Journalism
Censorship at work in Baghdad
Caesar Ahmad and Tina Susman write about censorship at work in Iraq for the LA Times Babylon and Beyond blog. The duo describe what happened when a bomb exploded on Sunday near the Baghdad bureau of the Los Angeles Times and the photographers headed to the scene, It was about a three-minute walk to the […]
Foreign news needs real experts
Richard Sambrook, BBC Global News Director and Frontline Club regular, is interviewed in The Guardian this week. He argues for a change in the way international news is covered. He says there’s a need to greater utilize local journalists on the ground “The nature of international coverage is changing. The old model of a western […]
Stop the War on Journalists in Sri Lanka
The recently launched CPJ blog highlights the plight of Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam. Tissa, as he is known, was detained in March by Terrorist Investigation Division forces and charged in August for "promoting terrorism through a magazine he published for a brief period in 2006". The International Federation of Journalists and Sri Lankan […]
South Korea filmaker banned from Iraq
Kim Young-me, a South Korean filmaker has been banned from travelling outside South Korea by the South Korean government. She could also go to prison for violating a (slightly bizarre) year-old law banning Koreans from traveling to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, “They don’t want journalists working in Iraq,” she said… “I wanted my own independent […]
Daman District
Went out to Daman district (Kandahar still) yesterday evening for a walk in the countryside. Shoran Dam is an area that has almost total sympathy with the Taliban, so we didn’t stay too long, but long enough to enjoy the peace of being outside the city. The days are getting longer, all the more so […]
Journalists detained in Iraq
The Wired Danger Room blog does a good job rounding up the number of journalists who have been detained by US forces in Iraq. In late August, for example, Ali al-Mashhadani — a freelance cameraman working for Reuters, the BBC, and NPR — was released by the U.S. military in after 26 days in detention. […]
The tools have changed
Broadcast talks to four senior TV news journalists about how their working life has changed due to improvements in technology. Tim Marshall, Sky News’ foreign affairs editor, says most of the changes are for the good. And sometimes knocking on a door and asking if you can hop on a wifi connection is the best […]
13 journalists killed in August
The Press Emblem Campaign says it has registered 13 journalists killed in the month of August. This is the highest recorded toll since October 2007. A total of 61 journalists have been killed since the beginning of 2008, Iraq remains the deadliest country for media coverage with 10 media workers killed since the beginning of […]
How to work in Somalia
Kabir Dhanji is a Kenya-born freelance photojournalist. He’s worked in Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Congo. He talks with Bundaberg News Mail about the particular dangers and precautions needed when working as a journalist in Somalia, “Somalia is quite unique in its dangers,” he said. “You have to be particularly well-versed in the ways of Africa, […]
Republican convention censorship?
As American eyes are focussed on the Democratic Convention, Art Hughes, of the Minnesota Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, points to a number of worrying incidents involving the seizure of cameras and video equipment in the run up to the Republican National Convention that begins on Monday, Just hours after arriving in […]
Missing the humanity of the Taliban
Lyse Doucet, BBC World News reporter, a good friend of the Frontline Club, old Afghan hand and a regular at club events, spoke about reporting from Afghanistan in Edinburgh recently. She called for more of a focus on the humanity of the Afghan people in media coverage of Afghanistan, ‘What’s lacking in the coverage of […]
Dexter Filkins on reporting from Iraq
Dexter Filkins talks to readers of the New York Times about working as a war correspondent in Iraq. It’s a lengthy Q&A, but it’s worth a look for his take on working in a war zone, Q: What would be your advice for young journalists who want to cover this conflict as you have done? […]
The forgotten victims in Somalia
By now the whole newspaper reading world has heard of the Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout who was kidnapped in Somalia earlier this week. Some of the world is also aware that Australian snapper Nigel Brennan was also kidnapped at the same time. Google search on ""Amanda Lindhout" Somalia" and you get 4,070 results, there are […]
Reporting – a danger to Kurdish journalists
Reuters report on the dangers faced by Kurdish journalists working in the enclave in northern Iraq. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists about 60 Kurdish journalists “were killed, threatened, attacked, or taken to court in the first half of 2008” “In Kurdistan there is no freedom for journalists. I have proof of that — […]
CIA recruits at journalism convention
Washington Post journalist Joe Davidson reports from a media recruitment fair in Chicago. He’s a little incredulous at what he finds at “a nondescript stall… at booth number 1709”, The CIA had set up shop, wedged between recruiters for WNYC, the Portland Oregonian and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, at the Unity Journalists of Color Convention. […]
Freelancing on the frontline
[video:youtube:WGTKFqcyfk0] Vaughan Smith, Frontline Club founder, talks to Press TV Iran about the dangers of freelancing on the frontline in the light of the recent kidnapping of Amanda Lindhout, Nigel Brennan, their Somali driver and two Somali guards. Vaughan makes the point that most journalists who are kidnapped or killed are from the countries they […]
War reporters with guns
There’s something a bit odd about praising a war reporter who carries a gun. In an article titled “War correspondent deserves Pulitzer Prize” in The Montgomery Advertiser, Alvin Benn talks about his colleague veteran war reporter Joe Galloway, Speaking to pilots at Maxwell Air Force Base last week, [Joe] praised actor Barry Pepper for portraying […]
Wilf Mbanga on journalism in Zimbabwe
Wilf Mbanga, founder and publisher of The Zimbabwean, talks in The Guardian today about how Mugabe’s regime deal with independent journalists. And how they have started threatening their children. Wilf knows all too well the threats journalists face in Zimbabwe. A 14 tonne truck carrying 60,000 copies of his newspaper was attacked in May, 2008, […]
Journalists kidnapped in Somalia
As Graham has already noted, 2 foreign journalists were kidnapped yesterday just outside Mogadishu. It’s an interesting story because not only were they working with the fixer I use out there, but also they were working probably with the same interpreter, same security guards, and the same car Philip and I used when we were […]
Students uncover Daniel Pearl suspects
[video:youtube:9yKsHWZyijA] According to MSNBC a group of Georgetown University students led by a colleague of Daniel Pearl have managed to succeed where the FBI failed. They claim to have discovered the real identities of 15 of the 19 suspects in the killing of Daniel Pearl who are still at large. The relevant segment in the […]
McCain vs. Obama
No, this blog is not getting political… I just ran across something on the Reuters blog about media coverage of the rival candidates for the US presidency. The post concentrates on the seeming disparity between the candidates regards their media coverage, specifically their respective US TV coverage and even the number of jokes made about […]
Video blogger arrested in Beijing
Friend of Frontline, Brian Conley has been arrested in Beijing. Brian is the brains behind the Alive in Baghdad blog and has helped us promote the Frontline Club live video channel. In an email his wife Eowyn tells us Brian was among 6 people recently arrested in Beijing, China while traveling to cover pro-Tibet demonstrations, […]
Bruce Wallace becomes LA Times Foreign editor
The LA Times blog reports that Bruce Wallace, Tokyo bureau chief for the Los Angeles paper, is to head the foreign desk with immediate effect, Bruce was based in Japan, but during the last four years he has been a kinetic firefighter, parachuting from hotspot to hotspot. He made two lengthy trips to Iraq, embedding […]
Telegraph closes Berlin bureau
The Telegraph will close its Berlin bureau leaving the paper with just one foreign news desk in Europe reports The Guardian. A stringer is expected to replace Berlin correspondent Harry de Quettville who will return to London to work int he features department. The move leaves just Henry Samuel in Paris as the paper’s only […]
No longer safe
Daniel Lak from CBC News talks about the changing status of journalists in conflict zones. No longer just bystanders, as Michael Holmes refelected in the previous post, but targets, “In the ’60s and ’70s, reporters were somehow regarded by all sides as tellers of the story, people who got out their version, and were allowed […]
Michael Holmes on shooting journalists
CNN correspondent Michael Holmes reflects on a week in which an alarming number of journalists have been either killed, injured and/or targetted in Georgia. Michael wasn’t stuck in a car in Georgia like the Turkish reporters he empathises with, but he’s experienced a imilar situation in Iraq, On January 27, 2004, our two-car convoy was […]
Dealing with psychological shrapnel
Katie Adie is interviewed in The Times this weekend and answers the age old question, War correspondents are often portrayed as psychologically damaged men who’ve looked into the heart of darkness and found sanctuary in booze. How does a woman who has walked through the human abattoir of history, from geno-cide in Rwanda to slaughter […]
How things used to be
[video:youtube:9aF_r_01ekY] In this video blog, NBC’s Mike Taibbi talks to John Rich, the only war correspondent to cover the entire Korean War. link
Impossible to verify 2,000 dead
From the BBC Editors blog Jon Williams, BBC World News Editor, offers an interesting perspective on how easy it is for big media to get access to powerful people who want a soapbox, but how difficult it is to verify basic facts, For the BBC to have access to someone so influential [as Georgian President […]
Getting the story out of South Ossetia
The Press Gazette does a good job of telling us how the British press got the story out of South Ossetia at the same time most of them were heavily focussed on what was going on in Beijing. Listed in among the ranks of foreign correspondents who were first on the scene are Frontline Club […]