From the Frontline: May 2008 Archives
The case of Trent Keegan
Freelance photographer Trent Keegan was murdered on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. His body was found in a ditch on Wednesday, 28 May. I'm not going to say much more about this at the moment, but I'd like to point you Nairobi-based, Frontline blogger, Rob Crilly who knew Trent...more
Top 10 journalistic uses for Twitter
Here's a brief guide to the top 10 journalistic uses of the microblogging tool Twitter. It's not all useless banter about cats and cookery... Sources - Use Twitterlocal to find out if anyone is tweeting from where you want to report, see what they're tweeting about, whether they might...more
James Nachtwey thanks fixers
[video:youtube:FVArFUxyNFM] The Frontline Club magazine this month mentions the inaugural Frontline Club journalism awards. These awards will raise money for the Frontline Club Fixers Fund. James Nachtwey recently praised the fixers who help him work as a war photographer in his President’s award acceptance speech at the Overseas Press Club...more
Twitter's quicker
"Just heard a big blast near badi chowpak. Donno what it was." Not much of a quote, but it was enough to get the story out. Sandil Srinivasan, or 2s as he is known on the micro-blogging service Twitter, was in Jaipur on 13 May when the first of a...more
Journalism award for Uganda film
[video:google:-7506651516025190367] The RFK Memorial Journalism Award goes to HDNet for their World Report programme, "A Silent War, A Violent Peace," about Uganda's civil war. The award will be presented at the Newseum tonight, according to TVNewser, "Kira Kay and Jason Maloney risked their lives to do the Uganda story, and...more
Interview with Alex Strick van Linschoten
Frontline blogger Alex gets interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live - great bit of insight into how one the Frontline bloggers operates, where he goes, how he approaches work and travel. Worth a listen....more
Declan Walsh in Garmser
The Guardian's Declan Walsh reports from Garmser, on the frontline of the fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan via audio slideshow on the newspaper's website....more
Embedded reporting from the inside
The cameraman writer on the Imagejunkies blog has a great post providing some insight into the process of "embedding", the logistics of TV reporting from a war zone and how sometimes the interests of the military minders don't always match the interests of the reporters on the ground, There is...more
Do you or don't you dumb it down?
Writing on the BBC Reporters blog, James Reynolds questions whether his reporting from the Chinese earthquake showed too much/too little or was too intrusive. This is a recurring debate that seems so often to evenly split between those who want to show everything and those who believe the news should...more
Cristi Hegranes wins Bravery in Journalism award
Cristi Hegranes works in a bar by night, by day she's "a media innovator" and this year's winner of the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism. Hegranes founded a nonprofit, the Press Institue for Women in the Developing World, to train women in the developing world as journalists...more
Reporting restrictions
David Carr writes in the New York Times about The Wars We Choose To Ignore. With war coverage shrinking to a mere drip - "3% of all American print and broadcast news as of last week" - down from 25% last September according to Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News...more
Who is Asne Seierstad?
Stephen Moss asks the question - Who is Asne Seierstad? A journalist, a writer, or something inbetween? Maybe a "literary journalist" he argues, The nomenclature matters. I met the American reporter Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone, recently, and while I admired the way he had gone to...more
Cornell Capa dies aged 90
Capa is remembered for coining the phrase "the concerned photographer," describing those who use their photography to contribute to humanity’s well-being. The idea has been an inspiration for countless photojournalists over the last five decades. link Capa founded the International Center of Photography in 1974 as a place to...more
Simon Kasyate wins Uganda journalism award
Simon Kasyate wins Uganda’s 2008 Investigative Journalist of the Year award. His winning TV feature focussed on a displaced family’s struggles to rebuild their life. Kasyate won from a field of 73 entries entered by 65 journalists. “My argument has always been that the biggest threat to media practice in...more
Alex de Waal on the Darfur crisis
[video:brightcove:1569954018] Alex de Waal, author of Darfur: a Short History of a Long War, talks about the history of Darfur, its conflicts, and what the future holds in store at the Frontline Club. In conversation with Nima Elbagir from More4 News and a reporter for Unreported World. She recently made...more
Create your own media
Former CNN and AP news correspondent Peter Arnett said the dominance and influence of the international media is waning during a speech in the Ghanain capital Accra this week, He challenged the media to endeavour to tell the people what they need to know but not what the international media...more
Molly-coddled journalists
Paul Callan of the Daily Express rails against research claiming journalists may have a hard time coping with addiction, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of reporting from conflict zones and the like. The Press Gazette publishes a letter from Callan who says a trip down the...more
Bilal Hussein wins journalism prize
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who spent more than two years in U.S. military custody in Iraq on suspicion of being a security threat, was awarded a journalism prize by the Miguel Gil Moreno Foundation on Thursday. link...more
Chronology of journalists killed in Iraq
As an Iraqi cameraman was shot dead by U.S. troops as he walked home on Thursday. Reuters has put together a recent chronology of journalists killed in Iraq. Reporters Without Borders has called the Iraq war the deadliest conflict for journalists since World War Two, with 213 journalists and support...more
Ray Fitzwalter: the rise and fall of ITV
[video:brightcove:1564577192] Ray Fitzwalter, executive producer of World in Action and author of The Dream that Died - the rise and fall of ITV - talks about his book at the Frontline Club....more
Congo Season: Media Talk -Lifting the Curse
[video:brightcove:1564577211] Are Congo's natural resources to be found at the root of the nations problems or do they offer a key to its future development? Taking part in the debate at the Frontline Club are Muzong Kodi, a research fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Tricia Feeney, the...more
Anthony Loyd and Seamus Murphy in Mexico
Frontline Club regulars reporter Anthony Loyd and photographer Seamus Murphy put together an audio slideshow from Palomas, Mexico. Click the image above to watch and listen the report, or you can read the same story here, Palomas is no stranger to violent death. Straddling a main contraband route across...more
Kimberley Dozier breathing fire
Kimberley Dozier is interviewed on the Bob Rivers show. She recalls the day she almost died when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad. Kimberley took part in the recent Frontline Club event in New York. Her book, "Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report and Survive the War in Iraq",...more
Fasih Ahmed wins New York Press Club Award
Fasih Ahmed has won the New York Press Club’s Best Spot News Award 2007 for coverage of the Benazir Bhutto assassination for Newsweek. â€I am very pleased to have been acknowledged by my peers in journalism,†said Mr Ahmed. This is an award for democracy and for Pakistan. Mr Ahmed...more
Drago Hedl wins award for war crimes journalism
[video:youtube:7f6AyehCFJQ] Croatian journalist Drago Hedl has won the Outstanding Merits in Investigative Journalism Award for 2008 announced by the Central European Initiative (CEI) and the South East Europe Media Organization (SEEMO) yesterday. Hedl works as an editor and journalist with the political weekly Feral Tribune in Split, The jury said...more
James Whitlow Delano in Burma
Digital Journalist publishes pictures and words from contributing photographer James Whitlow Delano. He was in Burma working on another assignment when Cyclone Nargis hit. For ten days he was able to travel the Irrawaddy River Delta and photograph what he found, Few western journalists managed to get in to...more
Ahmed Ali's story
Bloomberg take a look at the story behind the story of Oliver Poole's new book the Red Zone. The Daily Telegraph journalist spent five years in Iraq. In the book he pays tribute to the fixer who helped him along the way, a man called Ahmed Ali. Ali eventually fled...more
Anthony Loyd on Another Bloody Love Letter
Anthony Loyd, Times war correspondent, Frontline Club member and frequent speaker at club events, is interviewed in Metro about his most recent book, Another Bloody Love Letter. The book concentrates on his experiences covering the Balkans, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Iraq and he questions what it is to be...more
Interview with Peter Jouvenal
Kabul based Peter Jouvenal, one of the original Frontline agency journalists and an Afghan specialist is interviewed by TalkRadioNews military affairs correspondent Richard Miller. You can read about and listen to the 20 minute interview here or play it directly here. Peter touches on how he came to live...more
I was your editor once
[video:youtube:3U06nqagtyc] Lessons in how not to be a reporter: Lesson 1 - I was your editor once....more
Close call
Click the image above to see the slideshow from Helmand province in Afghanistan via David Viggars...more
Sean Smith "nothing very original"
Photographer Sean Smith is profiled in the Press Gazette today. Sean used video and stills photography in Iraq to report for the Guardian newspaper and he talked about his pictures at the Frontline Club in February soon after winning his Press Photographer of the year award. He talks about...more
Tony Jones on becoming a foreign correspondent
ABC Australia journalist Tony Jones talks to the Sydney Morning Herald about his first steps to becoming a foreign correspondent. When Tony Jones was at Sydney University, a visitor to his boarding college changed his life. Flamboyant foreign correspondent Francis James came to talk about his experiences in South-East Asia...more
Andrew Keen admits failure
Andrew Keen came to London with a motion some called ludicrous - Is new media killing journalism? - debate ensued at the Frontline Club and in today's Independent he admits, he lost. It was my job to argue that the internet is killing journalists. To cut a long debate short,...more
In the picture with Marcus Bleasdale
[video:brightcove:1557911521] Photographer Marcus Bleasdale talks about his work in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the Frontline Club during Congo Season. Marcus has worked in Congo over the past ten years so. He originally went there to see if the cliche was true. We've interviewed Marcus on the blog before....more
Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism 2008
Freelance journalists Dahr Jamail and Mohammed Omer share the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism 2008. There's more on the press release, Dahr Jamail’s unembedded reporting from Iraq, Lebanon and Syria has allowed us to understand the conflict in the Middle East not from a “Western†point of view (although he...more
Blowing it
David Viggars continues his tale of how he became a news photographer on the Reuters photographers blog. He was working as a newbie in Rome when he went to report on the aftermath of an earthquake in southern Italy and how 'missing the story' taught him not to miss...more
From propaganda to the press
The story of Haider Hamza, an Iraqi Ministry of Information teenage propaganda stooge, who eventually became a Reuters reporter soon after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This American Life produce this fascinating story, well worth a listen, When he was a teenager, Haider Hamza worked in the Iraqi Ministry...more
Flying low
John D. McHugh's latest installment in The Guardian today details his move to an outpost of Speray in Khowst province about 900 metres from the Pakistan border I managed to get the back seat, the one that photographers always want. This is because in a Chinook there is a...more
Making a one man documentary
Filmmaker Matt Clift talks about how he went about making a one man documentary film about an orphanage in Uganda in 2007. He details the problems he had, the equipment he used and offers a number of tips for wannabe filmmakers working in difficult environments, Where I was going...more
World Press Photo interviews
Very impressive series of multimedia interviews for the World Press Photo Awards. via MediaStorm...more
Frontline Club Spring party
It's the Frontline Club annual party tonight... and I can't be there. Wrong country at the wrong time etc. If, like me, you're not in the UK and you can't be there either, you might fancy a blast through the past. Click the above image of Frontline's Rory Peck...more
Getting into Burma
Saigon based photographer Kevin German was in Bangkok hanging outside the Myanmar Embassy with some other... tourists waiting to see whether their visas would arrive or not. Obviously there are jour------s there. Brave jour------s. It is becoming more and more dangerous for them to work there. The imagery is...more
John D. McHugh in the Guardian
I'm reliably informed Frontline Club member John D. McHugh has a big spread in the Guardian newspaper tomorrow. The piece will run online too, but it might be worth grabbing the papier mache version if you have access to a newstand near you. A wee bit of background, courtesy...more
Media victory in Iraq
Sociologist Andrew M. Lindner writes in the latest issue of the American Sociological Association’s Context magazine about his findings on how the media reported, and continue to report, the Iraq war. He says, the dearth of embedded reporting effectively gave an Iraq "media victory" for the Bush Administration, “The embedded...more
Joe Galloway is not a Pentagon poodle
Joe Galloway, an American war reporter, hits back at attempts to involve him in the Pentagon media poodles campaign we mentioned recently. According to Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher, Joe's not having any of it, "There's little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert propaganda operations mounted...more
Roddy Scott fundraiser
The Nidderdale Herald reports on the Nidderdale Book Festival, held on a farm in Summerbridge to help raise funds for the Roddy Scott Foundation. Kate Adie was among those present and she talked about her passion for reporting on war in a correct manner, "We all think that reporting...more
Reuters seek truth behind death of Fadel Shana
A month after Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza strip, the news organisation still has no explanation from Israeli authorities as to why he was targetted, "A month has passed since Fadel Shana was killed by Israeli forces while responsibly going about...more
CNN MultiChoice African Journalist 2008 finalists announced
The finalists in the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist 2008 Competition were announced today. The competition is in its 13th year. The winners will be anounced in Accra, Ghana on 19 July, Announcing the finalists, Azubuike Ishiekwene said: ""I have followed the CNN MultiChoice Awards for the past four years...more
Bangladesh boat project bags Sony
The BBC Bangladesh Boat Project has won the Sony Multiplatorm Radio journalism award. Ben Sutherland, one of the reporters on the project, writes about the experience for the BBC Editor's Blog. He says it wasn't just the amazing stories they helped tell, it was how they told them, Not...more
Sun brush with Burmese police
Nick Parker and Peter Jordan from The Sun newspaper felt the long arm of the Burmese law this week. The reporter and snapper duo were stopped as they headed south into the Irrawaddy Delta, We were ushered into an office where an immigration officer was waiting with pen poised....more
Becoming a news photographer
Reuters David Viggars discusses why he decided to become a news photographer on the Reuters blog, [The images of the Chinese earthquake] remind me what has always been so compelling about my job - the ease and speed with which still pictures can impart so much readily understood information...more
The new AP - no cost - high impact
following the jaipur blasts on twitter, originally uploaded by robinhamman. Robin Hamman follows how the microblogging tool Twitter was again so effectively used during the bomb blasts in Jaipur two days ago. Robin used Tweetscan, a tool that searches public Twitter messages for keywords, to see if anyone was...more
Susan Schulman on Congo
[video:youtube:rnW3ZnU3mSo] The Press Gazette picks up on the Frontline Club Congo season, which runs until May 16, and the work of Susan Schulman, whose photographs were used to help produce the Congo season video above. In the article, Schulman also talks about her work for Guardian Weekly and Channel 4...more
The diary of John D. McHugh
More from our man in Afghanistan. Actually, the Guardian's paying for his tea and biscuits and not us. However, he is the winner of the inaugural Frontline Club Award for Journalism and that's good enough for this blog. John D. McHugh's latest update for his Guardian diary is now...more
Explaining Omdurman
[video:youtube:AeldqfwUh4c] Meskel Square takes a stab at deciphering last week's attack on Omdurman, Sudan's largest city just across the Nile from the capital Khartoum. So, after hours of exhaustive interviews, in depth research and the refining of my own expert analysis, I have at last come up with the motive...more
Jonathan Steele reads Defeat
Jonathan Steele, senior foreign correspondent for The Guardian, reads from his latest book Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq for NPR, In the new book Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq, Jonathan Steele dissects the war and explains how it could have been fought — and planned —...more
No cameras, no foreigners
On the back of yet another foreign journalist deportation from Burma - the BBCs Paul Danahar was deported on 11 May following Andrew Harding's short trip to Rangoon last week - IPS reports that cameras and foreigners are banned from the country that was devastated by Cyclone Nargis on...more
Emily Holland heads to Liberia
Emily Holland heads to Liberia for the International Rescue Committee and she'll be blogging her journey, I’ll be exploring and writing about the IRC’s efforts to assist Liberians who were displaced during the fifteen-year long civil war. I’ll visit a clinic, a school, a radio station, and an agricultural project,...more
Kate Webb's ashes spread
The ashes of war correspondent Kate Webb were spread in Wellington Harbour in her native New Zealand yesterday some 37 years after her "first death", The ashes of New Zealand-born war correspondent Kate Webb were scattered on Wellington Harbour Tuesday, 37 years after she first read her death notices in...more
So, what is the future for news?
I have no idea... Well, I have some ideas, but I'm not blogging about them just yet. However, our very own Daniel Bennett puts together a useful future of news primer on his personal blog Mediating Conflict. One of the folks Daniel highlights is Adam Timworth, 'If you were to...more
Michael Bhatia remembered
Michael Bhatia was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on May 7. He was an American academic who was sent to Afghanistan to help the US military understand the country's customs in what are known (rather inhumanely) as "human terrain teams". He took pictures and wrote about his...more
Blogger Tariq Baiasi sentenced to 3 years
The Global Voices Advocacy group points our attention to the case of Syrian blogger Tariq Baiasi The blogger, who has been in prison for almost one year, has been sentenced to three years for leaving a comment on "suspicious websites", The State Security Court in Damascus has sentenced Tariq...more
From the sweet trolley part 1
Part 1 in an occasional series of posts live and direct from the bounteous Frontline Club restaurant sweet trolley. This is a chocolate brownie with some ice cream. It's a cocosolids-sugarstacked slice of somewhere sweeter than planet earth. Tread carefully, one too many and you may turn......more
Islamist insurgent warlords for dummies
Rob takes on a ride through the 21st century dictionary for confused journalists dumped into Middle eastern lexical hell. Don't know your insurgents form your islamists? Your war lords from your al Qaeda operatives? You soon will with Rob's handy tip sheet. And while we're on the topic... Just...more
Twitter's quicker debate over
The BBCs Rory Cellan-Jones wonders whether Twitter has come of age with the earthquake that struck Sichuan province in China this morning, Let's see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news...more
CNN man in Burmese chase
CNNs man in Myanmar, Dan Rivers, left the cyclone stricken country last Friday after being pursued by Burmese authorities. He credits his ability to evade capture upon the incompetence of those in hot pursuit. He defaced his passport, hid under a blanket and thinks he may have finally escaped...more
Jeremy Bowen comes under fire in Lebanon
"BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen has come under fire whilst reporting in Lebanon. Jeremy Bowen and his team are now safely back in Beirut." link. Click the image above to see Jeremy in Lebanon...more
Ian E. Brodie dies aged 75
Ian Ellery Brodie, a British foreign correspondent who covered Vietnam and worked out of Moscow before moving to the United States in 1975, has died of a stroke aged 72. The Daily Telegraph, a paper Brodie worked for, has an obituary and the Washington Post remembers an incident involving...more
David Axe joins Frontline
David Axe joins the From the Frontline blog ranks this week. David is the author of Army 101 and War Fix. He also writes for the Wired Magazine Danger Room blog, keeps a personal blog called War is boring and uploads his cartoons to Flickr. Staying with the 'boring'...more
There's a storm coming
[video:youtube:rDzV4Mw1CHQ] Andrew Heavens blogs from Khartoum in Sudan, that the Darfur rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) launched an attack a few miles north of the capital city. However, being on the ground doesn't make it any easier to report, especially when the mobile networks are down, Being...more
Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Grant Announced
Photographer Alexandra Boulat and her father Pierre, a Life magazine photographer, are to be remembered with an annual award created by VII the photo agency. The Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Grant was announced this week and will help fund projects that need to be told, The annual grant will...more
Frontline Club Journalism Awards
Right from the very beginning the Frontline Club broke all conventions. From cameraman Vaughan Smith's late 80's visions of flying over the Afghan frontline in a Microlite to shacking up in Osama Bin Laden's residence in Kabul. The founders of the Frontline Club didn't just shirk convention, they booted it...more
David Loyn on the Frontline fallen
David Loyn, the BBC foreign correspondent who authored the story behind the Frontline Club, writes in the Yorkshire Post about former Frontline TV journalist Roddy Scott. Roddy was killed by Russian soldiers while working in Chechnya. David writes in the paper as part of the run up to this...more
Howard Burditt released
Reuters photographer Howard Burditt was released today after he was detained for three days in Zimbabwe. Burditt, a Zimbabwean national covering the aftermath of the country's elections, had been in jail since Monday after officials accused him of illegally using a satellite phone to send pictures. "I am extremely relieved...more
Prepare to be a war correspondent
According to human rights groups and diplomatic sources, Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party intend to hang on to power come what may. In what is something of a scary reflection of the recent post from our Zimbabaloola a member of the ZANU-PF Politburo threatens a journalist with what will happen if...more
Hostile environment training for hacks
Reuters photographer Vivek Prakash recently spent four days undergoing hostile environment training in Bangkok - although some might say a stroll down Soi Cowboy is hostile environment training enough. But this is Reuters and 14 innocent hacks endured all manner of fear in pursuit of realistic training at the...more
Reporting Cyclone Nargis
DSC05551, originally uploaded by Azmil77. Russell Boyce is in charge of the Asia picture desk at Reuters. Yesterday, he says, was a "tough day". He is, of course, referring to Cyclone Nargis that ripped through Burma with a final death toll that could reach 100,000. Russell talks about the...more
China's dust bowl
China's Dust Bowl - a photo essay of desertification in the provinces of northwestern China. Photographs by Benoit Aquin / Polaris for TIME. The above picture is described thus, "To accommodate refugees displaced by desertification, the authorities have constructed Hongsibao, a town in Ningxia Province that can house 200,000...more
Mushtaq Yusufzai wins inaugural Kate Webb Award
Pakistani journalist Mushtaq Yusufzai has won the naugural Kate Webb Award for his reports from the Pakistans tribal belt areas home to a number of Al-Qaeda loyalists. The award was presented by Agence France-Presse and was announced today. the 32 year old reporter has previously been wounded by the Taliban...more
Why Darfur?
[video:youtube:3OWj1ZGn4uM] Charlie Beckett, from the London School of Economics, wonders why the conflict in Darfur, and not North Kivu, Somalia or Chad has so captured the imagination of western media (and to so little effect). Here's his theory, My theory is that since March 2003 this has been a narrative...more
Andrew Harding deported from Burma
He'd only just arrived, but the Burmese authorities weren't having any of it. Andrew Harding was hoping to report on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, but he was on the next plane out when 'irregularities' were spotted at border control. AFP quotes the state run New Light of Mynamar newspaper,...more
Fact check the media
Following on from the non-reaction that greeted the New York Times' Pentagon media poodles story, Wired's Danger Room suggests if journalists don't fancy digging into the story, readers can do it themselves, You can launch your own investigation, right now. The Defense Department has released thousands of pages of...more
Twittering from the frontline
In case you didn't know... we have a Twitter account. Twitter is a free, easy to update microblogging tool. We use it predominantly to broadcast to subscribers when there are new updates to any of the From the Frontline blogs. You can find out more about how Twitter works here....more
Kit to the future
Kevin Sites filed text, video, images and audio from twenty wars for the duration of one year between 2005-2006 for the Yahoo HotZone project. Pictured above is the equipment he took with him. It all fitted inside one rucsac. Just a couple of years later and I think it'd...more
The dotty old lady school of foreign correspondents
Daily Mail foreign correspondent Dame Ann Leslie talks with the Guardian's Vicky Frost about her path into life as a foreign correspondent and how playing a 'dotty old woman' or a 'bird brain' can help get the job done, "When I'm trying to assess a situation, I decide: am I...more
What no enquiry?
The New York Times published an 8,000-word, front-page article that seemed certain to generate attention. The story, written after the paper sued to gain access to Pentagon records, detailed the close relationship between the Defense Department and some military analysts commenting on the Iraq war for television networks... Despite...more
The most dangerous places to work as a journalist
[video:youtube:-lOZtc9zXMA] Last week the Committee to Protect Journalists released a list of the most dangerous spots for journalists. Places where journalists are killed and the killers go free. The ranking was produced in advance of World Press Freedom Day on May 3. It is based on the Impunity Index. CNNs...more
Reporting from Mogadishu
Apologies for cross posting on Alex's blog... Alex is back in Nairobi writing up the story he worked on in Somalia and he's on deadline. Therefore, just a quick post from me to guide you to the BBC Radio 5 Live interview with Alex for the iPM show and, repeated...more
The new live news
[video:youtube:nnffuBGNOfY] Josh Wolf has an interesting idea for a new live internet news network based - surprise surprise seeing as how it's the internet we're talking about - in San Francisco. He aims to harness live video broadcasting tools like Qik, Flixwagon and Ustream.tv - which Kyle MacRae has previously...more
Is new media (still) killing journalism?
[video:brightcove:1534611482] The World Press Freedom day discussion from the Frontline Club is now available. Is new media really killing journalism? Well, is it?...more
40 years ago
James Pringle reported from Vietnam for Reuters, Newsweek and the Times during the American War. Writing for the Asia Sentinel he remembers a tragic event in the Cholon district of Saigon 40 years ago today. Pringle was Reuters bureau chief, but was out of the country on May 5, 1968....more
I lost my love in Baghdad
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reviews Michael Hastings book, I lost my love in Baghdad. Hastings was posted to the Iraqi capital to work out of the Newsweek bureau there. His girlfiend, Andi, was later killed there. Janet Okoben's review in the Cleveland newspaper is less than complimentary, After his first...more
Mark Urban's brush with a suicide bomber
Mark Urban talks on the BBC Radio From our own correspondent programme about how he came to meet a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, When we arranged to meet a suicide bomber, we did not expect one wearing his bomb vest, all set to blow himself up outside the building in...more
Sarwa Abdul-Wahab gunned down
Sarwa Abdul-Wahab was gunned down in the Bakir district of Mosul on Sunday. The 35 year old freelanced for the Kurdistan Reporters News Agency and worked as a lawyer defending journalists' rights. The IHT has more, "She was a member of our association which is based in Baghdad but has...more
The real Africa
[video:brightcove:1534611483] The Real Africa was the topic of one of the debates at the Frontline Club last week. Africa, a continent made up of 53 independent nations, and yet as moderator Joel Kibazo points out, "If you look at it through the western media there aare the same issues and...more
Time for class
Gerald Martone, IRC director of humanitarian affairs, wins the 2008 Outstanding Photo Prize in a competition organised by InterAction, a coalition of 160 U.S.-based humanitarian groups, The photo, entitled, “A Chance to Learn: Time for Class in a Refugee Camp,†depicts young children at the Kalma Camp in South...more
Al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj released from Guantanamo
[video:youtube:qXLDtAYm6SI] Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj was finally released from Guantanamo Bay prison this week after seven years. He spoke with Al-Jazeera about his time in captivity. via Ethan...more
Is new media killing journalism?
Panelists at New Media is Killing Journalism? debate, originally uploaded by Nico Macdonald. Nico Macdonald has blogged his notes from the "Is new media killing journalism?" debate that took place at the Frontline Club this morning. Meanwhile the Guardian's Kevin Anderson is nonplussed by the whole affair. We'll have...more
Roddy Scott remembered
Next week sees the launch of the first ever Nidderdale Book Festival. It will help raise funds for the Roddy Scott Foundation. Roddy was one of the original Frontline TV agency journalists before he was killed by Russian soldiers in Chechnya in 2002. Roddy came from Nidderdale. The festival, which...more
Would you get out of your tank to apologise?
[video:youtube:tPuyZ5qQLUQ] You'd think the least they'd do is stop, apologise and exchange phone numbers. But, no. Crush some poor blokes car in Iraq and on your way. Rather rude methinks. And just imagine, one second later......more
Welcome to Somalia
I just got off the Skype chat with Alex in Mogadishu. He reckons he's one of just three foreign reporters in Mogadishu at the moment. I thought of him when I read Janine Di Giovanni's piece on Comment is free today about arriving at Moghadishu airport, A truckload of Kalashnikov...more
Live from Somalia
Frontline blogger Alex Strick van Linschoten is in Somalia blogging as news breaks that the leader of Al-Shabab has been killed. Alex is working with the French photographer Philip Poupin in Mogadishu and as well as blogging he is posting his own pictures to his Flickr account....more
Congo Season
[video:youtube:rnW3ZnU3mSo] Between 6th - 16th May the Frontline Club is hosting a Congo Season. The club has put together a short video highlighting the main issues in present day Congo. There are a number of interesting discussions scheduled and I'll be uploading video from the season as it becomes available....more
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