Journalism
Who exactly were the detainees at Guantánamo?
That’s the question a small band of journalists at The Miami Herald set themselves the task of answering in what the newspaper calls “one of the most methodical and challenging reporting projects anyone has undertaken this year.” The story took over eight months and involved travel to eleven countries. The journalists found 66 former detainees […]
All have their story here
From 10pm tonight a shaft of light will light up the sky above BBC Broadcasting House in London. Every evening at the same time, the ten metre high glass and steel structure will be turned on as a memorial to journalists who have died doing their job. Relatives of some reporters who were killed will […]
Returning to Afghanistan
Flying back to Kabul tomorrow and then on to Kandahar later in the week. Photo above is of the kit I’m taking with me (minus clothes and my aging Sony Vaio FS750P/W). Am looking forward to seeing how my new mini Asus copes in Kandahar (dust, heat, speed etc). Finally replaced my old Ipod mini […]
Peace not war
In Jakarta, Indonesia the government is trying to encourage the national press to put the focus on peace journalism and not war journalism, “It would be better for the national press not merely to develop war journalism such as communal violence or clashes,” Henry Subiakto, assistant for mass media to the information and communications minister, […]
Reporting the red zone
The New York Observer begins a week of reports, called Reporting the Red Zone, focussing on the lives of journalists stationed in Baghdad, “It’s the oft-stated phrase that truth is the first casualty of war,†said Michael Ware, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, on the telephone from Iraq. “In this war, as in every other conflict, everybody […]
What’s the economic model for news?
[video:youtube:a3n6qMGvpw8] We’re watching the Roman Empire fall apparently and we’re in the era of barbarian thieftans. Can’t argue with that. Josh Marshall, founder of Talking Points Memo blog, paints a paperless picture for the future of news at a conference last month at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Films from the frontline
John D. McHugh’s latest video report from Afghanistan is live on The Guardian website. John also has another film, “Captain McChrystal’s Thanksgiving” and a new audio slideshow called “Not fit for task” up on the site too. Both are part of a “flash” presentation. John dropped me an email to say he’s working hard on […]
Banned from Afghanistan?
Sir Max Hastings says he’s been banned from the battlefields of Afghanistan by Defence Secretary Des Browne. Hastings has been a regular visitor to war zones for more than 20 years. Talking to The First Post he explains further, “I asked to go, as I’ve so often gone to British battlefields all over the world, […]
Know your DBIEDs from your HBIEDs
Deborah Haynes, Baghdad Correspondent for The Times, navigates the world of military acronymns, As a journalist, I spend a fair amount of time asking someone to translate into real English (or at least real American English) what is being said when on an embed with soldiers. link Even so, Haynes does a fine job of […]
Doug Schmidt outside the wire
Doug Schmidt will spend six weeks filing stories from the frontline in Afghanistan. He’ll be reporting for the Canadian newspaper, The Windsor Star, and blogging on his Outside the Wire blog.
Are you constantly worried?
Just how do you report from a country under the control of a dictatorial regime? That’s the question posed in this half hour NPR programme, “This is a dangerous job,†[Ethan Bronner, New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief] said, citing the kidnapping and murder of the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, […]
The thin line
Peter Calamai from the Toronto Star reflects upon reporting from war zones and how 25 years ago newspapers were far more reluctant to use the photographs they publish today. At the end of it all, what was the point? What was the purpose of all this journalistic effort? We bore witness to man’s continuing inhumanity […]
Hostile environment training for student journalists
[video:youtube:FxinugZalOA] Student Steve Lestrange reports from a Hostile Environment training course undertaken by University College Falmouth MA International Journalism students. Doesn’t sound quite as hair-raising as the Reuters equivalent, but the weather looks worse.
Ian Parry Scholarship deadline June 20
The deadline for the Ian Parry Scholarship is June 20. Entrants need to upload a digitial portfolio of their work to the Ian Parry website before the deadline, Ian Parry was a photojournalist who died while on assignment for The Sunday Times during the Romanian revolution in 1989. He was just 24 years old. The […]
BBC Radio 5 Interview
This link will take you to an MP3 of my interview yesterday with Chris Vallance on my way home from the airport. Light listening.
Embedded reporting from the inside
The cameraman writer on the Imagejunkies blog has a great post providing some insight into the process of “embedding”, the logistics of TV reporting from a war zone and how sometimes the interests of the military minders don’t always match the interests of the reporters on the ground, There is a vision that we can […]
Do you or don’t you dumb it down?
Writing on the BBC Reporters blog, James Reynolds questions whether his reporting from the Chinese earthquake showed too much/too little or was too intrusive. This is a recurring debate that seems so often to evenly split between those who want to show everything and those who believe the news should be sanitised. James questions whether […]
Reporting restrictions
David Carr writes in the New York Times about The Wars We Choose To Ignore. With war coverage shrinking to a mere drip – “3% of all American print and broadcast news as of last week” – down from 25% last September according to Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, Carr highlights some […]
Molly-coddled journalists
Paul Callan of the Daily Express rails against research claiming journalists may have a hard time coping with addiction, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of reporting from conflict zones and the like. The Press Gazette publishes a letter from Callan who says a trip down the pub is all he’s ever […]
Crossroads
“Abu Skandar, who always drives by the university when he comes to Cairo from Heliopolis, has made this passegiata into his personal polling sample to measure the progress or regression of Islamic veiling. I secretly suspect him of privileging the qualitative aspect of the investigation over its strictly quantitative dimensions. In his defense, it is […]
Kimberley Dozier breathing fire
Kimberley Dozier is interviewed on the Bob Rivers show. She recalls the day she almost died when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad. Kimberley took part in the recent Frontline Club event in New York. Her book, “Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report and Survive the War in Iraq”, has just been published.
Tony Jones on becoming a foreign correspondent
ABC Australia journalist Tony Jones talks to the Sydney Morning Herald about his first steps to becoming a foreign correspondent. When Tony Jones was at Sydney University, a visitor to his boarding college changed his life. Flamboyant foreign correspondent Francis James came to talk about his experiences in South-East Asia and his views on the […]
Andrew Keen admits failure
Andrew Keen came to London with a motion some called ludicrous – Is new media killing journalism? – debate ensued at the Frontline Club and in today’s Independent he admits, he lost. It was my job to argue that the internet is killing journalists. To cut a long debate short, I lost. It was my […]
World Press Photo interviews
Very impressive series of multimedia interviews for the World Press Photo Awards. via MediaStorm
John D. McHugh in the Guardian
I’m reliably informed Frontline Club member John D. McHugh has a big spread in the Guardian newspaper tomorrow. The piece will run online too, but it might be worth grabbing the papier mache version if you have access to a newstand near you. A wee bit of background, courtesy of the Guardian, for those of […]
Media victory in Iraq
Sociologist Andrew M. Lindner writes in the latest issue of the American Sociological Association’s Context magazine about his findings on how the media reported, and continue to report, the Iraq war. He says, the dearth of embedded reporting effectively gave an Iraq “media victory” for the Bush Administration, “The embedded program proved to be a […]
Joe Galloway is not a Pentagon poodle
Joe Galloway, an American war reporter, hits back at attempts to involve him in the Pentagon media poodles campaign we mentioned recently. According to Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher, Joe’s not having any of it, “There’s little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert propaganda operations mounted against the American public by […]
Reuters seek truth behind death of Fadel Shana
A month after Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza strip, the news organisation still has no explanation from Israeli authorities as to why he was targetted, “A month has passed since Fadel Shana was killed by Israeli forces while responsibly going about his professional duties,” said Reuters […]
Sun brush with Burmese police
Nick Parker and Peter Jordan from The Sun newspaper felt the long arm of the Burmese law this week. The reporter and snapper duo were stopped as they headed south into the Irrawaddy Delta, We were ushered into an office where an immigration officer was waiting with pen poised. He seized our passports and began […]
The new AP – no cost – high impact
following the jaipur blasts on twitter, originally uploaded by robinhamman. Robin Hamman follows how the microblogging tool Twitter was again so effectively used during the bomb blasts in Jaipur two days ago. Robin used Tweetscan, a tool that searches public Twitter messages for keywords, to see if anyone was twittering from the scene. It’s not […]