Getting the story
David Pratt on reporting Iraq
David Pratt remembers working as a journalist in Iraq, the toll on reporters like Caroline Hawley who we blogged about earlier today, and the camaraderie that builds up when working on the frontline of history and conflict, More than anything I’ll remember the Iraq war in this way: a series of cameo moments and lives […]
Getting into Lhasa
On the MSNBC World blog Bo Gu, an Assistant News Producer at NBC, describes how she managed to get into Lhasa last Sunday, “The House of Shambala? No way, I’m not going there,” said the Tibetan taxi driver, his wrinkled, tanned face looking nervous. “It’s really chaotic in Lhasa now,” another taxi driver said as […]
“Like being in the mouth of a tuba”
In a series of behind the scenes films ITV’s Mark Austin and Phil Reay Smith describe life working as reporters in Helmand province, Afghanistan. And by the looks of things it’s all rather snug. As Mark says, “It’s the best food in terms of being in a theatre of war that I’ve ever tasted.” I […]
Deborah Haynes gets upgraded
Times newspaper reporter Deborah Haynes blogs about the rigmarole associated with getting flights in Iraq as she seeks out the ‘Freedom Express’ on a mission to Mosul only to get upgraded to cockpit class, Travelling to northern Iraq for an embed is always a bit of a gamble because there are limited military flights and […]
“It’s my story, I want to cover it”
News reader and foreign correspondent Carol Barnes was fighting for her life last night after suffering a massive stroke at her home in Brighton. Carol had been due to fly out to South Africa in a few days’ time. Sir David Nicholas, former head of ITN remembers an occasion when Carol insisted on following up […]
A day in the life of a Burmese journalist
Aye Chan Myate, who was until recently a senior editor with a weekly journal in Rangoon, writes in The Irrawaddy what it’s like to be a working journalist in Rangoon. Doesn’t sound a whole lot of fun, In our newsroom, only the management desk and the copy-typists worked with computers. We reporters and editors had […]
Pyongyang media scrum
Reuters photographer David Gray recently visited North Korea to cover the two day visit of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. His first visit to the peninsular began with a media scrum, What happened next must have been a rather unusual sight for North Korea – a media scrum. The traveling press of which we were […]
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 you so gently when your country […]
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 it made me happy, smiling and […]
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 to run the other way. […]
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, My interpreter Ammar and I had […]
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 next time you’re in Russia, Heathcliff?
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 Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Talking to […]
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 journalism” has become all too common […]
“I would never do it again”
Filmmaker Mike Shiley says he’d never do it again. The filmmaker, who quit his job and faked an ABC press pass before infiltrating Iraq, won awards for his documentary Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories. This week he spoke at a screening and Q&A at Temple University in Philadelphia. During the event a number of attendees […]
Kenyan crackdown
Shashank Bengali works for McClatchy newspapers and is based in Nairobi. He blogged about recent events in Kenya and took a number of snaps of the local media on the job recording what was happening. Here’s the clip for the snap above, Photog gets a closeup of the police van that was firing teargas and […]
Dressing the story
Is it just me, or is The Guardian newspaper increasingly headed towards the tabloid drain these days?? Anyway… Tim Dowling explores the sartorial possibilities for burka wearing, master of disguise, Frontline club member and roving reporter John Simpson as he traverses the world’s danger zones. Most recently in Zimbabwe. I bet you can’t guess which […]
Chicago Tribune foreign correspondents speak
The Chicago Tribune features an excellent series of short video profiles of five of the newspaper’s foreign correpondents; Laurie Goering, Tom Hundley, Evan Osnos, Kim Barker and Christine Spolar. Christine is a Frontline Club member and she talks about her life as a reporter from early days through Bosnia, the Balkan war, London, Liberia, Chicago, […]
Simpson gets a makeover
Frontline club member and BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson is in Zimbabwe filing live reports for the BBC News at Ten. No mean feat for one of Britain’s most recognizable reporters in one of the world’s least BBC-friendly spots, Back in London a make-up artist fitted me out with a beard, to make me […]
Getting the story out
Tim Arango, writing in the International Herald Tribune, considers the dangers facing journalists in Iraq and looks at the methods news organisations use to recruit local reporters, fixers and translators, “When you are working side by side, you get to know the person, and if the person seems unreliable, or if you ever see someone […]
Marie Colvin in Basra
Last week Frontline Club member and Sunday Times journalist, Marie Colvin, became the first unembedded western journalist from a British newspaper to visit Basra for nearly two years. She worked under the cover of an abbaya. Nevertheless, Basra is an extremely dangerous place to work unembedded. So much so that one of Marie’s interviewees took […]
Bikinis to Islamabad
Chief foreign correspondent for CBS Lara Logan secured an exclusive with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for the 60 Minutes show, but not all her luggage made it with her from near her hometown in South Africa, The interview capped a frantic week-and-a-half for Ms. Logan, who was vacationing on a beach near her South African […]
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad profiled
[video:youtube:JoOmquaRCx8] Menassat, an organisation that promotes good journalism in the Middle East and North Africa, begins a new series profiling arab journalists. Lebanon-based Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who writes and photographs for The Guardian and has twice been shortlisted for best foreign correspondent of the year by the British Press Awards, is first up, “I think rule […]
Reporting restrictions
Tom Roeder of the Colorado Springs Gazette kicks off his Iraq Notebook blog by uploading a copy of the original reporting restrictions agreement he signed with the US Military before heading to Iraq, It’s fairly rare for reporters, always fond of their constitutional rights, to agree to any government-imposed restriction of their activities. It’s important […]
Bruce Loudon on being a foreign correspondent
Bruce Loudon has worked as a foreign correspndent since 1968. He is currently The Australian’s South Asia correspondent. In today’s Australian he ponders the life he leads and the near misses he’s missed, Nothing concentrates the mind quite like sitting atop 10 tonnes of lethal ammunition stacked into the belly of an ancient, clapped out, […]
Reporting Iraq
Vivienne Walt, Judith Matloff and Christopher Allbritton interview some 50 journalists who have worked extensively in Iraq for the book called Reporting Iraq. The Statesman reviews the book, The psychological toll of war reporting is often forgotten or denied, even by journalists themselves. In “Reporting Iraq,” Anne Garrels of NPR confesses, “I still have nightmares, […]
Beyond the Green Zone
Former Alaska mountain guide Dahr Jamail had no formal journalism training or experience when he picked up a laptop and digital camera and headed to Iraq initially emailing stories back to a small group of friends. He soon got picked up by independent news services. Beyond the Green Zone is a compilation of Jamail’s reports, […]
Shanker gets frisked in Kabul
Thom Shanker, Washington Correspondent for the New York Times, relates three tales of his recent blast through Djibouti, Afghanistan, Iraq and Bahrain on the trail of US Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates, Outside the palace walls, correspondents went through metal detectors, and had their backpacks searched — that’s routine. But heavily armed security guards also […]
Working in the Korengal valley
In the latest edition of Vanity Fair, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington talk about working on a story from the Korengal Valley frontline in Afghanistan. The duo were embedded with Second Platoon for ABC News.
Baghdad catwalk
The Daily Telegraph’s Colin Freeman finds his fashion sense shot to shreads by his translator upon a arrival in Baghdad, ”Forget those foreign-looking clothes, dress like an Iraqi,” he advised. In modern-day Baghdad, however, that didn’t mean doing a Lawrence of Arabia number in elegent Arab robes and headdress. Instead, it meant a pair of […]