Frontline Club bloggers
Embedded with the Taliban
Discussions around embedded journalism in Afghanistan tend to focus on journalists joining up with NATO or U.S. forces but what about the view we get from an embed with the Taliban? In the video below, Norwegian journalist Paul Refsdal risks his life to film Taliban operations with a commander in Eastern Afghanistan. There’s some intriguing […]
Mid-Ramadan in Mogadishu is Just Another Bloody Day
It is the eve of the 15th night of the holy month of fasting in the Islamic calendar, but the families of at least 33 people killed in Tuesday’s attack will be mourning rather than feasting. Al-Shabab gunmen disguised as government forces stormed the Muna hotel close to the presidential palace and opened fire. One […]
Rwanda decides but what next?
There was no discussion about who would win Rwanda’s 2010 Presidential election among Rwandan and foreign hacks as we drove through the eastern provinces yesterday afternoon. As we passed shuttered polling stations, the betting began. How much would President Paul Kagame win by? By 5pm, we’d heard three preliminary results from three separate polling stations. […]
Global Voices launches Caucasus Conflict Voices
Since working on my own project using new and social media to counter local media bias in terms of reporting on Armenia-Azerbaijan relations and the still unresolved conflict between the two estranged neighbours over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, it’s been quite a roller coaster of a ride. If in late 2008 it seemed […]
Footage from Pakistan plane crash site posted to YouTube
Earlier today a plane crashed in Pakistan killing all 152 people that were on board. The Airblue aircraft came down in hills north of the capital, Islamabad. Footage from the scene of the aftermath was posted to YouTube and highlighted by the CitizenTube blog. In June, CitizenTube said it would increase its focus on finding […]
Media round up: Wikileaks releases Afghanistan war logs
Main coverage Wikileaks "The Afghan War Diary [is] an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. "We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and […]
Do images of the aftermath of an attack help insurgents?
Earlier today I came across an interesting blog post by Holly Pickett who recently finished her seven week rotation as the New York Times bureau photographer in Baghdad. She says: "It is nearly impossible to photograph the aftermath of a car bomb or street battle. In most cases, the scene is blocked by police, and cameras […]
Tracing the first official U.S. military blogs
So yesterday on Twitter I asked a question: when was the first official U.S. military blog started? Of course, long gone are the days when blogs were an unknown quantity, and these days blogs by U.S. soldiers will usually be signed off by a superior meaning they are to some degree ‘official’ but I wasn’t […]
Blogs & Bullets: Evaluating the Impact of New Media on Conflict
When first starting to examine the use of new and social media in facilitating communication between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the environment of an effective information blockade, I could never have imagined that what started out simply as a personal and professional need would have reached the point it has now. In fact, it has […]
British Armed Forces launch front line blogs from Afghanistan
Need to run out in a moment or two so excuse the brevity of the post, but I’ve just been helpfully pointed in the direction of a press release on military blogging: ‘British forces in Afghanistan have launched their first-ever mass blogging initiative, with dozens of personnel writing from the frontline on the Army, Navy […]
McChrystal, Michael Hastings and the future of war reporting
Last week, General Stanley McChrystal was fired from his position in charge of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan after comments he made in a magazine article. As I write it looks as though he will retire from the military altogether. In the article written by journalist Michael Hastings for Rolling Stone, McChrystal and (in […]
Somaliland standing in line
The un-recognized but de facto independent Republic of Somaliland goes to the polls today in what should be – for all its flaws and uncertainties – the most fair and well-administered election that this nation in the north of the Horn of Africa has ever seen. This election could bring about the peaceful transfer of […]
Taking on the Taliban
THE SLIT in the rock wall is not much to look at: A two-foot wide gap that disappears into blackness. But passing through the nondescript entrance opens up a network of caves and a small insight into the world of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas. This was once a subterranean hideout. The […]
CitizenTube highlights plight of Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan
CitizenTube, run by YouTube, recently announced that it would be providing a breaking news feed of video that is uploaded to its website. It has ‘dallied’ with news videos in the past around the Iran election protests last year and the Los Angeles wildfires but says it will be increasing its "focus significantly" over the […]
Founder claims Wikileaks is preparing to release video of Afghan strike
According to the Daily Beast, NPR and apparently Wikileaks itself, the organisation is preparing to release a video of a U.S. airstrike on a village in Afghanistan which caused civilian casualties. In April, Wikileaks released footage of a U.S. Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad from 2007 in which two Reuters journalists and several Iraqi civilians […]
The bumpy road to the presidency – campaigning in Somaliland
With the date for Somaliland‘s Presidential election set for June 26th the campaign for the polls is now in full swing. These three authorized parties – the incumbent president Rayaale’s UDUB, the KULMIYE (Unity) and UCID (Justice and Welfare party) – are mobilising their supporters and the country is awash with the colours and symbols […]
A lesson in information operations
That’s what Andrew Exum at the Center for a New American Security thinks the Israeli raid on the Free Gaza flotilla provides.
Murdoch vs Al Jazeera: Paywalls vs Free to All
We admirers of the Times are wrestling with whether to give in to Rupert Murdoch’s new pay wall that now deprives us of free web access or refuse to sign up and sign in. Do we strike a blow for Rupert’s profits and more money ploughed into field journalism or resist and try and show […]
Don’t mention anything about the war
Given the euphoria over Germany’s Eurovision win, it was probably only an event of the magnitude of the German President resigning that could bump Lena off the headlines… But as tabloid Bild shows not by much… The surprise resignation of President Horst Köhler has both politicians and the media playing over and rewinding the tape […]
Mobile phones: Reporting in your pocket
Last year arguably saw unprecedented attention on the use of mobile phones for content creation in some shape or form. Whether SMS updating crisis mapping platforms such as Ushahidi, using Twitter to update followers on breaking news, or simply to use as video cameras, in a sense there was plenty to demonstrate their […]
The blog as a weapon in an era of information war
I’ve been doing some research into the coverage of the Gaza conflict (back end of 2008, front end of 2009) on blogs. One of the English-language blogs that covered the war was the Muqata blog. The Muqata blog was started in 2005 by ‘Jameel’, a Jewish settler who had lived in Chomesh in Gaza before […]
Shooting with Malian musketeers
I’ve just got back from a short filming assignment in Mali and still trying to remove fine red dust from all of my camera equipment. I’ve worked in West Africa several times but this was my first trip to Mali. I’m indebted to an old friend in Bamako in the form of the BBC’s Martin […]
How Facebook users can report casualties in Afghanistan before the military
Recently Facebook changed its privacy settings which meant that a lot of people’s profile information is now far more public than they might realise. Facebook users who joined with the expectation that their information was only going to be shared with a select group of online ‘friends’ are finding that all sorts of other people […]
The Tehran-Tbilisi Connection
Iran isn’t exactly known for its free media. Exactly the opposite, in fact: Freedom House rates it as one of the ten worst places for freedom of speech in the world. So it’s somewhat bizarre that Mikheil Saakashvili’s government here in Georgia – with its pretensions to European-style liberal democracy – has just signed a […]
Russian war correspondent discovers journalism is more dangerous at home
In this New York Times article we learn of the fate of Mikhail Beketov who dared to investigate corruption in Moscow. Beketov, a former army officer, had reported from both Afghanistan and Chechnya but Russia proved to be more dangerous. As his paper, Khimkinskaya Pravda, wrote about the dealings of local officials and questioned party […]
Somali Officials Resign as Fighting Escalates
by DAVID AXE Sheikh Adan Madobe, speaker of the U.S.-and U.N.-backed Somali parliament, resigned today after his support in the weak governing body collapsed. Prime minister Abdirashid has also resigned after seeing his own influence wane amid continuing violence in the East African country. "The president is going to appoint a new prime minster and […]
How difficult is it to cover a modern war effectively?
I thought I’d have a long overdue experiment with AudioBoo. I have been recorded by somebody else on Twitter and Journalism but thought it was time to give it a go myself…I reckon short and sweet is the way to go rather than rambling on and on and on. But if you think you can […]
Somali Islamists = Environmentalists?
Guardian photo. by DAVID AXE Just two weeks ago Somali Islamic group Al Shabab advanced on a Harardere, a pirate stronghold in central Somalia. "The pirates began retreating with the hijacked vessels and crew to Hobyo, another pirate stronghold about 108 kilometers to the north," Voice of America reported. This after years of inaction by […]
A date with democracy? Somaliland’s presidential election is set (for now)
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything from Hargeisa. Life in the de facto (but unrecognized) independent Republic of Somaliland has been very quiet and the democratic deadlock affecting overdue presidential elections has continued. Is no news good news here? An absence of the oft-reported (if little fully-understood) blights of southern Somalia – piracy, […]
Admiral Mullen’s social media strategy
The Public Affairs Office looking after Admiral Mullen has revealed his social media strategy for 2010 by sticking it up on Slideshare. Admiral Mullen is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for US forces and admitted a while ago that his wife reminded him to use his Twitter account. Some interesting bits […]