Africa
Niger RFI journalist released
Moussa Kaka, a local reporter for Radio France International (RFI) in Niger, was released from prison yesterday after spending over a year in prison. The charges against him have been “downgraded”. He was originally charged with “complicity in plotting against state authority”. He will now face charges of being “against the integrity of national territory”. […]
The Zimbabwean profiled on BBC
Wilf Mbanga and his wife Trish, who produce The Zimbabwean weekly newspaper from their home in Southampton, UK, are profiled by BBC South’s Inside Out programme this week. Wilf is a regular at the Frontline Club and he took part in the Zimbabwe debate earlier this year. The BBC documentary will look at the couple’s […]
Jean-Paul Ney in danger
Jean-Paul Ney, the investigative journalist and war reporter arrested in Ivory Coast nine months ago, is in ill health according to the Intelink website, Today after 9 months in jail, the health of Jean-Paul Ney is in danger. He has been hospitalized twice for Malaria and typhoid fever, and put back in jail each time. […]
Caution urged over Somalia kidnap video
Reporters Without Borders urge caution when watching the video aired by Al Jazeera earlier this week that purports to show kidnapped journalists Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan held hostage in Somalia, “We have to be very careful of this video,” said Leonard Vincent, head of the organization’s Africa desk. “We don’t know who sent it, […]
Somalia kidnap journalists in Al Jazeera video
Al Jazeera has aired a video that purports to show Australian photographer Nigel Brennan and the Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout. The duo were kidnapped on 23 August – you can see the timeline here – ABC News has more, The video showed Mr Brennan and Ms Lindhout, wearing an Islamic robe, along with armed Islamic […]
Live tonight: Is Somalia the new front in the war on terror?
View in iTunes You can now watch the event here. We’ll be discussing Somalia at the Frontline Club in London tonight. This time the question up for debate: Is Somalia the new front in the war on terror? We’ll be streaming the discussion live on the Frontline Club Live Channel and if you can’t make […]
Live tonight: Somaliland – Getting it right in Africa
You can now watch the event here. View in iTunes In May 1991 Somaliland declared independence from the rest of Somalia and over the past 17 years the government there has restored law and order to make it one of the must democratic and functioning societies in the Horn of Africa. Tonight’s debate at the […]
$2.5 million ransom for Somalia hostages
The kidnappers of the three journalists and two drivers kidnapped in Somalia two weeks ago have finally submitted their demands, “The kidnappers demanded 2.5 million dollars and we are trying to secure their release,” said Dahir Farah, who has been participating in negotiations to free the three abducted in Somalia last month. Another person claiming […]
Andrew Berends “temporarily released”
The filmmaker Andrew Berends has been temporarily released for the weekend along with his Nigerian translator, Samuel George. The two were arrested earlier this week while working on a film about the oil business in the Niger Delta, “Nigeria’s democratic government has made enormous strides since the days of dictator Sani Abacha, when dozens of […]
Film maker Andrew Berends arrested in Nigeria
Andrew Berends and his Nigerian fixer Samuel George were arrested in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt at the weekend. Berends has been working in the Niger Delta since April making a film about the oil-producing area that has been riven with conflict between government forces and armed separatists since the early 1990s, “Berends was […]
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, […]
Somalia kidnap: “Things are moving positively”
Leonard Vincent, head of the Africa desk for Reporters Without Borders, talks to Canwest News Service about the plight of journalists Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan who were kidnapped in Somalia earlier this week, “Things are moving positively,” said Vincent. “It is a crucial moment and it would be very dangerous to disclose more than […]
UN condemns murder of Nigerian journalist
Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, a reporter with the Nigerian newspaper ThisDay, was shot and killed in the Nigerian capital Lagos on 17 August. His killer or killers have still not been found. Simon Kolawole a colleague of Ogundeji, bemoaned the state of the justice system in such killings, Those of us who have no police escorts, […]
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, […]
Top tips for reporting from Sudan
Heading to Sudan? Ever wondered what to look out for? Rob has the lowdown with his top tips for working in the African nation. I particularly liked number five, Don’t bear an uncanny resemblance to the previous BBC stringer who got kicked out. link
Getting into Zimbabwe
Andrew Geoghegan, an ABC News journalist, marvels at how he has been allowed to enter Zimbabwe four times without arrest, It’s easy to develop a false sense of security in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe’s notorious thugs work behind the scenes. It’s the police roadblocks that make me nervous. Most of the time the cops just want […]
Blocked in Chad
Frontline blogger David Axe writes on the Danger Room blog about the joys of getting around Chad. Roadblocks equal a local road tax. He’s got through $500 in just a month paying off the blockers. At least at one roadblock the ‘guards’ let him hold onto his wallet, I was driving through a U.N.-administered refugee […]
Cobbling the story together
Bill Mitchell at Poynter does a great job dissecting the timeline that saw the picture above appear on the front page of the Sunday Times, only to be subsequently debunked At The Sunday Times, managing editor Richard Caseby said the paper’s first account of the baby was cobbled together on deadline when editors slotted the […]
Darfur and the media attention deficit
Ethan Zuckerman asks some great questions about Darfur and media attention on his blog. I dropped a comment, but it might be worth pulling together a few threads here. The general feeling is that “attention paid to Darfur is unprecedented” – but was it? Is it? If we feed a few keywords through Silobreaker’s Media […]
James Brabazon on the Wonga coup
James Brabazon, documentary film maker, talks about his part in the downfall of Simon Mann and Mark Thatcher in the so-called Wonga coup in The Independent today. Brabazon was asked to film a private army as it tried and failed to seize power in the small west African nation of Equatorial Guinea in 2004, A […]
David Axe on Radio 5 Live
Chris Vallance, presenter of BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs show, interviews David Axe in Chad. You can hear the report here and you can follow David’s trip on the border of Sudan on his Frontline blog. To listen direct click here – I think this link is good for one week or so […]
More trouble in Chad
Finbarr O’Reilly, Reuters snapper and World Press photo 2006 winner, is currently in Chad. He found himself in a spot of bother as he haretails it through the desert of the eastern part of the country. Harsh light and shifting shadows in the windblown desert of eastern Chad can conjure strange images, but this was […]
Zimbabwe in slides
TIME publish a slideshow of images from Zimbabwe on the eve of the “run off election” set for tomorrow. Click the image above to see 15 images from Zimbabwe in recent days.
Reporting Zimbabwe
The Committee to Protect Journalists produce an audio slideshow of journalists discussing the difficulties of reporting from Zimbabwe and the great risks involved for little or even no money. The slideshow is an accompaniment to a larger article entitled Bad to worse published today ahead of the June 27 “run-off” election, “We can’t go to […]
Trouble in Abeche
Frontline blogger David Axe and photographer Anne Holmes think they’re onto a story when they hear gunfire in the Chadian city Abeche. The story appears to have been little more than a misunderstanding that finds David in the wrong place at the wrong time, We’d seen plenty of shooting and lots of soldiers, but no […]
Tribute to Nasteh Dahir Farah
Media workers from across Somalia paid tribute today to Nasteh Dahir Farah at a Safety awareness training course organised by National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) and the International News Safety Institute. Nasteh Dahir Farah was the Vice president of the NUSOJ, before he was murdered in Kismayu on 7 June, “Journalists work in the […]
Live tonight: Sorious Samura screening & discussion
African journalist and film maker Sorious Samura will screen his latest film at the Frontline Club tonight and you can watch the live stream of the film and the discussion afterwards on our ustream channel. The event starts at 7.30pm UK time. There’s more information on the event here. How effective are foreign based charities […]
This is Mike India in North Kivu
Goma flyktninger 18, originally uploaded by cyclopsr. Michel Sibilondire runs a radio station in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After a decade of war the UN hired him to run the radio show which is broadcast in four languages. The show has run for four years and, in between the Rwandan and […]
David Axe heading to Chad
Frontline blogger David Axe is heading to Chad and Sudan tomorrow. He’ll be blogging when he can. He’ll also be the second Frontline blogger to experiment with the mobile phone live streaming video tool called Qik. Kyle is already a big fan, but David will see how (and if) the service works in the field. […]
How much violence can we show?
The New Times in the Rwandan capital Kigali ponders whether or not BBC World should have shown the picture of a man whose right ear had been chopped off in violence in the run up to the Zimbabwe election “run off” later this month, Such pictures quite often pose a dilemma for the media; they […]