Forum Blog
Frenemies entertain the Frontline Club
By Will Turvill A crowd gathered at the Frontline Club last night for a humour-filled evening hosted by comedian Katerina Vrana, who stood alongside jesting journalist Miss D (Daphna Baram) and Peyvand Khorsandi. In an exclusive preview of the stand-up show Frenemies, controversy and laughter were coupled throughout. With an Israeli Miss D and an […]
The Price of Kings: Yasser Arafat at the Frontline Club
By Tom Lowe The hugely important figure Yasser Arafat casts a long shadow over Middle Eastern politics even years after his death. Yasser Arafat takes a long hard look at Arafat himself as seen through the eyes of prominent people that knew him well. Yasser Arafat is one episode of a series being produced by Spirit Level […]
Tears of an Afghan Warlord
By Rosie Scammell After nearly a decade in the making, Tears of an Afghan Warlord had its UK premiere on Friday night, with director Pascale Bourgaux on hand to tell the story behind the screen. Bourgaux dedicated the evening to Frontline News Television cameraman James Miller, killed in 2003 while filming in Gaza, […]
Frontline Club panel optimistic about the future of Egypt
By Will Turvill There was an overall feeling of positivity in the Frontline Club last night as the panel, chaired by the Observer‘s foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont, discussed what the future might hold for the Egyptian people after a year of military rule. Indeed, despite recognising the number of challenges facing the revolutionary movement, each […]
ToryBoy visits the Frontline Club
By William Turvill The Frontline Club, on Monday 21 November, screened the critically acclaimed ToryBoy The Movie, followed by a question-and-answer session with the film’s creators, John Walsh and John Cowen. Dubbed the “documentary of the year” by The Guardian, this film follows the campaign trail of Walsh, a “disillusioned Labour Boy gone stray”, […]
Content is King – David Carr in conversation with Richard Gizbert
By Charlotte Eyre Original and innovative content will remain the keystone of the news industry as the media machine progresses, David Carr said in a discussion with Richard Gizbert on Monday. New York Times media industry columnist David Carr highlighted the problem of making journalism count in an increasingly digitalised industry when he was at […]
Phone hacking – ethics and tabloid journalism
View in iTunes Watch the event here. By Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi Rupert Murdoch’s positive contributions to the British press as well as the negative effects of his influence were discussed by a Frontline Club panel on phone hacking last night. Although some of the panelists concluded that the positives might even outweigh them, the negatives are “awfully […]
Fictional ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ blog disappears
The ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ blog, which was believed to have provided an authentic voice documenting the Syrian chapter of the Arab Spring, has "vanished". The author of the blog, Tom MacMaster, apparently decided to delete the contents of the blog after it reached more than a million "separate views". The blog had claimed to […]
From internships to the WikiLeaks truck: catch up on the Forum blog
Here’s a round-up of this week’s blog posts, which began with an anonymous piece about the life of an intern and ended with a piece by Ryan Gallagher In praise of… the WikiLeaks truck. This week we posted Frontline: Vaughan Smith Shot in Kosovo (1998), the second of two excerpts from the newly revised and […]
Realignment in the Arab world: what are Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran worried about?
Watch event here. The impact of the Arab Spring on three regional neighbours: Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran and how they might respond to the changing political landscape was the focus of last night’s discussion at the Frontline Club. Chaired by Sam Farah, lead presenter of BBC Arabic’s flagship interactive programme Nuqtat Hewar (Talking Point), the […]
My favourite time – Asparagus is out
Three years ago we planted two acres of asparagus in our farm. Last year we didn’t get much crop but this year its amazing. I have never seen so much asparagus in my life. We started the deliveries to London this week and there is asparagus all over the menu. Come and try the new […]
BBC World Debate: “Is Homosexuality UnAfrican?”
Download this episode View in iTunes You can watch the Frontline event here. By Gianluca Mezzofiore After the killing of gay rights activist David Kato in Uganda in January, debate about homophobia in Africa has been reignited. Kato was the face of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) an advocacy group actively campaigning against the controversial Anti-Homosexuality […]
Blood and Dust film
Vaughan’s new film, Blood and Dust, is below for those who didn’t catch it on Al Jazeera’s People and Power strand. If you want to see it on a large screen we will showing it at the Frontline Clubon 6 March. Followed by a discussion about how war is represented by the broadcast media. Vaughan writes: I have […]
Martin Rowson: Caricatures and Commentary
Martin Rowson walked onto the stage at the Frontline Club last night with a pint and Laurie Taylor. As you would expect from a satirist, the tone of Rowson’s presentation was humorous with generous lashings of acerbic wit thrown into the mix.
In the Picture: Orphaned and Ostracised- HIV in Africa with Carol Allen Storey
Download this episode View in iTunes Watch the event here. By Antje Bormann Broadcaster Sue Steward introduced Carol Allen Storey as one of the most fascinating photojournalists around. Carol Allen Storey’s photographic career started 10 years ago following a thorough rethink of a successful career in the fashion and beauty industry. Photographs by Edmond Terakopian. […]
The world’s most wanted house guest by Vaughan Smith
Having watched Julian Assange give himself up last week to the British justice system, I took the decision that I would do whatever else it took to ensure that he is not denied his basic rights as a result of the anger of the powerful forces he has enraged. This decision – which will result […]
The Secular Fatwa on Julian Assange by Charles Glass
In February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa inciting the faithful to murder author Salman Rushdie for blasphemy. Within a few days, professional writers convened in London, New York, and elsewhere to discuss countering this threat. In London, we met at the National Union of Journalists’ offices in Gray’s Inn Road. We had fierce arguments […]
Report don’t dispatch
Rule number one for journalists starting a blog in a foreign land, pick the blog’s name carefully. Meskel Square = clever, good, local. South by South West = geographic, but not specific, nice. Noodlepie = genius. I’ve just picked a new name for a new website I’m planning. The name’s bloody brilliant. How did I […]
Hearty Food for Valiant Olive Pickers on Sunday 5th December
POTENTINO POP-UP Our cousins who make the wonderful Potentino wine we serve in the Restaurant and Club are running their pop-up restaurant at Frontline every first Sunday of the month. This is their latest email with news from the vineyard and announcing the menu for Sunday 5th December: Hearty Food for Valiant Olive Pickers. Please […]
Blogging backlash against proposal to escalate confrontation with Iran
Earlier this month bloggers rounded on a column written in the Washington Post which suggested that Barack Obama could revive the United States’ flagging economy by ramping up tensions with Iran. In an article in the Washington Post on 31 October, David Broder wrote that the President could "spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating […]
The Secret War – Iraq War Logs
With the ‘biggest leak of military documents ever’, Wikileaks has reestablished its position as the pentagon’s no1 hate object. In a special four-page report, FRONTLINE discusses the shocking results of the whistle-blower’s collaboration with the Iraq Body Count group and talks to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange about the latest release. i l l u s […]
Welcome to the Global Shadow State – Julian Assange talks turkey about Wikileaks
Julian Assange reaches to take a book from a shelf behind him – any book. The commodity in which hedeals is information, and he wants to make a point about how information travels, and why. Or does nottravel, and why not. About what he calls “the media information flow economy”. He asks one to bear […]
Enough is Enough by John Morris
By John Morris, from the Autumn 2010 issue of the Frontline broadsheet (subscribe here) … Open publication
Afghanistan: the brittle compact between military and media
Vaughan Smith argues that news management by the military is a risky business. Smith founded the Frontline Club in London in 2003 and during the 1990s he ran Frontline Television News. He filmed the only uncontrolled footage of the Gulf War in 1991 after bluffing his way into an active-duty unit while disguised as a […]
Social networking and journalism: Power to the people?
By Julie Tomlin and Sirena Bergman How have Facebook, Twitter and blogs changed changed grassroots politics? This was the question tackled at the club on Tuesday, at an event moderated by Deborah Bonello, founder of Mexicoreporter.com and video journalist for the Financial Times. If you couldn’t be with us for this event, you can watch […]
Incredible India by David Rieff
The shining face of success that the country presents to the world disguises deep tensions between great wealth and extreme poverty. With the commonwealth games approaching, David Rieff looks at the politics that sustains such divisions and wonders whether the dream of the Asian century still has meaning for this divided culture. The term “Asian […]
Hunting Men
Here is my director’s cut. 22 minutes from Operation Moshtarak, exciting stuff. Shows the war as it really is. First shown on Channel 4 News in February 2010. Vaughan
War & Peace by Jon Swain and Gavin Greenwood
As Vietnam celebrates the 35th anniversary of its defeat of the US, Jon Swain remembers the adrenalin rush of being a young reporter in the biggest war story of his life. Gavin Greenwood reports on how the old guard struggles to hold the socialist line. A few weeks ago, a group of Vietnam Old Hacks […]
Africa for sale by John Vidal
China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India – half the world seems to be buying vast tracts of territory to grow food for their home markets. But, as John Vidal reports from Ethiopia, the great land-grab is at the expense of local farmers and is seen by some as a new colonialism. We turned off the main […]
Continental Drift by Jurgen Kronig
Britain may find its new coalition govern ment strange and hard to comprehend. But, says Jurgen Kronig, look to Germany, long accustomed to such arrangements, which is adopting attitudes to politics more like our own. It is an ironic twist of fate: suddenly, Germany is discovering the attraction of a more sceptical attitude towards […]