News
Concerns emerging over May municipal election
Residents of Yerevan will for the first time vote to elect a Mayor in May. Fearful that an elected Mayor would rival the power of the presidency, the municipal head had previously been officially appointed until the constitution was amended by a referendum held in November 2005. The 31 May election will also be the first […]
Broke without fixers
Jonathan Miller writes about the "secret weapon" of television news on the Channel 4 World News blog. He’s talking about the fixers he’s worked with in the DRC, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Pakistan, Serbia and Sudan. "When fixers deliver," Miller says, "We make good telly," Fixers are all-too-often the unsung heros of our business. They work long […]
Cars inspire Mexican artist’s show with a green message
Mexico visual artist Betsabee Romero used cars to create installations for “A vuelta de rueda (driving slowly),” an outdoor exhibition in downtown Mexico City that has a decidedly green feel to it.
Romero’s installations in the Atrio de San Francisco, an open-air plaza in the heart of downtown Mexico City, include an old VW combi covered in green plants and a car coated with traditional Mexican tiles. Watch the artist explain the motives behinds her work in the video above. — Deborah Bonello in Mexico City Video by Deborah Bonello.
Stop Press
My favorite all-time movie moment about journalism takes place at the end of the Humphrey Bogart 1952 film Deadline USA. Bogart as the grizzled editor defies a gangster’s threat and order not to print a story about him. He orders the press to roll and holds the phone up so the gangster can hear it. […]
Damning human rights reports on eve of 1 March post-election clash anniversary
Having narrowly escaped sanctions from the Council of Europe, and following controversy surrounding the trial of seven senior opposition figures arrested after last year’s post-election violence, come two damning reports on the human rights and political situation in Armenia. Just 4 days before the first anniversary of the 1 March 2008 clashes which left at […]
Digital War Reporting
Just flagging up a book to watch out for later this year. Digital War Reporting is being written by Stuart Allan and Donald Matheson, two authors I’ve already cited on numerous occasions in my PhD. In the book they explore ‘how new technologies open up innovative ways for journalists to convey the horrors of warfare […]
The golden age of foreign correspondence
I’m reading Christina Lamb’s Small Wars Permitting these days, a thoughtful Christmas gift from a friend and colleague here who’s a Lamb fan herself. I’m enjoying the book, which mixes personal recollections with the stories she wrote at the time for the Financial Times. I’m only just starting, reading about her start as a 20-something […]
The changing image of Brazilian immigrants
Last week pictures of 26-year-old Brazilian Paula Oliveira, with the initials of Switzerland’s main right-wing party cut into her body were printed all over the world. She claimed to have been attacked by skinheads in Zurich, but later reportedly confessed to self-mutilating. Now she is being investigated for misleading the police. The fact is that […]
Fleeced on Flickr?
Amid all the chatter about how using social media can help journalists and photographers broaden their audience and win new business, a cautionary tale emerges from the Flickr/Twitterverse. Via @michald on Twitter, I notice that photographer Shaun Curry, who I believe works for AFP, has removed all his photos from Flickr and posted a holding […]
Lockdown in Darfur
It’s business as usual, according to pretty much anyone you ask in Khartoum when the issue of next week’s International Criminal Court indictment of Omar al-Bashir comes up. No-one wants to give the Sudanese government an excuse to accuse diplomats or the international community of acting as judge and jury and finding Bashir. So […]
Tamil editor abducted in Sri Lanka
Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, a senior Sri Lankan newspaper editor, was abducted by armed men in police uniform this morning, according to the Tamil Eelam News Services. The editor of both the Uthayan newspaper in Jaffna and the Colombo based Sudar Oli was attending the funeral of a friend on the Galle Road in Colombo when the […]
Photo exhibition rewards Mexican artists
Albinos in Mexico and the “human tragedy” of Mexican society were focuses of the winning entries in one the country’s longest-running photography competitions, the results of which are now on display in Mexico City’s impressive Centro de Imagen.
Demonstration outside Georgian Embassy
To be honest, I hadn’t particularly planned on attending today’s demonstration staged outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan to protest the detention of two ethnic Armenian activists in Georgia’s Samtskhe Javakheti region – or rather, I was in two minds about doing so. To begin with, a friend in town from Tbilisi told […]
Working as a journalist in Iraq
The excellent Alive in Baghdad talks to Hassan Fadhel Allah al-Hussaini, the editor of the Rayat al-Arab newspaper, at his office in Baghdad. He talks about his newspaper, the assasination of former colleague Saad Mehdi Shalash, press freedom and the "miracle" of working life in Baghdad. Click the video above to play the interview, "All […]
How the IDF fell off the social media bandwagon
I’ve been thinking for a while about how the Israeli Defence Force used social media during the conflict in Gaza and I’m not at all convinced the campaign was successful. Yes, the IDF was right to engage with the Internet and social media. But the way they went about it was questionable. I have two […]
Somali Was First American Suicide Bomber
In October, a suicide bomber killed 30 people in northern Somalia, a region once considered fairly safe compared to rest of the war-torn country. Now it appears the bomber was an American, making him the first suicide jihadist to come from this country. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has more: "It appears that this individual was radicalized […]
Mexico’s media under scrutiny in documentary
Violence against journalists in Mexico is, sadly, nothing new and has been followed closely by the press and nonprofits alike for the last few years. But "Voces Silenciadas" (Silenced Voices), a documentary film that was part of the Ambulante film festival here, broadens the debate around the persecution of journalists to encompass the bigger issues […]
The Kenji Nagai Award
The Kenji Nagai Award for Journalism was announced at the Burma Media Conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand this week. The Burma Media Association created the award to honour the Japanese video journalist who was killed on the streets of Rangoon by a Burmese soldier during the saffron revolution of September, 2007. The inaugral award goes […]
Kidnapped journalist on video
A videotape of Beverly Giesbrecht, a freelance journalist who was kidnapped almost three months ago in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region, surfaced on Monday according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. The reporter, who also goes by the name of Khadija Abdul Qahaar and publishes Jihad Unspun, was kidnapped in November, 2008 in the Bannu district of […]
Iraqi journalist banned from covering the opening of the Iraqi Museum
Al Hurra reporter Ahmad Aram said last night that he and other Iraqi reporters were not allowed to enter the Iraqi Museum during the opening ceremony which took place yesterday. He also alleges that Iraqi security forces hit the Hurra cameraman who was with him – oddly the quote about his cameraman being hit is […]
Nationalists agitate for Samtskhe-Javakheti
Following the arrest of two ethnic Armenians in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of the Republic of Georgia, nationalist groups in Armenia plan to hold a demonstration outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan on Wednesday. While it is unlikely to be well attended, the activity of such nationalist groups has sharply increased since the short war between […]
The Waiting is Over – Apart from the next 8 days that is…
Proving once again that mindless press speculation can serve a purpose, the International Criminal Court has been forced to put out a notice saying that it will issue a warrant for the arrest of annouce its decision on President Omar al-Bashir next Wednesday. It rather snootily notes… CONSIDERING that there have been numerous rumors over the […]
Six months and counting
Six months ago today the first reports came in of the kidnap of Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout, freelance photographer Nigel Brennan and their fixers and driver. The team were reportedly abducted just outside Mogadishu. The fixer and driver were subsequently released, but Lindhout and Brennan remain hostage. A ransom demand of $100,000 was recently […]
One night in Equatorial Guinea
Just ploughing through Martin Bell’s top tips for frequent flyers in The Times today. The club regular says he can never sleep on planes – I know how he feels. Even if I do manage significantly less than 40 winks, I invariably awake with a crick neck. The weirdest place Martin’s ever stayed in, so […]
And the next Club Quiz is booked for 30th March
Marcus Berkmann is preparing our next quiz. Again, it will be £5 (donation to the fixers’ fund) to enter, maximum 6 people per team. We start at 7pm, 30th March.
Child rapes plague Cambodia
I have been reporting lately a lot —too much unfortunately— about cases of child rape. Granted, not the easiest topic to launch this blog on, but it’s been on my mind. As a reporter, I am careful not to be a fear-monger. As a descendent of a long line of jurists, I am all too […]
Who Are Darfur’s Arabs?
Powerful piece by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times about two sisters affected by violence in Darfur. Kristof was in Chad (or the Darfur area as he calls it) for a few days with George Clooney, raising awareness of the conflict and the looming ICC indictment of President Bashir. Which is great. And makes for eyeopening […]
Bishop Williamson: the silent blogger
Bishop Richard Williamson’s five-year sojourn in an Argentine seminary came to an abrupt halt this week. The controversial bishop, who claimed the gas chambers are a myth and that only 300,000 Jews died during the Holocaust, was given ten days to pack his bags and leave the country. The Church never seems to do itself […]
Who killed Politkovskaya?
The case against those accused of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment in October 2006 collapsed this Thursday as the jury aquitted all three suspects. One day later the presiding judge, Yevgeni Zubo, ordered the Russian Investigative Committee reopen the case, “The fact that no one at all has been held accountable […]
Sitting pretty
On Old Road in Congo Town, a neighborhood in Monrovia, I went through an alley, and then through another, to a compound hidden inside what seemed like never ending compounds. A bunch of teenagers were meeting inside for a youth group, and this little girl watched in awe. She couldn’t wait to join. But I […]
