From the Frontline: February 2008 Archives
Churnalism at the Frontline Club
[video:brightcove:1437286069] Controversial media commentator Nick Davies was at the Frontline Club the other day to talk up (or down?) what he calls churnalism. Nick's book, Flat Earth News, has stoked a mountain of controversy throughout the British media from the likes of Adrian Monck, the BBC's Kevin Marsh and Frontline...more
Harrystan raises media debate
Writing on the BBC Editor's blog about the recent deployment of Prince Harry to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, Jon Williams, says When the Ministry of Defence approached the BBC - along with other parts of the UK media - to ask us not to tell our audiences about a...more
World War II through the eyes of a black soldier
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a report about the experience of black soldiers during World War II. Among them were many of the 1 million black Americans who served during the war, including Frank James, 83, of Shaker Heights. The day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, James put a...more
The folly of attacking Iran
Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times foreign correspondent, is in Philadeplhia on a tour to promote his book “The Folly of Attacking Iranâ€. Philly Mag interviews Kinzer ahead of his talk, As a staff reporter, I was not able to beat my spoon on the highchair. That’s one of...more
Baghdad bureau opens for blogging
The New York Times launches Baghdad Bureau this week. It's "a blog supplementing the Reach of War coverage and focused on events inside Iraq" The New York Times Baghdad bureau is both home and office to between 7 and 10 western reporters, snappers and videographers along with a large...more
Great war painting up for auction
An historic painting, called Incident at Bullecourt, by war artist Mervyn Napier Waller goes up for sale next month. The painting depicts Australian and Scottish soldiers on the front line in France during World War I. It's unusual in that the artist painted it with his left hand after...more
Journalists are targets says Allan Little
Patrick Smith at the Press Gazette grills Allan Little, Frontline Club member, regular MC at club events and BBC foreign correspondent. Allan talks about his time in the former Yugoslavia and how the conflict changed his life, “The one that changed my life was Yugoslavia,†he says. “The funny...more
W. C. Heinz dies at 93
The former war correspondent, sports columnist, magazine writer and novelist W.C. Heinz died on Wednesday at the age of 93. The New York Times obituary retells the story behind the story of his 1949 feature article "The Morning They Shot the Spies†In it he describes a firing squad...more
Webb McKinley dies at 90
Webb McKinley, a former Associated Press foreign correspondent, has died. He was 90 years old. During his 35 year career with AP he worked in Detroit, Rome, Istanbul - becoming chief of Middle East services in Beirut in 1960. AP has more, "He was larger than life," [daughter Judy McKinley...more
Pakistani Death Ray
Hilarious piece of Kabul gossip from Jean MacKenzie on the Institute of war and peace reporting blog. It appears the strength of rumour in Kabul rivals the strength of American firepower. And whatever you do, watch out for those incoming Pakistani death rays when you're answering the phone, My...more
In Vietnam we looked like this...
Googling around for a picture of Sydney Schanberg for the previous post I discover this interesting wee site consisting of polaroid portraits of foreign correspondents and others who passed through the AP bureau in Saigon during the Vietnam war. Neal Ulevich has compiled the images here including the one...more
Sydney Schanberg on embeds
Quick follow up from an earlier post about Greg Mitchell's new book about the run up to Iraq and the role of the media, a raft of reporters wade in to the whole "to-embed or not-to-embed debate. Sydney Schanberg has his say, "Em-bed-ded," said Sydney H. Schanberg [the New...more
David Brooks on the role of foreign correspondents
New York Times columnist David Brooks gave a talk at UCLA this week. He touched on the topic of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist who was held hostage and murdered in Karachi in 2002. He also discussed the role of the foreign correspondent. The UCLA student rag,...more
Kevin Sites in Haifa
Kevin Sites latest HotZone report is up. This time the roving multimedia reporter, who spent a year covering conflicts around the world for Yahoo, is in Northern Israel reporting from Haifa where residents were on the receiving end of Hezbollah rockets in summer 2006. You can also watch a...more
Don't be a whiner
From the Digital Journalist way back in 2003, war reporter Joseph L. Galloway gives sage advice to wannabe war reporters on what to carry and how to avoid being killed. I've extracted a few highlights, Strive to look as much like a private of whatever service you are travelling with....more
The run up to Iraq
In this week's Editor & Publisher podcast there is an interview with E&P Editor Greg Mitchell who recently published a book about the run up to war in Iraq and the role of the media - “So Wrong for So Long: How the The Press, the Pundits -- and the...more
Photographer Preston-Smith on Iraq
Writer and photographer Joel Preston-Smith spent four months in Iraq in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He talks about his most recent book "Night of a Thousand Stars and Other Portraits of Iraq" with The Oregonian, How do you feel about these people treating...more
Korean variations
NBC News correspondent, Ian Williams is blogging the visit to North Korea of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, I was on a press bus, and could only guess what the orchestra was thinking, until I spoke to Michele Kim, violinist and assistant concertmaster, whose parents hail from North Korea....more
Conflict economics
Frontline club member, photojournalist and regular in these parts, Marcus Bleasdale gets the Q&A going over at the Santa Barbara's Independent prior to a talk he is giving a UCSB next month. Marcus' work focusses on Africa, in particular the Democratic Republic of Congo. Money, he says, is at...more
One soldier's war
The Boston Globe runs a Q&A with soldier-turned-author Arkady Babchenko. As an 18 year draftee he fought with the Russian Army in 1995 in the First Chechen War. In 1999, he volunteered to fight in the Second Chechen War. "One Soldier's War" is his account of his experiences. Babchenko...more
Prominent Iraqi journalist shot
From the International Federation of Journalists, President of the Iraqi Union of Journalists in Baghdad, Shihab Al-Timimi, 75, is in hospital in critical but stable condition after his car was hit by a hail of bullets in a targeted attack following a meeting of the union leadership in the Al...more
Phoning Fallujah
One of the Iraqi journalists working for McClatchy Newspapers and blogging at "Inside Iraq" is chuffed - to say the least - that after nearly five years of waiting, the phone lines from Baghdad to Fallujah are up and running again, It will sound silly, not worth it but...more
Winners Of 2007 George Polk Awards
The George Polk Awards were announced this week. The categories change each year, but in foreign news reporting the winners are, Senior foreign correspondent Jim Sciutto, producer Angus Hines and cameraman/producer Tom Murphy for the program “ABC World News with Charles Gibson†will share the George Polk Award for Television...more
Where's the war?
You turn up for a war and the war doesn't show up. Frontline club member, and fellow blogger here, Ben Hammersley along with the world's press corps didn't find the story he was expecting in Pakistan this week, This is a strange job. Most people, upon seeing impending trouble, tend...more
Matthew Green talks Kony
[video:brightcove:1420186693] West Africa Correspondent for the Financial Times and former East Africa reporter for Reuters, Matthew Green talks at the Frontline Club about General Joseph Kony and unveils hidden and forgotten layers of the bloody conflict that plagues Northern Uganda. Matthew has been getting a lot of press lately for...more
Frontline photographer wins award
Sean Smith was one of the winners at the Royal Television Society (RTS) journalism awards for 2007 for his report for Channel 4 News, ITN and Guardian Film's called Iraq: Apache Company, The report by Guardian photographer Sean Smith - narrated by Channel 4 reporter Keme Nzerem - beat...more
Sexual harassment of foreign correspondents
Sexual harassment of female foreign correspondents is the topic in Mother Jones with Judith Matloff quoted on the harsh realities as she works on her second book, [Matloff] is also trying to challenge notions of a swaggering, hyper-masculine reporter at the center of a war zone. It's an image, she...more
Back in the HotZone
Kevin Sites is back up with a post from Sri Lanka, Kevin Sites covered Sri Lanka as violence erupted between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels, pushing a nation with so much to lose back to the brink of all-out war. In rebel-held territory Sites interviewed Tiger fighters about...more
Ben Hammersley covers Pakistan elections
Founding Frontline club member and From the Frontline blogger Ben Hammersley is on the move. He heads to Pakistan today for a week to cover the upcoming elections. He'll be blogging along the way and you can follow what he's up to as soon as his blog reawakens here....more
Tim Hetherington talks
Frontline Club founding member and this year's World Press Photo of the year award winner, Tim Hetherington, is in conversation with Der Spiegel this week, It was Hetherington's third tour there with US forces. The British photographer was once again traveling with the 2nd Platoon of Battle Company, part...more
Frontline fodder
British food bloggers descended upon the Frontline Club in London last week for our monthly Food and Wine event. Fortunately, all seemed to come away very impressed. Fraser from Blogjam and the Observer Food Monthly blog had his say, wine blogger Andrew blogged his experience at Spittoon.biz and Jeanne...more
Hans Jaap blogs from Baghdad
Hans Jaap is a Dutch journalist working for Radio Netherlands and he's based in Baghdad. It's not the threat of bombs that bother him in the Iraqi capital, it's the fear of kidnapping. And for a moment the other day, he thought it was about to happen to him,...more
Dozier secures sacred cat
The Milwaukee Press Club announces that CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier is to become the 2008 Sacred Cat Award honoree. The Sacred Cat Award has been doled out annually since 1973. It recognizes excellence in journalism at the national level. Dozier will accept the award at the club's annual...more
The Carsten Thomassen Kabul library
A new library in Kabul is to be named after the journalist Carsten Thomassen who was shot dead during an attack on the Serena Hotel in the Afghan capital in January, The Afghan Minister of Education has announced that the new library at the National Institute for Leadership and Adminstration...more
From the Mosul frontline
Salam Adil at Global Voices does an excellent job of rounding up the latest from the folks on the streets of Basra, Mosul and beyond. He dedicates a blog post "to the extraordinary bloggers of Mosul who are living on the front line of a war zone" Here are...more
Reporting Iraq like reporting on the Chinese government
Is reporting in Iraq really like reporting on the Chinese government? Well, according to some longtime journalists it is. Talking in the The Norman Transcript Oliver Schell, director of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations, describes it as it is, He described a trip to Baghdad to visit...more
Journalist shot dead in Iraq
From the International Herald Tribune, yet more tidings of joy for journalism in the Middle East, An Iraqi journalist who disappeared after leaving his offices to buy some supplies was found shot to death Tuesday in central Baghdad, according to his organization. Hisham Michwit Hamdan, 27, went missing Sunday after...more
Commuting with Putin
Ever wondered what Vladimir Putin's ride to work is like in the morning? Luke Harding, The Guardian's Moscow Correspondent, has been putting his multimedia reporting skills to work to try and tell you. Click the image above to check out Luke's stalking skills. How about doing something like this...more
Not taking any flak yet
The BBC TV war reporter comedy series Taking the flak was supposed to start filming in Kenya this month. Due to the unrest there, the project has been shelved for now. Richard Kay in The Daily Mail has more, Alas the £1million series - called Taking The Flak and starring...more
Rob Crilly in Nairobi
Nairobi-based freelance journalist Rob Crilly is the latest addition to the blog stable at From the Frontline. Rob started blogging at South of West late last year. He's been very busy with coverage from Kenya for The Times, Irish Times, Christian Science Monitor and The Daily Mail during the...more
Global incident locator
Following on from the BBC's Foreign Correspondent's map of the world, I discover the Global Incident map. The idea is pretty simple. Incidents of terror, war, conflict and the like are fed into the map. You can click incidents to find out more and go to the original news...more
Andy McNab on Kabul hotels
[video:youtube:2iltEbDjM_M] Dominic Medley, a frequent visitor to Gandamack Lodge in Kabul and a founding member of the Frontline club, emails to tell me popular war novelist and ex-SAS man Andy McNab writes about the hotel scene in Kabul in his latest book, Crossfire. The author looks favorably upon the Gandamack...more
From the Frontline from Zimbabwe
Blogging from Zimbabwe is Zimbabaloola. This is latest addition to the From the Frontline stable of blogs. Zimbabaloola is an anonymous blog written by someone living in Zimbabwe. The blog will cover the elections in Zimbabwe, the reality for the people living there and what hyperinflation means on the streets...more
Julius Strauss joins From the Frontline
Former war reporter, Julius Strauss is now blogging here at From the Frontline. Julius started his war reporting career as a freelance snapper during the Serbo-Croat and Bosnian wars. In 1996 he became the Daily Telegraph's Balkans Correspondent. After covering the aftermath of the Bosnian war and the war...more
CBS staff kidnapped in Basra
The Guardian reports this morning that two employees of the US broadcaster CBS News have been kidnapped in Basra in southern Iraq. One is believed to be a British journalist, The UK journalist was seized by gunmen in Basra with his interpreter on Sunday, according to the Iraqi news agency...more
"NATO cannot advance"
Channel 4's Alex Thomson and cameraman Stuart Webb report from Sangin valley in Afghanistan on an embed with British forces, Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson accompanied the marines up the Sangin valley to the Kajaki Dam. It was an assault on Taliban forces dug-in amongst the hills and valleys. A...more
Jonathan Steele discusses Iraq
[video:brightcove:1411847678] Senior foreign correspondent and in-house columnist on international affairs for the Guardian, Jonathan Steele argues that the Coalition was not defeated in Iraq because of inadequate planning but for much more deep-rooted reasons. Jonathan was talking at the Frontline Club last Thursday, In his present role he travels frequently...more
War reporter trauma
Ian Stewart, former West Africa bureau chief for AP, was shot by a boy soldier while travelling in a car through Freetown in Sierra Leone in 1999. The bullet lodged in the back of his brain and left him paralyzed. He recounted the experience, subsequent trauma and "survivor guilt"...more
Journalist murdered in Quetta
Paramedical workers carry the body of famous journalist Dr Chishti Mujahid on an ambulance - PakTribune According to The Daily Times Dr. Chishti Mujahid, a senior journalist and press photographer, was shot dead in Quetta on Saturday morning. The banned militant group, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), has claimed responsibility...more
Tim Hetherington wins 2008 World Press Photo Award
Great to hear that Frontline club founding member - the photographer Tim Hetherington - has won the prestigious World Press Photo Award 2008 for the photo above. Tim has previously presented his pictures and talked about them at the Frontline Club, The international jury of the 51st annual World...more
Grigory Pasko on Russian media
[video:youtube:n9OUmV-B14M] Journalist and blogger Grigory Pasko talks about how the murder of Anna Politkovskaya changed freedom of press in Russia, and discusses the new role of the internet....more
Baghdad rental
I've just finished listening to this and it's superb. This American Life is an excellent weekly podcast and the episode that I just noticed in my subscription folder will no doubt have Frontline folk who've lived and worked in Iraq in stitches, Radio reporter Adam Davidson went to Iraq to...more
Photojournalists on photojournalism
[video:youtube:6kFxY4yGbQA] Mediabistro runs a session on photojournalism with freelancers and staff snappers from Getty, The Washington Post, AP and Sipa Press. How is the newsroom changing, how is the rise of digital impacting print media and, especially, what is this multimedia journalism malarkey all about? link...more
We need puppy dogs in Iraq
[video:youtube:LDy7vn7-LX4] Billionaire Sam Zell who owns the Tribune Company (Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and New York Newsday) fires off two barrels during a Q&A at the Orlando Sentinel. Photographer Sara Fajardo questioned the media moghul twice about softening news coverage and Zell was not best pleased. Gawker has...more
Ernesto Londono heads to Baghdad
Media Bistro picks up on a memo stating that Ernesto Londono becomes the newest member of the Foreign section of the Washington Post. As of next month he will be stationed in Baghdad where he'll join Sudarsan Raghavan and correspondent Amit Paley. Londono succeeds Josh Partlow who is coming...more
War correspondent dies in ski accident
Retired ABC News war correspondent John McWethy has died while skiing in Colorado. He ran into a tree at on the intermediate 'Porcupine' trail at Keystone Ski Resort on Wednesday morning, According to Summit County Coroner Joanne Richardson, John McWethy was skiing fast and missed a turn, sliding chest-first...more
The batteries are running down
46 year old Sebastian Junger launched his career as a war reporter 15 years ago by travelling to Bosnia with no credentials or contacts. Following a stint in Nigeria, where he reported on militants attacking foreign oil companies, he ended up spending last year with U.S. soldiers in the...more
Quizzing Paxman
[video:brightcove:1406224110] BBC Newsnight interviewee frightener Jeremy Paxman is given the Q&A treatment at the Frontline club by Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade and the audience too, of course....more
It's too dangerous
ABC News war correspondent, Terry McCarthy, talks about working in Iraq and how it is almost impossible to report from outside the green zone, "It's a very dangerous war to cover and to go out and get those 'feel good' stories," he said. "Being out among the people is...more
Missing Burmese blogger spotted
IFEX reports that a Burmese blogger has gone missing from his home in Rangoon. The blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was allegedly arrested on 29 January according to his mother, Daw Aye Aye Than. Although her son's whereabouts cannot be confirmed, eyewitness accounts on Mizzima suggest he is being held at...more
Touch and go journalism
In Tehran, and blogging for the LA Times, Ramin Mostaghim talks about how one western journalist (+ editor) were flown in - to an alleged Ministry of Intelligence hotspot-come-hotel - to interview President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and promptly flown out again after the interview. Ramin argues this kind of "touch-and-go...more
Lawrence Kaplan launches World Affairs
Politico discusses the launch of a new quarterly called World Affairs with Lawrence Kaplan. Kaplan has reported from Iraq for The New Republic six times. He hopes that World Affairs contributors “can explain the world to people like me, who really don’t know what to believe anymore.†The ten...more
The death of war reporting
[video:brightcove: 1260649123] Frontline Club Honorary member and occasional speaker at the club talks about the death of war reporting and lamentable state of the news in general on The Guardian's Comment is free site, The death of war reporting is an inevitable consequence of the increasing dangers out there. The...more
R.K. Karanjia 1912 - 2008
The New Post India reports that veteran journalist, editor and war correspondent Russi K. Karanjia passed away in Mumbai last Friday. He was 95. During World War II, he worked as a war correspondent, reporting from the front lines in Burma and the Assam region of India. He became famous...more
The death of a war reporter
Ernie Pyle is one of the most celebrated war correspondents. He made his name during World War II and was killed by the Japanese sixty-three years ago. A picture showing the death of Pyle recently surfaced. The negative has long since been lost and only a few prints exist,...more
Why Tet Matters
Stanley Karnow, who wrote "Vietnam: A History" and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1991, talks about the Vietnam War in the Washington Independent. As Vietnamese people prepare for Tet and the year of the rat this coming Thursday, Karnow compares the conflict to the present day...more
The day I became a journalist
As BBC foreign correspondet Kim Ghattas prepares to move to a new posting in Washigton D.C. On BBC radio's From Our Own Correspondent show she talks about her upbringing in Lebanon during the civil war and of how, at thirteen years old, she decided to become a journalist, I...more
The flak jacket in her wardrobe
[video:brightcove:1399286156] Foreign Correspondent of the year, Frontline club member and regular feature on this blog, Christina Lamb, spoke last week about her life as a foreign correspondent and her new book, Small wars permitting. You can watch the whole talk by clicking the video above....more
Help save Pervez Kambaksh
Blogging at The Guardian, Roy Greenslade points to a petition at The Independent newspaper to help save the journalist Pervez Kambaksh who has been sentenced to death in Kabul. His "crime" was something I do every single day and don't give a second thought to - downloading material from...more
Conflict blogging
iConflict is a new website set to launch this month. According to comments from one of the founders of the site, Jason Haber, on the DigiDave blog, the time is right for a citizen-generated war reporting website, Unlike other social media news sites, ours is very focused. We aren't covering...more
Mapping BBC Foreign correspondents
Oliver at the Journalism.co.uk blog points to an interactive map - or "Google mashup" - of BBC Foreign correspondents, stringers and bureaus around the world. Click the map above to explore the locations and people. Now, if we could get a "conflict map" and lay it over the top of...more
From the Frontline:
Stories and analysis from journalists around the world and insight into the world of foreign correspondents, war reporters, life on...