of Mexico City today after a five year hiatus. Its directors have promised a more independent tone this time around. In its prior incarnation The News kept its head under the parapet, preferring to keep […]
Thai Rath reporter Charlee Boonsawat killed
Two bombs exploded in the the southern Thai town of Sungai Kolok today. Charlee Boonsawat, a reporter on the Thai Rath newspaper, was among the dead. The first bomb, which caused minimal damage, is believed to have been planted on a motorcycle. The second bomb exploded as onlookers, police and journalists attended the scene of […]
John Hemming hitches a Humvee to Kandahar
Jon Hemming Reuters chief correspondent in Afghanistan, heads to Kandahar with a convoy of U.S. troops, Normally as a reporter driving around Kabul, I take great care to avoid being anywhere near a foreign military convoy as they are the Taliban’s favorite target. But when you’re inside a Humvee, the tables are turned and you […]
Israeli investigation into the beating of Mohammed Omer
Mohammed Omer, winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism was beaten by Israeli security guards upon his return home to Gaza in June. We blogged about it at the time. Stuart Littlewood, author of Radio Free Palestine, writes in The People’s Voice that he has received an explanation “of sorts” for the treatment […]
Bruce Wallace becomes LA Times Foreign editor
The LA Times blog reports that Bruce Wallace, Tokyo bureau chief for the Los Angeles paper, is to head the foreign desk with immediate effect, Bruce was based in Japan, but during the last four years he has been a kinetic firefighter, parachuting from hotspot to hotspot. He made two lengthy trips to Iraq, embedding […]
Back to Vietnam
Ruth Ann Burns became the youngest accredited Vietnam war correspondent when she stepped off a plane to get her papers stamped in Saigon aged just 20 years old. Her husband Carl Burns was an Army helicopter pilot. The two of them chronicle their war stories, together with submissions from other soldiers, in a book of […]
Yuri Kozyrev in South Ossetia
TIME photographer Yuri Kozyrev rides with Russian troops through Georgia and the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. Meanwhile, Leli Blagonravova, a Georgian photojournalist, who was in Gori when the Russians first attacked on August 8-9 delivers a personal account on France 24’s Observers site. The Frontline Club‘s very own Kim Sengupta reports on Georgian claims […]
Mexico wins its first gold medal in Beijing
Guillermo Pérez is to take home the first gold medal for Mexico from the Olympics in Beijing this year, after winning a four-round taekwondo match against Gabriel Mercedes of the Dominican Republic. “Perez won a decision over Dominican Republic’s Yulis Gabriel Mercedes by scoring early. Mercedes was unable to come back until just seconds before […]
Mexico church assailed for maligning miniskirt
Last week’s condemnation of the mini-skirt by the Mexican Catholic Church has enraged some Mexican women, who say that church’s statement that women should wear less provocative clothing makes it easier to justify rape and other forms of violence against them. Last week’s statement, which advised women not to get into “spicyâ€conversations with men if […]
Kidnappings in Mexico up by 9 percent
The number of kidnappings in Mexico grew by 9.1 percent in the first five months of the year, according to figures published this week. The statistics, from the anti-kidnapping branch of the attorney general’s office (Procuraduria General de la Republica, PGR, in Spanish), will serve to justify the fear currently gripping the country over insecurity […]
Mini-skirts banned to stop “provoking” rape in Mexico
A Mexican university has banned miniskirts and other “provocative clothing” in an effort to stop “provoking” violent attacks against women. Héctor Melesio Cuen Ojeda, rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, said that minskirts worn by many of the pupils are an invitation for attacks both inside and outside the university, according to El Universal. […]
Blogs ‘fail’ in coverage of Russo-Georgia War
Joshua Foust argues that blogs have not lived up to expectations in covering the Russo-Georgia War. He homes in on what he describes as ‘large blogs’- the Small War Journal, Instapundit, the Washington Monthly etc. He’s disappointed that they seem to have relied on the same set of sources as the mainstream media: Soon after […]
Alexander Klimchuk laid to rest
[video:youtube:7-o8qgZY1MQ] Alexander Klimchuk was killed in Tskhinvali, the capital of the embattled region of South Ossetia nearly two weeks ago. Russian Today reports from his funeral in the video above. He was found dead in the streets of the South Ossetian capital along with another Georgian reporter, Grigol Chikhladze. Alexander headed up the photographic agency […]
Three killed, dozens injured and arrested
Reporters Without Borders catalogues the deaths and injuries to journalists in Georgia since the war began less than two weeks ago. Turkish cameraman Levent Öztürk working for the NTV station was severely injured in attack which he and his colleagues caught on video, “When I was hit, my eye went and I knew something bad […]
White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America
White Cargo tells the story of the 300,000 plus urchins, prostitutes, criminals and those without social blemish or criminal record who were taken from the British Isles during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and sent as forced labour to the American colonies. While the circumstances and stories of those shipped across the Atlantic against their […]
