News
Remembering Alexander Klimchuk
Matthew Collin, a foreign correspondent in the Caucasus region, is heading out of Tbilisi. He takes time out in today’s Guardian to reflect upon his adopted home and the death of his friend, the journalist Alexander Klimchuk, Last autumn, Klimchuk and I worked together in South Ossetia, covering a government-sponsored Boney M concert in a […]
The glamorous life of a foreign correspondent
Bed sharing, fried ants, yak’s milk and dodged bullets… Carol J. Williams writes in the Los Angeles Times about her time as a foreign correspondent. It isn’t always this grim, is it? Only weeks into the Bosnian war that began in 1992, shellfire had blasted out the windows at the Sarajevo Holiday Inn. We referred […]
Into South Ossetia with Yuri Kozyrev
TIME photographer Yuri Kozyrev travels with Russian units through South Ossetia. Click the image above to see a photgallery of recent images.
Analysing Ossetia
Sean’s Russia blog offers a very interesting analysis of the western media’s interpretation of the situation in South Ossetia and Georgia, Every small Russian action is instantly viewed as part of a larger design. The latest evidence that sparked fears of an assault on Tbilisi? A Russian convoy that was heading toward the Georgian capital […]
Darfur: Not the Size of France or Texas
Poor befuddled readers of newspapers can’t be expected to understand straightforward units of measurement so when it comes to geographical area we journalists have a neat (where neat means hackneyed) trick – compare the subject of the article to things the reader might know. Traditionally this has been the football pitch as in…”the Beckhams’ front […]
Russo-Georgia War: cyber-propaganda
“In its war with Georgia, the first truly global user-generated conflict, Russia’s digital guerillas have been drafted into a state-waged propaganda war” The opening paragraph of an excellent article by Evgeny Morozov on Open Democracy. He argues that the Web’s democratic potential has been undermined by the agendas of nation-states and maintains that ‘digital guerillas’ […]
Aye Aye Win wins Courage in journalism award 2008
The International Women’s Media Foundation award Burmese journalist Aye Aye Win with the Courage in Journalism award for 2008. The 54 year old AP journalist wins the award for her coverage of the demonstrations in September 2007, In a telephone interview with The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, Aye Aye Win said she thought the Foundation had […]
‘At no time should you endanger yourself’: BBC’s ‘citizen journalism’ disclaimer and war zones
The BBC’s standard plea for information on this article about the crisis in Georgia is bothering me. On the BBC website, we learn that ‘violence has flared [in Gori]’, ‘there are reports of cars being taken from residents at gunpoint’, and ‘there is looting going on involving South Ossetian separatists’. Similarly, The Guardian’s latest article […]
John Ray detained in China
[video:youtube:bdG0tpmKgbw] John Ray, ITV’s China correspondent, was covering a Free Tibet protest in Beijing’s main Olympic zone when he was detained by police earlier today. He managed to use his telephone from the back of the police van before the line went dead, “I have been roughed up. They dragged me, pulled me and knocked […]
John Cooley dies
From Democracy Now, The longtime foreign correspondent John Cooley has died. He covered the Middle East for more than fifty years, mostly at the Christian Science Monitor. He was the author of eight books, including Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism. link
Russian bombs kill journalist in Gori
From AP, A Dutch television journalist was killed overnight when Russian warplanes bombed the central Georgian city of Gori. The television news station RTL reported on its Web site that its cameraman Stan Storimans, 39, was killed and correspondent Jeroen Akkermans was wounded in the leg in the attack. RTL said, in all, five people […]
Live from Kandahar… soon
[video:youtube:VOiLs95QpV8] Frontline blogger Alex made his way down to Kandahar last week – you can see a bit of his recent journey through Arghandab district in the short clip above. He’ll be based in the southern province for the next eight or nine months. Well worth keeping an eye on his blog. He’s putting up […]
Cyberwar, blogging and other Russo-Georgia War links
I’ve just got back from an all too brief holiday and this morning I’ve been collecting some stuff on the conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia and beyond. 1. While most of the attention has rightly been on the physical war that has been costing Russian and Georgian lives, Wired has nevertheless […]
Chasing Shadows
Today’s Standard splashes on mounting suspicion that someone in Kenya’s anti-terror police unit tipped off Fazul Abdulla Mohammed, a key terror suspect, just as officers were about to swoop. They arrested a family thought to be hosting Fazul in Malindi even as his dinner was cooling on the table. But there was no sign of […]
Slideshow: Immigration explored as a concept in Mexico City exhibition
The video and photography exhibition Laberinto de Miradas – Laberinth of Glances – that opened in Mexico City last month in the Cultural Center of Spain – features the kind of images that we are used to seeing in relation to immigration. But the show also looks at migration and immigration as a concept, broadening […]
Journalists killed in South Ossetia
A Moscow radio station reports two journalists have been killed in Tskhinvali, the capital of the embattled region of South Ossetia. The International Herald Tribune has more, The station, Ekho Moskvy, cited a Russian Newsweek magazine correspondent Orkhan Dzhemal as saying that both went into the separatist Georgian province from the Georgian side and were […]
Saving Darfur II
My lurch from left-wing idealist living in Britain, to right-wing realist in Africa continues apace. This time it is The Spectator that seems to have nailed the analysis of Darfur… The exclusive focus on bashing the government has emboldened the rebels, encouraging them to keep up the fight and shun the negotiating table. The peace […]
How do you track Russian language news from South Ossetia without reading Russian?
Here’s one way to try and follow the South Ossetia story in Russian if you can’t read Russian. I touch on these methods when I teach the Track Breaking News Online courses each month in London. We’ll do all this by using a combination of online translation tools and RSS feeds. Firstly, find a number […]
Monitoring South Ossetia
Veronica Khokhlova at Global Voices does a good job rounding up and translating the word from the streets of Georgia including this comment from Russian journalist Mikhail Romanov in a hotel basement in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, The city is under heavy howitzer and mortar fire. An endless cannonade. I’ve seen many wounded […]
Russian troops attack South Ossetia
[video:youtube:E4AD6mOZm9I] Russian troops head in the direction of Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia’s separatist South Ossetia region. This follows “a massive attack” by Georgian troops to regain control of breakaway region where officials said at least 15 people were killed and an unspecified number of people wounded. A convoy of Russian tanks and troops is […]
Top tips for reporting from Sudan
Heading to Sudan? Ever wondered what to look out for? Rob has the lowdown with his top tips for working in the African nation. I particularly liked number five, Don’t bear an uncanny resemblance to the previous BBC stringer who got kicked out. link
Beijing Press pack detained
The Huffington Post reports that a plane carrying the White House press pack to Beijing was detained for three hours due to “logistical problems” Delays on landing have happened before, but no one on the plane was able to recall one this long. The plane landed at 2:10 a.m. local time. Passengers finally were able […]
Peter Lloyd could face 10 months
Peter Lloyd, the ABC journalist arrested in Singapore last month, could face 10 months in prison for possession of drugs. A Singaporean man who said he bought drugs from Lloyd has already been jailed for 10 months. The New Delhi-based foreign correspondent still faces a number of related charges, Lloyd, 41, also faces charges of […]
Spinning the war in Iraq?
“Back to Iraq” is a trip organised Vets for Freedom (VFF), an American pro-war group. A band of ex-servicemen with some journalism experience are heading “Back to Iraq” to areas in which they served to report on what they find. But is it journalism? Alex Koppelman on Salon.com has more, VFF leaders say they chose […]
8-8-88 remembered
The photojournalism blog Verve Photo features the work of Brian Sokol today. The Nepal-based American snapper has covered a range of stories from “armed conflict in the Himalayas to the international trafficking of human organs”. The photo above is from the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma. Meanwhile, writing in The International Herald Tribune, Ko […]
A dummies guide to war reporting
John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, is set to star in a new BBC2 TV series called Three Dogs. The veteran foreign correspondent will teach the two other dogs, explorers extraordinaire Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, how to do the job of journalism in a war zone. In return, the duo will show […]
Waiting for a man to die
Photo: An empty bench outside the American Embassy on Tuesday. There was no candlelit vigil for Medellin in a city still on shock from other violent crime. Deborah Bonello / MexicoReporter.com On Tuesday, I waited for a man to die. Even though several people die every minute of every day, I’ve never known the name […]
How to Operate in Sudan
Soldiers wait for President Bashir to arrive in El Fasher last month Two contrasting views of operating in Sudan. Jennie Matthew of AFP describes her frustration at trying and failing to travel to the Merowe Dam where last week 200 families said they were deliberately flooded out of their homes. As always, the man from […]
Tourism not terrorism
Our man Kim Sengupta reports that the Iraqi government has come up with the winning slogan “tourism not terrorism” to try and attract visitors to the land of Babylon. Delegates from Basra have taken inspiration from the upsurge in tourism seen in Northern Ireland since the IRA ceasfire, Hamood al-Yakoubi, head of the Iraqi tourist […]
Muting the war
Fascinating reminder of the way American and western media report the wars in Iraq and Afghanstan on The Media Channel, Why do I think this image from Thursday’s NYT is so profound? It’s because the military has been so overwhelmingly effective in muting the war, and the war photographer, that — practically without notice — […]
