From the Frontline: September 2008 Archives
Mark Wood steps down from ITN
Mark Wood, chief executive of ITN, is to leave the television company after six years to “pursue opportunities outside the companyâ€. The one time foreign correspondent will remain as Chairman of ITN for the time being. He entered the world of foreign correspondents in 1976. He joined ITN after a...more
Foreign Policy bought by Washington Post
Foreign Policy magazine has been acquired by the Washington Post Company. Washington Post editor and foreign correspondent Susan Glasser will join the magazine as executive editor, "Foreign Policy is a terrific magazine, and I'm pleased it will become a part of our company," said Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief...more
Journalists in prison
Every year the Committee to Protect Journalists releases a list of journalists imprisoned around the world. Every year since 2001, the United States has featured on this list. Joel Simon blogs about this further on the CPJ Blog, The annual appearance of the United States on CPJ's imprisoned list since...more
For sure they will kill us
Jason Motlagh writes on the Washington Times blog about the increasing dangers of reporting from Afghanistan. According to the post, "the government was responsible for at least 23 of the 45 reported incidents of intimidation, violence or arrest of journalists between May 2007 and May 2008" Unsurprisingly, it's the Afghan...more
Jaime FlorCruz working the China beat
Jaime FlorCruz, CNN Beijing bureau chief, talks about life of a foreign correspondent in China in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The 57 year old FlorCruz has been based in China for the past seven years, “It took time and effort to overcome professional and nationality-related barriers, to stare down...more
Daniel Pearl jam session
FODfest, or Friends of Danny, is a concert tour to celebrate the life of Daniel Pearl, the WSJ journalist murdered in Pakistan in 2002. The first show takes place on what would have been Pearl's 45th birthday on Friday, Oct. 10, at 7:30 p.m., at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center...more
The business of death
Hugh Sykes writes on the BBC website about the dangers for Iraqi journalists trying to report on the ongoing war. Almost 300 media workers have been killed in Iraq since 2003. Most of the dead are Iraqi, The editor of the Baghdad daily paper al Sabaah, Falah al Mashal, told...more
100,000 signatures commemorate death of Kenji Nagai
Protesters in Japan presented the Myanmar Embassy in Tokyo a 100,000 signature petition protesting the murder of video journalist Kenji Nagai in the Burmese capital Rangoon one year ago. The group also asked for the return of his camera equipment, The group led by Kota Kinoshita, who was a close...more
Our next door neighbours are foreign countries
[video:youtube:nokTjEdaUGg] I didn't want to post this here... but I have to. If there's one thing that impacts the work of foreign correspondents and war reporters more than any other it is US foreign policy. Should the Republican party win the US election in November Sarah Palin will become Vice...more
LIVE event: Liu Heung Shing on China
[video:bliptv:1301208] Pulitzer winning photographer Liu Heung Shing is a renowned Chinese photographer and a former foreign correspondent. In a career spanning over 20 years he covered China, India, Korea, the US and former USSR for all the major publications. China: Portrait of a Country is the new photography volume edited...more
LIVE event: All change in the Caucasus
[video:brightcove:1815800142] The discussion at the Frontline Club tonight focusses on the Caucasus. As usual, we'll be broadcasting the discussion on the Frontline Club live channel. We start at 7.30pm UK time, Wed 24 Sept. If you can't make it in person, I hope you can join us online. Is the...more
Burmese journalist Win Tin released
Burmese journalist Win Tin was released from prison today after 19 years behind bars. The 78 year old, who is Burma's longest serving political prisoner, vowed to continue to protest against the ruling junta, The 78-year-old Win Tin said he would continue to wear his light blue prison uniform...more
LIVE tonight: Philippe Sands - Torture Team
[video:bliptv:1296373] Philippe Sands, the author of Torture Team, will be in conversation with Olenka Frenkiel, a reporter, writer and documentary film-maker specialising in international investigations for BBC Television and Radio, at the Frontline Club tonight. If you can't make it in person, please come and watch the discussion online on...more
Jean-Paul Ney in danger
Jean-Paul Ney, the investigative journalist and war reporter arrested in Ivory Coast nine months ago, is in ill health according to the Intelink website, Today after 9 months in jail, the health of Jean-Paul Ney is in danger. He has been hospitalized twice for Malaria and typhoid fever, and...more
In defence of the shocking
Bernard-Henri Levy picks apart the media reaction to the Paris Match Taliban photographs taken by photographer Veronique de Viguerie and asks the question - When are news photographs too shocking for public consumption? - After firing a broadside at the commentators and government officials who lambasted de Viguerie and Paris...more
The Kurt Schork newsroom
Matt Von Pinnon writes about the building of a newsroom at Jamestown College campus in the United States in memory of Kurt Schork, the Reuters reporter who was killed on May 24, 2000 in Sierra Leone, The Kurt Schork Newsroom. In a retrofitted space in the basement of the college’s...more
Mark Austin on "autocuties"
Last week Mark Austin, ITV war reporter and news reader, complained about pretty boy and pretty girl reporters who read the news in a studio, but have little experience in the field. He termed them "autocuties", "I do think there are a number of pretty young women and handsome young...more
Mark Mardell in hostile environments
Mark Mardell heads into hostile territory for the BBC, but this is just make believe. The BBC's Europe Editor found it increasingly daft that he was missing out on stories because he hadn't done the requisite hostile environment training course, Why am I here if I don't want to get...more
Capa snap story told at Barbican
A new exhibition of photography from the late Robert Capa will show at the Barbican in London next month. Some 72 years after the famous falling soldier photo was taken and for the first time in the UK every image taken by Capa on that same day will be shown....more
Muaid al-Lami wounded in Baghdad bomb
Muaid al-Lami, head of Iraq's national journalists' union, was among six people wounded in a bomb blast outside the union offices in central Baghdad today according to Reuters, "Some vehicles outside caught fire and it shattered all the glass in the building," union member Hassan al-Aboudi, who was in the...more
FBI investigate death of Cambodian journalist
Two FBI agents arrived in Cambodia this week to help investigate the killing in July of local journalist Khim Sambo and his son. Khim was gunned down in the streets of the Cambodia capital in July. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior reportely invited the duo to contribute in a...more
Caution urged over Somalia kidnap video
Reporters Without Borders urge caution when watching the video aired by Al Jazeera earlier this week that purports to show kidnapped journalists Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan held hostage in Somalia, "We have to be very careful of this video," said Leonard Vincent, head of the organization's Africa desk. "We...more
Jamie Tarabay on the frontline
NPR reporter Jamie Tarabay talks about being stationed in Baghdad for two years and on her upcoming project about Muslim culture in the United States, What was it like being stationed in these high-conflict areas? It’s hairy. You do sort of have to remind yourself to a certain degree...more
Arkady Babchenko on South Ossetia
Arkady Babchenko, military correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and author of One Soldier's War, took some of the most graphic and memorable footage from the recent war in South Ossetia. He talked to the German publication Neuer Zürcher Zeitung about the assignment. Sign and Sight translate the interview...more
Addicted to danger
The Daily Mail publishes extracts from Ann Leslie's Killing My Own Snakes this week. The veteran foreign correspondent talks about the addiction to danger she sees in other war correspondents and which she has experienced herself, To be a professional war correspondent means, in my view, that you have to...more
Live tonight: Lord Malloch-Brown - An unlikely diplomat
[video:bliptv:1278256] Lord Malloch-Brown, UK Minister for Africa, Asia and the Middle East, will be in conversation with Richard Beeston, Foreign editor at The Times, at the Frontline Club tonight - Weds 17 Sept. It's a sell out event, so if you haven't got a ticket do please join us on...more
The view from an embed minder
Lt. Col. Paul Fanning writes on the Daily Gazette blog about working with embedded reporters in Afghanistann. Fanning is the Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix Public Affairs Officer with New York National Guard 27th Brigade Combat Team. He documents how he helped three journalists working in Afghanistan; namely Charles Eckert,...more
Hotline for Iraqi journalists
Iraq's Journalistic Freedom Observatory has agreed with the Interior Ministry to create a hotline for journalists and to provide them with armed protection if needed. The move follows the killing of four Al-Sharqiya TV staff in Mosul last week, "Iraq is not only the most deadly country in the world...more
Channel 4 foreign movers
Channel 4 News international editor, Lyndsey Hilsum, will return from China to London after the 2008 Paralympic games have finished. While foreign correspondent and occasional Frontline Club events chair Nick Paton Walsh moves to the channel's Beijing bureau to become Asia correspondent. link...more
Somalia kidnap journalists in Al Jazeera video
Al Jazeera has aired a video that purports to show Australian photographer Nigel Brennan and the Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout. The duo were kidnapped on 23 August - you can see the timeline here - ABC News has more, The video showed Mr Brennan and Ms Lindhout, wearing an...more
Censorship at work in Baghdad
Caesar Ahmad and Tina Susman write about censorship at work in Iraq for the LA Times Babylon and Beyond blog. The duo describe what happened when a bomb exploded on Sunday near the Baghdad bureau of the Los Angeles Times and the photographers headed to the scene, It was about...more
Asra Nomani on tracking down Daniel Pearl suspects
Asra Nomani, a journalist and activist who teaches at Georgetown University, talks to Murali Krishnan at the Indo-Asian News Service about 'The Pearl Project'. The aim of the project is to track down the estimated 19 suspects still at large in the Daniel Pearl murder case - the Wall Street...more
Foreign news needs real experts
Richard Sambrook, BBC Global News Director and Frontline Club regular, is interviewed in The Guardian this week. He argues for a change in the way international news is covered. He says there's a need to greater utilize local journalists on the ground "The nature of international coverage is changing. The...more
Four Iraqi TV staff gunned down in Mosul
Reuters report that four staff from Iraq's Sharqia TV station were kidnapped and then shot by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul today. "Today at noon, armed people kidnapped and killed four of our workers in the channel. They were doing their national duty recording an episode in Mosul,"...more
Live tonight: Is Somalia the new front in the war on terror?
[video:brightcove:1790967242] We'll be discussing Somalia at the Frontline Club in London tonight. This time the question up for debate: Is Somalia the new front in the war on terror? We'll be streaming the discussion live on the Frontline Club Live Channel and if you can't make it in person to...more
Al-Arabiya bureau chief escapes car bomb
AFP reports that Jawad Hattab, the Baghdad bureau chief for Al-Arabiya, narrowly escaped a car bomb today, "An explosive device was placed in the car of Al-Arabiya's bureau chief Jawad Hattab near his home in the Al-Salihyah district of central Baghdad," the Dubai-based satellite channel said. link Hattab and a...more
Live tonight: Somaliland - Getting it right in Africa
[video:brightcove:1785292126] In May 1991 Somaliland declared independence from the rest of Somalia and over the past 17 years the government there has restored law and order to make it one of the must democratic and functioning societies in the Horn of Africa. Tonight's debate at the Frontline Club focusses on...more
Stop the War on Journalists in Sri Lanka
The recently launched CPJ blog highlights the plight of Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam. Tissa, as he is known, was detained in March by Terrorist Investigation Division forces and charged in August for "promoting terrorism through a magazine he published for a brief period in 2006". The International...more
Ugly of war
John D. McHugh, Frontline Club member and regular in these parts, has his latest short film from Afghanistan up on The Guardian website. He to a member of a the US army Medevac team about the day to day job of helping the wounded and the dying. John says...more
South Korea filmaker banned from Iraq
Kim Young-me, a South Korean filmaker has been banned from travelling outside South Korea by the South Korean government. She could also go to prison for violating a (slightly bizarre) year-old law banning Koreans from traveling to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, "They don’t want journalists working in Iraq," she said......more
$2.5 million ransom for Somalia hostages
The kidnappers of the three journalists and two drivers kidnapped in Somalia two weeks ago have finally submitted their demands, "The kidnappers demanded 2.5 million dollars and we are trying to secure their release,'' said Dahir Farah, who has been participating in negotiations to free the three abducted in Somalia...more
Into Danger
Katie Adie promotes her new book Into Danger, which was published yesterday, in The Telegraph. She discusses why people like her choose to go to war and other dangerous places to work, One of the questions I am frequently asked is: ''What is the most dangerous thing that's happened to...more
Andrew Berends "temporarily released"
The filmmaker Andrew Berends has been temporarily released for the weekend along with his Nigerian translator, Samuel George. The two were arrested earlier this week while working on a film about the oil business in the Niger Delta, “Nigeria’s democratic government has made enormous strides since the days of dictator...more
Robert Fisk: We are all frightened
Robert Fisk, The Independent's Middle East correspondent and a Frontline club regular, was in Christchurch, New Zealand to give a talk about his work and the situation in the Middle East at The Press Christchurch Writer's Festival. The dangers for journalists working in the Middle East are "very real" says...more
Live tonight: Photographer Jehad Nga on Somalia
[video:brightcove:1740029320] Jehad Nga will be talking at the Frontline Club tonight (Fri 5 September 7.30 pm UK time) about his photographs from Somalia. The talk is part of the Somalia season we are running at present. Click the video above to learn more about that. As usual, if you can't...more
Marcus Bleadale in Georgia and beyond
Marcus Bleasdale is a bit of a regular in these parts and it seems the Oslo-based photojournalist has been busy of late. The above frame is taken from a recent commission in Georgia. Beyond all out war, Marcus has also visited Venezuala and the USA. There are some great...more
Francoise Demulder dies age 61
Francoise Demulder, the French war photographer who became the first woman to win the World Press Photo award in 1976, has died, according to the International Herald Tribune today. She died of a heart attack at a hospital in Paris. She was 61 years old. "She was considered by all...more
Georgia in motion
Now that's how to do a multimedia presentation and get inside the workings of a photojournalist on the road all through images and emails. A Georgian Diary by Thomas Dworzak for Magnum in Motion is excellent, The Russians invaded Georgia on August 8th, while George W. Bush was in...more
Journalists detained in Iraq
The Wired Danger Room blog does a good job rounding up the number of journalists who have been detained by US forces in Iraq. In late August, for example, Ali al-Mashhadani -- a freelance cameraman working for Reuters, the BBC, and NPR -- was released by the U.S. military in...more
Iraqi snapper Ibrahim Jassam arrested
Ibrahim Jassam, an Iraqi photographer working for Reuters, has been arrested by US forces south of Baghdad. He "posed a threat to security" an army officer told AFP by email. Reuters demand he is either charged or released, "We are concerned to hear about Jassam's detention, and urge the US...more
Russian TV journalist Abdulla Alishayev shot dead
Abdulla Alishayev, a journalist from the republic of Daghestan died today after being attacked by gunmen on Tuesday. Alishayev worked as the anchor to a popular religious programme Peace to Your Home. He was attacked in his car in the village of Separatorny near Daghestan's capital, Makhachkala. An official said...more
Alistair Cooke cut up and sold
Gruesome news from Philadelphia. Two former funeral directors have admitted to "selling cadavers to a ring that cut them up and sold the body parts to hospitals for implants". Not only that, but one of the bodies was that of esteemed foreign correspondent and voice of Letter from America,...more
Live tonight: Understanding Somalia
[video:brightcove:1772128809] Martin Plaut will chair a discussion about Somalia at the Frontline Club tonight - Tue 2nd September, 7.30pm UK time. If you can't make it in person, please tune in to the Frontline Club live channel to watch it online and take part in the dicussion. Taking part will...more
Film maker Andrew Berends arrested in Nigeria
Andrew Berends and his Nigerian fixer Samuel George were arrested in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt at the weekend. Berends has been working in the Niger Delta since April making a film about the oil-producing area that has been riven with conflict between government forces and armed separatists since...more
The tools have changed
Broadcast talks to four senior TV news journalists about how their working life has changed due to improvements in technology. Tim Marshall, Sky News' foreign affairs editor, says most of the changes are for the good. And sometimes knocking on a door and asking if you can hop on a...more
Fund for relatives of journalists killed in South Ossetia
The response to the campaign for funds to help the relatives of two reporters killed in the recent conflict in South Ossetia has been impressive according to Journalism.co.uk. As we blogged at the time, Alexander Klimchuk and Giga Chikhladze were killed in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Journalism.co.uk talks to...more
The 91st most powerful woman in the world
Forbes releases its annual 100 Most Powerful Women list. Christiane Amanpour, the CNN war correspondent and regular at the Frontline Club, comes in at number 91. Award-winning correspondent has reported on nearly every major news story CNN has covered in recent years, including Hurricane Katrina, the first Iraqi elections...more
International Festival of Photojournalism 2008
The International Festival of Photojournalism starts this week in Perpignan. I hope to be able to pop down to the festival on Thursday or Friday, let me know if you're going. You can follow the festival blog here. There's a regularly updated list of who will be at the...more
13 journalists killed in August
The Press Emblem Campaign says it has registered 13 journalists killed in the month of August. This is the highest recorded toll since October 2007. A total of 61 journalists have been killed since the beginning of 2008, Iraq remains the deadliest country for media coverage with 10 media workers...more
Nicolas Henin nominated for Bayeux
[video:youtube:vP-mdIDezNc] Nicolas Henin, a French journalist specializing in conflict reporting, writes on his personal blog about his nomination for a Bayeux award for war correspondents for his report from Iraq int he video above, This is my second nomination at Bayeux. I was nominee for the first time in 2004,...more
Russian website founder Magomed Yevloyev shot dead
Magomed Yevloyev, the founder of the Ingushetiya website was arrested at gunpoint in Narzan as he stepped off a plane. He was taken into a police car where "an incident" took place... "resulting in a shooting injury to the head and he later died in hospital," Interfax reported, A source...more
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