Iraq
Partytime in Ramadi
Peter Carlson scans through the magazines for the Washington Post and finds an article in the Virginia Quarterly Review by David J. Morris, a marine veteran turned journalist/college teacher. Morris returned to Ramadi in October. The reception he got this time around was quite different from the first time he arrived in the summer of […]
Best part of three years embedded
You might not agree with the way he sees things in Iraq, but Michael Yon has spent longer there than any other reporter. Three years and holding. Yet, he’s not strictly a reporter. He’s an embedded blogger and he has a transparent agenda. The New York Times profiles Yon, [Yon] does not work for any […]
A marriage made in Baghdad
A husband and wife war reporting team tell of the battles they’ve seen and the battles they’ve had in the New York Times, “It’s just mortars,†I told her. In fact, I wasn’t sure about the cause, which Diana could immediately see. “Stop trying to protect me,†she snapped. “Just be honest.†It was a […]
Under the Turkish cosh
In their own different ways, Diyarbakir, Hasankeyf and Hakkari are trying to cope with events that have become more than a regional struggle between the Turkish state and its Kurdish minority. The run-down city of Diyarbakir remains the regional hub and political centre of the Kurdish rights movement, where the city’s crumbling infrastructure is testimony […]
Back in the sandbox
A former US soldier and milbogger who served in Iraq until October 2007 is heading back to the “sandbox”, but not with the army, I am going back of my own free will- I am becoming a participant in this great experiment of independent, citizen journalism. I am going back to Iraq as a photojournalist, […]
Tom Ricks gets grilled
Military reporter for the Washington Post Tom E. Ricks gets the quiz treatment from readers today. The former Pulitzer prize winner has reported from Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq and is the author of the 2006 book, FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Here’s a quick dip into […]
Richard Wild “unlawfully killed”
Richard Wild was killed while working on a feature about museum looting in Baghdad in July 2003. He had only been in the country for two weeks and wanted to establish himself as a war reporter. He was shot in the back of the head. At the time Oxford Coroner’s Court heard that the US […]
Getting the story out
Tim Arango, writing in the International Herald Tribune, considers the dangers facing journalists in Iraq and looks at the methods news organisations use to recruit local reporters, fixers and translators, “When you are working side by side, you get to know the person, and if the person seems unreliable, or if you ever see someone […]
Bourne to Baghdad
[video:brightcove:1026280250] 2008 looks set to host something of a war film mania. Matt Damon is the latest actor to go to war. The star of the Bourne trilogy of films, starts work in Spain today with film director Paul Greengrass and actress Amy Ryan on an as yet untitled war thriller about life in Green […]
Marie Colvin in Basra
Last week Frontline Club member and Sunday Times journalist, Marie Colvin, became the first unembedded western journalist from a British newspaper to visit Basra for nearly two years. She worked under the cover of an abbaya. Nevertheless, Basra is an extremely dangerous place to work unembedded. So much so that one of Marie’s interviewees took […]
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad profiled
[video:youtube:JoOmquaRCx8] Menassat, an organisation that promotes good journalism in the Middle East and North Africa, begins a new series profiling arab journalists. Lebanon-based Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who writes and photographs for The Guardian and has twice been shortlisted for best foreign correspondent of the year by the British Press Awards, is first up, “I think rule […]
Reporting restrictions
Tom Roeder of the Colorado Springs Gazette kicks off his Iraq Notebook blog by uploading a copy of the original reporting restrictions agreement he signed with the US Military before heading to Iraq, It’s fairly rare for reporters, always fond of their constitutional rights, to agree to any government-imposed restriction of their activities. It’s important […]
From Colorado Springs to Baghdad
Colorado Springs Gazette reporter Tom Roeder and photojournalist David Bitton head to Baghdad to report on the 4,000 soliders from the Springs area who are stationed there. The duo will report for the newspaper and will also keep a blog – Iraq Notebook. On reporting from Iraq, the Gazette notes, The Army doesn’t censor reports […]
Dogs not people
It’s easier to get a dog out of Iraq than it is to get an Iraqi out. Ex-Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief, Ellen Knickmeyer, tells the story of how she got her dog out of Baghdad, We all try to pretend day-to-day that our differences of nationality, race and class don’t matter to us, but […]
Reporting Iraq
Vivienne Walt, Judith Matloff and Christopher Allbritton interview some 50 journalists who have worked extensively in Iraq for the book called Reporting Iraq. The Statesman reviews the book, The psychological toll of war reporting is often forgotten or denied, even by journalists themselves. In “Reporting Iraq,” Anne Garrels of NPR confesses, “I still have nightmares, […]
Kelly Kennedy in Adhamiya
Amy Goodman at Democracy Now interviews Kelly Kennedy, a staff writer with the Army Times, about breaking the story of mutiny among the ranks of Charlie company in Adhamiya, a district in northeastern Baghdad, I hope that the story would show people exactly what soldiers in Iraq are dealing with. I’m not sure Americans understand […]
Story of the scarf
When journalist, and author of In the Red Zone, Steve Vincent was killed by gunmen in Basra, his translator Nour Khal kept the blood stained yellow scarf she was wearing at the time they were both shot. She survived and now Khal and the scarf reside in Manhattan with Vincent’s widow, Lisa Ramaci. The LA […]
Drawing Jihad
“Get that negative energy out on the paper,” urges Awad Alyami waving his arms like an orchestra conductor. The objects of his exhortation – eight convicted jihadi warriors – sit at a long table clutching pastel crayons, as intent as children in a kindergarten. Each of these young men has served prison time for terror-related […]
Richard Engel wins a duPont
Richard Engel wins a duPont Award for his MSNBC War Zone Diary which aims to give an insider’s look at the life of a war correspondent in Iraq. The 2008 duPont awards, which were announced today, were originally established in 1942 and are widely considered to be the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes. A […]
Inside the Surge ends
[video:youtube:OBu3AJF52Is] Snappers Tom Van Dyke and Kuni Takahashi working for the Chicago Tribune on a multi-part series from Iraq called Inside the Surge were in for a bit of surprise when they returned to Baghdad last month. They were no longer wanted. Sunday’s edition of the Tribune has more, The Tribune was told that questions […]
Killed in Baghdad
Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi, Special Correspondent with the excellent Alive in Baghdad, was shot and killed in his home in Habibya, part of the Sadr city, on December 14th. The Alive in Baghdad blog has more, On Friday the 14th at 11:30pm Baghdad time, Iraqi National Guard forces raided the street where Ali’s house is, one […]
Beyond the Green Zone
Former Alaska mountain guide Dahr Jamail had no formal journalism training or experience when he picked up a laptop and digital camera and headed to Iraq initially emailing stories back to a small group of friends. He soon got picked up by independent news services. Beyond the Green Zone is a compilation of Jamail’s reports, […]
Who talks about them?
[video:youtube:wamMBgt3Uic] Hesain Khadir is an exiled journalist from Iraq living in Britain. He recently spoke at the University of Stirling about the life of Iraqi journalists living and working in Iraq, “You are banning yourself from expressing yourself freely… People of Scotland realise the pain of what happened with Alan Johnston. There are huge numbers […]
Baghdad catwalk
The Daily Telegraph’s Colin Freeman finds his fashion sense shot to shreads by his translator upon a arrival in Baghdad, ”Forget those foreign-looking clothes, dress like an Iraqi,” he advised. In modern-day Baghdad, however, that didn’t mean doing a Lawrence of Arabia number in elegent Arab robes and headdress. Instead, it meant a pair of […]
War News Radio
All the wars, all of the time. Well OK, some of the wars, some of the time. War News Radio reports on and from Afghanistan and Iraq and is cobbled together by students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. The weekly 29-minute programme is free to listen to. The station aims to shed light on, [the] […]
Foreign correspondent’s family killed in Iraq
Deutsche Welle reports that eleven members of the family of an Iraqi foreign correspondent based in Jordan having been killed in Baghdad, Armed men have massacred eleven family members of an Iraqi foreign correspondent, including seven children. The correspondent himself, Dia al-Kawas called the AFP news agency from Amman in Jordan where he works at […]
War, truth and the media today
A short film made for the Media workers against the war conference at the London School of Economics last weekend, Amid all the current agonising about media integrity – and at a time when BBC management is preparing to cut news resources even further – can there be any area more worthy of scrutiny […]
Shooting War
Shooting War is a graphic novel set in the Iraq of 2011. Journalist Anthony Lappe drew on his experience working for the New York Times in Iraq to create the book with artist Dan Goldman.
“The most dangerous war in the history of journalism”
The Indepedent reports on the grim landmark reached this week. More than 200 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March, 2003. The Independent compares this to previous wars, Two were killed in the First World War, 68 in the Second, 77 in Vietnam and 36 in the Balkans… […]
Story behind the snap
Photographer Luis Sinco tells the story of the image he took of Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller as the soldier’s regiment entered Falluja on 8 November 2004, On the second day of the battle, I called my wife by satellite phone to tell her that I was OK. She told me my photo had […]