Frontline Club bloggers
Nation of Millionaires
For a short while today I was a billionaire. I changed US$100 at a rate of 40 million Zimbabwean dollars (ZD) to the US dollar. In Zimbabwe everyone is a millionaire some of the time. I couldn’t have changed more, even if I’d had room in my rucksack because apprehension about the outcome of tomorrow’s […]
It’s an Election… but not as we know it
Just two days before the elections in Zimbabwe, Santos still hadn’t decided which presidential candidate to vote for. “Who do you think will make the better president,” he asks, “Simba Makoni or Morgan Tsvangirai?” (He ruled out a vote for Mugabe with an emphatic sideways shake of his head and a guttural click of the […]
Breakfast in Khartoum
The coffee tastes like coffee, the croissants are flaky on the outside and soft on the inside, and the wifi is running at the speed of light. But this isn’t breakfast in Kenya – where the coffee was probably grown and which is setting itself up to be an internet hub for East Africa. This […]
Video: Mexico making peace with los emos
MexicoReporter.com headed down to Insurgentes yesterday with the Los Angeles Times to cover a kind of peace rally organised by the leftist city government following the friction between emos and other youth groups, reported earlier this week. The result was this blog post by correspondent Ken Ellingwood and myself featuring a video interview with 18-year-old […]
Fast-track to the deadpool?
It takes nerve to launch a new citizen journalism website right now. It’s already a crowded space – shortly, I predict, to become markedly less crowded as tried-and-failed business models hit the buffers – but some opportunities surely remain. And so credit is due to iConflict.com, which launches today. It’s shtick is compartmentalising the news: […]
Movie ‘La Zona’ thrills with its ambiguous take on Mexico’s class divide
This brilliant directorial debut from Uruguayan-born Rodrigo Pla poses some of life’s most fundamental moral questions in a film that grips the viewer right from the start. The feature also brings to the cinema, with very little exaggeration, some of the social dynamics of Mexican society and its obstacles to justice. Set in a gated […]
I Hope It Was Worth It
So, 1500 people died and some 600,000 people were displaced in violence after rigged elections that denied Raila Odinga his chance to become (what his campaign promised would be) the People’s President. He never really specified exactly what the People’s President would do. But the feeling was that he would ensure the dark days of […]
‘Emos’ under attack in Mexico City, Gov tries to peacemake
The Mexico City Government called a meeting today for the coming Tuesday between the city’s ‘urban tribes’ to try to put an end to the increasing violence and animosity against emos that is currently sweeping Mexico – see Daniel Hernandez’s blog here for an excellent synopisis of the current situation. Since the first attack against […]
‘Free’ content doesn’t mean free content
I had a call from Lloyd Davis last week when BBC London wanted to use one of his video clips. You can see it on his blog here, and also here. Lloyd was happy to help but – naturally and quite rightly, in my view – he wanted payment. Not a fortune, just a fair […]
Don’t Call It Cattle Rustling
While the love-in between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga continues, so too does the killing. Another 25 deaths in “cattle rustling” incidents in the Rift Valley this week underlining the fact that a political deal between Kenya’s rivals for president has had little impact on long-standing tribal resentments over land and power. As François Grignon, […]
‘La Misma Luna’ splits critics
La Misma Luna, or Under the Same Moon, made its Mexico City debut last week to a full house. The movie, which is the first Latino-centric feature from Fox Searchlight, tells the story of the separation of mother and son against the backdrop of thorny issue of immigration between Mexico and the United States. The […]
Mexico: Impunity and Collusion
Threats to reporters from government and criminals are making investigative journalism impossible, writes Deborah Bonello In February this year, the car of Mexican journalist Estrada Zamora was found empty on the side of the road in the southern state of Michoacán with its engine running. Zamora was not inside and has not been seen since. […]
Interest in Africa Suspended
The best thing about writing from Africa is that editors leave you to your own devices. In Washington, Baghdad or Moscow you can bet on a phone call each morning asking what that day’s line will be. In Nairobi, there is no daily grind. You can disappear for a week. Maybe work on a feature, […]
Reporting on the forbidden
When Georg Blume of Germany and Kristin Kupfer of Austria left from Lhasa train station in the early hours of Thursday March 20 they were the last two foreign journalists to leave Tibet after being forced out by the Chinese authorities. “If they don’t have anything to hide, then why are they making foreign journalists […]
The Age of Assassins: The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin
Since Dimitri Medvedev’s predictable triumph in Russia’s presidential elections, the future of the Kremlin’s internal power balance has fascinated those who scrutinize events in Moscow. As ever, questions outstrip answers. The central issue is whether the latest choreographed ballot signified a true shift of power away from Vladimir Putin. Since 2000, when Putin came to […]
Los Angeles Times: La Misma Luna
[video:bliptv:720717] The focus of the latest film from LA-based Mexican director Patricia Riggen is torn from today’s headlines and deals with the issue of families separated by borders. The Los Angeles Times talked with director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, about making the film and Mexicans in LA. This […]
Portrait of Darfur
General Rokero commands Jebel Mara for the Abdul Wahid faction of the Sudan Liberation Army Opheera McDoom, the Reuters correspondent in Khartoum, wrote recently of her frustration at the lack of progress towards peace in Darfur. “I have been writing on Darfur for 4 1/2 years. More than ever, I am wondering how much difference […]
From Skid Row to the Suburbs
I admit it was an impetuous and poorly-judged decision. I had just arrived in Anchorage for my annual teaching assignment at the University of Alaska and the temperature was twenty-plus degrees below freezing. I spent the first night at a sleazy motel not far from the airport. The walls were thin, the carpets reeked of […]
Off to the frontline
This guy got his marching orders today and is setting off to join his unit in an operational zone near Rumangabo in North Kivu, eastern Congo. Transport is not provided, so he’ll probably flag down vehicles along the way. He won’t have to pay… Interesting that he’s taking the stereo too. The army is officially […]
Does Qik change everything?
If you’re not already familiar with it, check out Qik. It’s an application and web service that lets you stream video from a mobile phone to the web, live. Why is this important? For me it’s one of these wow-this-could-revolutionise-journalism moments. It’s similar to the widespread adoption of cameraphones during the past few years – […]
Severe human rights problems persist in Mexico: US State Department
The headline might be stating the obvious, but for the record, according to the 2007 country report from the US State department, released this week: ‘The [Mexican] government generally respected and promoted human rights at the national level by investigating, prosecuting, and sentencing public officials and members of the security forces. However, impunity and corruption […]
Former Scoopt head honcho blogs for Frontline
Great to have Scoopt founder Kyle MacRae blogging with us here at From the Frontline. Kyle founded the world’s first citizen journalism photograph agency – Scoopt.com – in 2005. He’s been at the forefront of digital media industry ever since. He sold the company to Getty Imgaes a year ago and just last week left […]
Violence censors journalists in Mexico
This is a version of an article which appeared in Press Gazette last month. While traveling home through Pánuco, Veracruz with his 16 year old son in late January this year, Octavio Soto Torres, journalist and director of the Mexican daily Voces de Veracruz, was shot at by four masked gunmen. This was just the […]
‘Citizen journalism’ without the scare quotes…
It’s good to be back at the Frontline Club. My first encounter with the club was when I was invited to speak at an event way back in September 2005, when citizen journalism/user-generated content/blogging was a hot topic and Scoopt, the company I had started two months earlier, was part of the buzz. It was […]
The Pickup
On Friday I stopped. After two months haring around Kenya, diving in out of slums and driving throuugh the Rift Valley I simply stopped. And went to Lamu for the weekend. My body responded by making me sleep for long periods of time and then making me vomit. Anyway, I managed to polish off the […]
‘Innocent until proven guilty’ to underlie Mexican justice system
Sweeping overhauls to Mexico’s criminal trial system announced last week could bring the country into the modern world, according to the Financial Times. People suspected of crimes will be presumed innocent until proved guilty, according to the reforms backed by President Felipe Calderon. ‘For the first time – and assuming that a majority of the […]
Ethical living? Stop taking cocaine
There is a great Leader in this Sunday’s Observer which makes a point I’ve often debated – how cocaine takers in Britain and the US, which provide the demand for the illegal drug industries in Latin America, tend not to think too hard about the impact their weekend drug habits might be having on other […]
Debacle disperses in Latin America, but more Mexicans involved
Just as quickly as it blew up a week ago, the disagreement between Ecuador and Columbia over an incursion into Ecuador by Columbia to kill a leader of the Farc rebel group has blown over. President Correa of Ecuador, Uribe of Columbia and Chavez of Venuezuela shook hands during a conference of Latin American leaders […]
Video: Las Mariachis celebrate International Women’s Day for BBCMundo.com
Tomorrow is international women’s day, so we went down to Plaza de Garibaldi to ask Mariachi Sonidos de America Feminil to sing a song for BBCMundo’s viewers across Latin America. Please click here to watch the film.
Rights group attacks impunity in Mexico
The limited attempts of the Mexican Government to tackle the high levels of violence against journalists testifies ‘to the inability or unwillingness of the Mexican authorities to make the fight against impunity,’ according to Article19, the freedom of expression NGO. Dr. Agnes Callamard, executive director of the group, said in a statement that the impunity […]
