News
Too Many 4x4s By Far
UN carpark in Khartoum Couldn’t resist using this picture again to highlight Sukuma Kenya’s admirable attempt to expose hypocrisy at the United Nations as it campaigns to reduce carbon emissions. Pics of UN registered gas guzzlers can be posted on a flikr page. This is an issue close to my heart. But I have to […]
Shooting the messenger
Shooting the Messenger, Al Jazeera’s documentary on the deliberate killing and intimidation of journalists in conflict zones, investigates how international reporters became targets. In the past, members of the media were considered to be neutral in time of war. They were much like paramedics in the sense that their main concern was not victory, but […]
Mapping media deaths
MSN have created an interactive map of journalists killed in 2008, Plotted according to where they were killed, the map shows 31 deaths this year, according to figures from the International News Safety Institute. link via journalism.co.uk
Remembering the fallen
The dedication of Jaume Plensa’s giant glass vase ‘Breathing’ on the roof of the BBC at Portland Place as a memorial to all who have fallen in the cause of news and reporting was moving, fitting and strangely remote. It is fitting and timely because reporting is an increasingly dangerous business. The grim numbers of […]
AP vs. Bloggers
As freelance word rates go, $2.50 per word isn’t bad. It’s what you might expect from some of the higher end magazines in the US. However, it might not be what you expect the Associated Press (AP) to charge bloggers for quoting AP material.In June the newswire filed a lawsuit against Rogers Cadenhead, publisher of […]
Deserters
It started with singing. I was in my sweltering hovel – I mean, typical Chadian room – at a guest house in Abeche in eastern Chad on Friday evening when I heard the women’s voice harmonizing. My photographer Anne bustled over. “Do you hear it? I think it’s a wedding.†We hopped the fence, audio […]
12 people killed during nightclub police raid
Reports are emerging this morning that 12 people, including three police officers, were killed yesterday during a police raid on the News Divine Nightclub in Mexico City. The capital’s police chief said hundreds of youths marking the end of the school year had panicked when police raided the News Divine club. He said there had […]
Congo’s Crumbling Castle
Dungu Castle The castle looms up out of the jungle, overlooking a muddy river which bisects the town. You can just imagine the soirees on the lawn which runs down to the riverbank. Talk would have been of that day’s hunting while couples danced to music from a gramophone in the shimmering light from flaming […]
From Forgotten Frontlines
Remember when Nagorno-Karabakh topped the news? Two decades ago it became the war to report. For a while we all knew how to say and even spell the name of the disputed territory fought over by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenia eventually took control and many thousands died. Armenian journalist Vardan Hovhannisyan’s film, A Story of […]
A view on the security situation in Baghdad
I thought I’d take Arianna Huffington’s advice and point you to someone claiming to be giving the facts on the ground in Iraq. Dr Mohammed blogs at Last of Iraqis. He’s been blogging about his life as a dentist in the Iraqi capital for some time now and has contributed to the BBC’s iPM radio […]
Frontline Journalism Awards tonight
Webcam chat at Ustream John D. McHugh will talk about his work as he accepts the inaugural Frontline Journalism Award at the Frontline Club tonight. Brent Stirton will also receive the inaugural Frontline Memorial Tribute. Please tune in to our live stream channel to watch and listen to John in conversation with Jon Lee Anderson […]
Tribute to Nasteh Dahir Farah
Media workers from across Somalia paid tribute today to Nasteh Dahir Farah at a Safety awareness training course organised by National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) and the International News Safety Institute. Nasteh Dahir Farah was the Vice president of the NUSOJ, before he was murdered in Kismayu on 7 June, “Journalists work in the […]
Abeche: Chad’s Dusty Outpost
The French troops at the N’Djamena airport were wearing short shorts (pictured) – the kind you usually associate with cheesy beach movies starring Elvis, only these were in camo pattern. We trudged aboard a Greek C-130 for the quick flight to Abeche, the fortified eastern outpost occupied by the Chadian army, EUFOR and the U.N. […]
Arianna Huffington slams media coverage of war in Iraq
Just back from listening to Arianna Huffington, the founder of the Huffington Post, at the BBC. In between some interesting comments on the American election and her citizen journalism project, ‘Off the Bus’, she thought she’d spend a bit of time telling assembled journalists how much of a disaster she thinks the Iraq war has […]
Africa Reading Challenge. 4. The Wizard of The Nile
Joseph Kony is an enigma wrapped up in a riddle disguised by two decades of misunderstanding as his ragtag band of rebels tries to bring down the Ugandan government. That he came close at times and has managed to evade capture or defeat has long baffled observers who believe Kony’s few public statements suggest he […]
Video diary from Burma
Dr Chris van Tulleken, from the aid agency Merlin and a Frontline Club member, reports from Burma on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Chris is the first aid worker allowed free access to film wherever he wanted in the Irrawaddy Delta since the cyclone wrecked this region, Finally we were on our way. I looked […]
Mona Alami on Lebanese media
Mona Alami, a Beirut based French-Lebanese journalist, writing for the Inter Press Service describes the failings of Lebanese media outlets. Assassinations, physical threats, political pressure, biased reporting, lack of professionalism, rampant corruption and self-censorship are what she calls the seven deadly sins of Lebanese newsrooms, The most severe [sin] is undoubtedly the killing of prominent […]
Australian journalist shot in Kandahar
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an Australian journalist was shot in the arm near Kandahar. The journalist is believed to be 36-year-old Jamie Kidston, a former cameraman for SBS Television, A [Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade] spokesman said the Australian, from NSW, was being treated at medical facilities inside Afghanistan. “Australian government officials […]
Scottish war reporter serialised
All Media Scotland begin publishing a series of extracts from the memoirs of Scottish war correspondent, Paul Harris today. The book, ‘More Thrills than Skills: A Half-life in Journalism’, is scheduled for publication in 2009, I’d always wanted to be a journalist. I can remember exactly what inspired this bizarre deep inner-longing. Around the age […]
Journalists in Sri Lanka under threat
The International Herald Tribune reports on the increasing threats to the journalists working in Sri Lanka. At least 100 reporters have been attacked, 25 journalists have fled the country and several others have gone underground, said [Sunanda] Deshapriya of the Free Media Movement… Iqbal Athas, a high-profile defense columnist for the Sunday Times who is […]
Mushtaq Yusufzai collects Kate Webb Award
Mushtaq Yusufzai, the Pakistani journalist who was announced the inaugural winner of the Kate Webb Award last month, picked up his award at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong last night. He won the award for his reports from Pakistan’s tribal belt, “It is very difficult now to work independently in the tribal areas. […]
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation
How do you review a book that articulates what your life under occupation is like so honestly and clearly that you are left feeling shocked and angry? To an outside world that sees only the issues of “peace” and “terrorism,” occupation loses its significance and becomes a mere abstraction. This book brings it back to […]
My Grandmother: A Memoir
While a young girl, Turkish lawyer Fethiye Çetin adored her grandmother, a Muslim matriarch named Seher. Then she learned that Seher was in fact Haranuş, an Armenian Christian. She had been seized from her mother by a Turkish gendarmerie corporal officiating over an Armenian death march during the First World War. My Grandmother is Çetin’s […]
Four charged for Politkovskaya murder
“Three suspects have been charged with the murder of [Anna Politkovskaya]: Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov,” the Investigations Committee said in a statement announcing the end of the high-profile murder inquiry. A fourth man, Pavel Ryaguzov, an officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the former KGB, has been charged with abuse of power […]
Afghanistan: Medieval Warfare?
The savagery of medieval warfare is widely acknowledged and understood; yet the idea of chivalry as an important and influential force in the conflicts of the Middle Ages somehow lives on in seemingly comfortable juxtaposition with this awareness. In By Sword and Fire I show that such notions of incongruent compatibility do not reflect the […]
Green Grass
I write this from my beautiful green garden in Kabul, which has changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable. We now have aubergine, mint, coriander, roses, grapes and mulberries growing, along with a lot of other stuff that I’m sure is edible but don’t know the names of. As always, there’s lots happening in […]
Blinding Sandstorm of War
Contradictory reports. Evidence that doesn’t make sense. Rumor getting repeated until it seems true. Military historians call this the “fog of war.” What do you call it in a place that’s way too dry for fog? The blinding sandstorm of war? A week ago rebels in eastern Chad announced that they were launching their third […]
Amnesty International Media Awards 2008
Deborah Haynes, Baghdad based foreign correspondent for The Times, was announced the winner of the National Newspaper reporting award at the Amnesty International Media Awards last night. Deborah is a regular on this blog with highlights from her Inside Iraq blog. The Press Gazette reports that among the winners was one posthumous award, Iraqi journalist […]
Are we just numb?
[video:youtube:zh2A_SYuhls] That’s the question Jon Stewart, presenter of the Daily Show, asked Lara Logan, chief correspondent for CBS News, on the show he presents last night, I mean, there were 51 people killed today in a Shia neighborhood in Iraq. Are we just numb? Have we lost our humanity with this entire situation? Yeah, we […]
From Broadway to Baghdad
Campbell Robertson, New York Times Broadway gossip columnist, is heading to Iraq – “once the Tony’s are over” – for the United States leading broadsheet. Explaining the decision James Glanz, Baghdad Bureau Chief, says the paper could do with some fresh ideas, “Look, he’s an untraditional war correspondent the way a lot of us are,†[…]
