From the Frontline: July 2008 Archives
Live tonight: Karadzic to the Hague
[video:brightcove:1704074804] Live discussion about Karadzic tonight Thu 31st July, 7.30pm UK time from the Frontline Club chaired by Ben Brown (BBC). Joining us will be Ed Vulliamy (Guardian and Observer), Kemal Pervanic (survivor of the Omarska concentration camp), Sir Geoffrey Nice (QC) and Gordana Igric by skype (BIRN). You can...more
Frontline Twitter power
I'm on holiday for a week, but I'd like to send you all over to Daniel's blog. He's blogging a series about the journalistic uses of Twitter. Meanwhile, Deborah in Mexico talks about her multimedia blogging work for the LA Times. And Rob is grumbling about the price of swimming...more
Live: Five Zimbabwean writers on Zimbabwe
We ask a group some of Zimbabwe's most well-known writers and journalists from widely divergent backgrounds to reflect on how their country got to this point. Join us live Tue 29 Jul, 7.30pm UK time on the Frontline Club livestream channel. The BBC's George Alagiah will chair the discussion with;...more
Richard Mills found dead in Harare
Richard Mills, a photographer with The Times newspaper, was found dead in a hotel room in Harare on July 14 after a suspected suicide. The Belfast Telegraph reports that Richard officially died of "asphyxiation by hanging". Richard was working on an undercover assignment in Zimbabwe when he was found...more
More on the death of foreign news reporting
One of the least favourite (yet most common) topics of this blog since we started has been the decline in foreign news coverage and the various attempts to try and rescue it. The New York Times, quoting the latest Pew Research report today, suggests the grim tidings are only set...more
Live Stream: Guns for Hire - The Good, the Bad and the Unregulated
The work of Private Military and Security Companies is up for debate tomorrow - Tue 22 July, 7.30pm UK time - at the Frontline Club in London. As usual we'll be livestreaming the event on the Frontline Club Channel. Taking part will be Andy Bearpark (British Association of Private Security...more
Video journalism awards open for business
The International Video Journalism Awards nomination phase is now open, The awards contain two international prizes and a series of categories for German videojournalists. A total of €12,000 is up for grabs across eight categories. The deadline for entries is October 15 and the winners will be announced at an...more
Getting into Zimbabwe
Andrew Geoghegan, an ABC News journalist, marvels at how he has been allowed to enter Zimbabwe four times without arrest, It’s easy to develop a false sense of security in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe’s notorious thugs work behind the scenes. It’s the police roadblocks that make me nervous. Most of the...more
Hostile environments for journalists
The Independent today looks at survival training for journalists working in hostile environments. The Frontline Club's John Owen adds his wise tuppence to the article, "I do not accept any justification for not getting safety training to journalists. If they cannot afford paying for training, they should not send people,"...more
Frank Gardner on getting back to work
[video:youtube:vIYF6rg5uPQ] Frank Gardner, the BBC journalist who was shot by Al-Qaeda gunmen and left for dead in Saudi Arabia in June 2004, talks to Attitude TV about getting back to work, the Saudi shooting and about his recent assignment to Afghanistan....more
Belfast Post does a week in Helmand
Is everybody going to Afghanistan this week?? Maybe it has something to do with someone else's arrival there at the weekend. In addition to Liz Perkins from the South Wales Evening Post, Lesley-Anne Henry will be in Helmand all week for the Belfast Telegraph....more
ABC News man on Singapore drugs charge
Peter Lloyd, the New Delhi based South Asia correspondent for ABC News, was arrested for selling the drug "Ice" in Singapore at the weekend. He is expected to be charged today and could face up to twenty years in prison. The Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith said, "Let...more
Editorial preferences
[video:youtube:L5XIhIpVUfI] Photo District News has more on the disembedding of photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller, "The official reason which they chose to use for disembedding me was that I had supplied the enemy with information on the effectiveness of attack," he said. "I told the public affairs officer, listen, I...more
Corkscrew into Camp Bastion
Liz Perkins, Health reporter on the South Wales Evening Post, is heading to Afghanistan for one week to report on the soldiers stationed at Camp Bastion. After arriving in Kandahar, it's on to another plane, a "corkscrew" landing and... cricket, I was warned beforehand to be prepared that it would...more
Daily Mirror Palestine war diaries published
The memoires of Barbara Board, a Daily Mirror reporter for ten years, are to be published by her daughter Jacqueline in a new book, Reporting From Palestine. Barbara worked as Daily Mirror's frontline war correspondent from Palestine in the 40's and 50's, "It was fascinating to discover everything she had...more
Eric Silver dies aged 73
Tim McGirk writes on the TIME blog about the funeral of freelancer Eric Silver, a 73 year old originally from Leeds, who made Jerusalem his home and died recently of pancreatic cancer, Eric turned down a job back in London as a foreign editorial writer to return to Jerusalem as...more
LIVE stream tonight: Iraq - A Fragile Sovereignty
[video:brightcove:1676207768] The future of Iraq is up for debate tonight at the Frontline Club with a great panel. If you can't make it to the club in Paddington, please join in online on the Frontline Club livestream channel where you can register to chat and join in the debate. The...more
Escape from Iran
Ahmed Batebi who fled from Iran after eight years in prison tells his story in a short video on the New York Times. Using footage he shot on a small camera Batebi tells the story of his journey froma activist to refugee as he slipped over the border into...more
Afghanistan - Not won yet
Aryn Baker talks over a slideshow of some great shots of British troops in Afghanistan on the TIME Magazine wesbite. Click the image above to play the slideshow. The article accompanying the images is called Afghanistan - A war that's still not won, The villagers couldn't--or wouldn't--fight back. "We...more
Forgotten film season at the Frontline Club
[video:youtube:x2d6bVw7t8k] The Forgotten season starts at the Frontline Club from 4 August. The season consists of nine documentary films from some of the world's forgotten stories, Ranging from female soldiers in Sri Lanka to a forgotten war in Nagorno Karabakh, a covered up massacre in Uzbekistan to conscientious objection in...more
Zoriah Miller says he was censored
Democracy Nation talk to Zoriah Miller, the American photojournalist we previously blogged about here and here, who was booted out of Iraq last week. He describes the aftermath of the attack he photographed that led to the US Army immediately disembedding him, I immediately began to take as many pictures...more
A fixer goes to America
Jeremy Gerard provides an update on the fixer known only as Ahmed Ali. A few months ago things weren't looking good for Ali and his new life in America. However, things are picking up for the man who helped Oliver Poole work as a journalist in Iraq and who features...more
Kim Sengupta talks to Ahmed Rashid
[video:brightcove:1657894487] Ahmed Rashid spoke recently at the Frontline Club with the BBCs Lyse Doucet and today it's another Frontline Club member's turn Kim Sengupta. He talks to the fighter turned foreign correspondent in The Independent today. He recalls how the Pakistani authorities banned him from working and the Taliban said...more
Cambodia journalist gunned down
Magnum snapper John Vink writes about going home to Phnom Penh to discover Khem Sambo, a local journalist, and his son were gunned down in the street, Today the cremation ceremony took place at the Toul Tompoung pagoda. Sambo is the 12th journalist killed in Cambodia since 1993. link...more
Blocked in Chad
Frontline blogger David Axe writes on the Danger Room blog about the joys of getting around Chad. Roadblocks equal a local road tax. He's got through $500 in just a month paying off the blockers. At least at one roadblock the 'guards' let him hold onto his wallet, I...more
One year on: Reuters still waiting for US Army video
The U.S. military said on Friday it was still processing a request by Reuters for video footage from U.S. helicopters and other materials relating to the killing of two Iraqi staff in Baghdad a year ago. Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in...more
Warren Zinn on the suicide of Joseph Dwyer
Photographer Warren Zinn reacts to the news of Joseph Dwyer's death. Dwyer was a US Army medic in the Iraq when Zinn took the photograph above. He writes about his reaction to the news in the Washington Post, For years, I'd proudly displayed the front page of USA Today...more
Cobbling the story together
Bill Mitchell at Poynter does a great job dissecting the timeline that saw the picture above appear on the front page of the Sunday Times, only to be subsequently debunked At The Sunday Times, managing editor Richard Caseby said the paper's first account of the baby was cobbled together...more
Gonzo
[video:youtube:QT2c3lwidkw] Alex Gibney talks to the BBCs Tom Brook about his latest film Gonzo which portrays the life of the original gonzo journalist and foreign correspndent Hunter S. Thompson...more
Live tonight: Is this the end for FARC?
[video:brightcove:1662475187] With the recent release of Igrid Bettancourt, we'll be discussing the future of the FARC at the Frontline Club tonight. Please come watch, listen and join in live on the Frontline Club live broadcast channel. We go live at 7.30pm GMT. The question up for discussion is, Will the...more
Web 2.0 for warzones... not there yet
Our man in Chad, David Axe, writes a great post summarizing the strengths and the weaknesses of using a Nokia N95 and live video broadcast software Qik to report from a war zone. It's not rocket science, if the mobile phone networks are flakey and/or you can't get to a...more
Darfur and the media attention deficit
Ethan Zuckerman asks some great questions about Darfur and media attention on his blog. I dropped a comment, but it might be worth pulling together a few threads here. The general feeling is that "attention paid to Darfur is unprecedented" - but was it? Is it? If we feed a...more
Live tonight: Misha Glenny on McMafia
[video:brightcove:1670053708] Misha Glenny, author of McMafia, will be in conversation with the BBCs Paul Kenyon tonight at the Frontline Club. You can watch, listen and join in on our live video channel from 7.30pm UK time. I'll send out a Twitter message as we go live - please sign up...more
15 months of reporting
[video:youtube:N3_ZKBwv3V0] Mike Boettcher, ex-CNN, NBC, Peabody award winning journalist, is heading to Iraq and Afghanistan to report on the soldier's stories. He'll be out there for 15 months and will file all his work to the web on a site called NoIgnoring. He says he'll make all the material free...more
James Brabazon on the Wonga coup
James Brabazon, documentary film maker, talks about his part in the downfall of Simon Mann and Mark Thatcher in the so-called Wonga coup in The Independent today. Brabazon was asked to film a private army as it tried and failed to seize power in the small west African nation of...more
Is this the end of the FARC?
Bogotá based Frontline blogger Anastassia picks up the story of the recent escape of French/Colombian kidnap victim Ingrid Betancourt and 14 others, There are still political hostages being held by the Farc (including 27 policemen and 3 politicians). Some families fear that the guerrillas will carry out reprisals against their...more
Mohammed Omer chronicles his beating
Mohammed Omer, the Gaza-based Palestinian journalist who recently recieved the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, gives a full and frank account of the treatment he received at the hands of Israeli security officers upon his journey home to Gaza, As the beating, scratching and assaults continued, I was sure...more
Blogger booted out of Iraq
Zoriah Miller, a photojournalist and blogger whom we've featured here previously, has been ordered to leave Iraq for taking photos. Well, one photo in particular appears to have rankled the American military powers that be. The image, of a dead American soldier lying on his back his face unrecognisable due...more
To show or not to show?
Writing on the The BBC Editor's blog Craig Oliver describes the decision making process behind the broadcast of footage from a street in Jerusalem where a man went amok driving a bulldozer killing and injuring a number of people. After some discussion he decided not to show the moment of...more
Journalist Victims’ Fund announced
This week in Pakistan, the Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman announced the launch of the Journalist Victims’ Fund to help journalists working on the frontline, “Cameramen and photo journalists on frontline, in particular, those who work in conflict zones have to suffer. Their instruments are insured but their organisations don’t...more
Charles Wheeler dies age 85
Sir Charles Wheeler, has died at the age of 85. He was the BBC's longest serving foreign correspondent and reported from Spain, Germany and India after the Second World War. Martin Bell writes about his legacy in The Guardian, He was no swashbuckler – quite unlike like his heirs...more
Navigating the counterinsurgency field manual
John D. McHugh's latest film for The Guardian is up. This is his fourth piece and we find John talking to Charlie Company in Afghanistan about what it's really like to work as an American soldier trying to follow the guidance in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual Click the image...more
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