News: February 2008 Archives
Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq
Thank God for journalists like Patrick Cockburn: diligent, intelligent, clear-eyed, brave, experienced. In Muqtada al Sadr and the Fall of Iraq, his third book on the country, he assembles a narrative out of the conflicting mash of self-serving accounts, propaganda......more
Israel - Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East
When Israel was occupying much of southern Lebanon in 1984, I recall reporting, in a paragraph or two in a larger story, that I'd just been in a trashed Shi'ite village where, amongst other things, a car had been run......more
Public or Private?
Social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo are awash with video and pictures uploaded by the general public. News organisations are grappling with what they can and can't use from the sites, but there is no agreed standard and recent......more
The Talib who turned
There was little in the dismal reception room to dispel the all-pervading cold of the snow outside. Mice scurried among the relics of half-eaten food on plates scattered around an unlit wood-burning stove. Apart from a few blankets and a......more
The new Falklands war
At a great, rumbustious old fashioned Fleet Street leaving do, shortly before Christmas, one of the departing journalists recalled in his farewell speech that he has been looking through his old passports and found he has visited more than a......more