How British TV reports famine - “The documentaries have stopped, but the starvation hasn’t.” Pretty damn depressing.

Q&A White House Legend Helen Thomas - “Keep your standards high. Understand that your role is to seek the truth, wherever it leads you.” Wise words from the Queen of the White House press corps.

Emmanuel Jal: from child soldier to rap artist – an incredible event at the Frontline Club earlier this month.

One year on, Lehman Brothers still haunts us – Intelligent analysis from Jon Snow.

How Carolinians see the race row – I am really enjoying Mark Mardell’s reporting from the US. Thoughtful, interesting and beautifully written.

The trouble with reporting on Sri Lanka – Nick Paton Walsh on the difficulties faced by journalists reporting the conflict in Sri Lanka. He raises some of the same issues recently discussed at an event at the Frontline Club. You can watch a video of the discussion here.

As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches, the bookshops are filling up with commemorative and interpretative volumes. One of the most welcome is Peter Millar’s 1989 The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall (Arcadia Books, £11.99), which will be launched at the Frontline Club in London on 1 October. Peter followed me from Oxford into Reuters at the news agency’s old Fleet Street offices and then as the baby in the set-up in the International Press Centre in Brussels, though he lasted longer than I did. I resigned while still in Brussels when I received my first book contract  (for The Great Wall of China), whereas he went on to work for Reuters in East Berlin and then Moscow, before moving over to the Sunday Telegraph and then the Sunday Times.

We didn’t meet up in East Berlin when he was posted there, though I was going in and out of the place frequently at the time, visiting Quakers and other people involved in what became the Swords into Ploughshares movement which was the forerunner of civil unrest that would eventually see the edifice of DDR authority collapse like a house of cards. By the time 1989 came round, I was at Bush House as a sort of ‘rest of the world’ commentator for the BBC World Service and at times rather envied those who could concentrate on the disintegration of European communism. I did go to Berlin again shortly after the Wall came down, however. Rather than  bringing back a chunk of that graffiti-daubed monument, I bought a very fetching Soviet sailor´s cap for US$1 from a tipsy Russian instead.

Peter Millar’s book — whose title is a deliberate nod of homage to the late, great Spike Milligan — is full of telling anecdote and seamlessly blends autobiography with historical reportage. There are a few go0od laughs, but much of the tale is suitably serious. There was indeed euphoria on the night of 9 November 1989, as the Wall was breached — I shed a tear of joy myself, watching the scenes on TV at home in London — but there was anguish too. Peter was able to smile wrily at some details he later discovered in his Stasi files. But for many of my friends and colleagues, what they then found out about the system they had been forced to live under for so many years was in many cases even more traumatising than what they had imagined.

Link: www.arcadiabooks.co.uk

Michael Yon, readers might know, has been embedded with British army units in Helmand for the last month – producing some of the most vivid reporting I’ve seen. But now, he’s not. And he’s not happy about it either.

Greetings, The British Ministry of Defence canceled my embed after today’s dispatch.  Please Read “Bad Medicine“.

Bad Medicine is Yon’s last full post, and describes in considerable detail, British efforts to improve security along a short section of road linking two British bases. As with his earlier stuff, this is compelling reporting – great photos and lots of detail. So much detail, in fact that on reading it, I thought I could see why the Brits might be peeved.

But apparently not. As far as the MoD is concerned, his embed wasn’t cancelled – in fact it was extended. It just ran out, is all. Here’s their statement (h/t Dan Bennett)

Michael Yon’s embed with British forces has not been cancelled and we are disappointed that he has chosen to characterise it as such. We have hosted Michael with British forces for five weeks, some two weeks longer than originally planned.

We welcome Michael’s thorough reporting of the work of British forces and we have no objection to his recent piece entitled “Bad Medicine”. All journalists embedding with the UK military are given access to troops without censorship. However all materials coming out of theatre is checked to ensure that key tactical details that would aid the enemy are not being made public. Michael’s dispatch was subject to these checks and was given the go-ahead.

That sounds fair enough: there are other journalists to accomodate, after all. Back to Yon then – does he still believe the MoD gave him the boot? If not, he ought to clarify. In his latest update, he writes simply that ‘My embed with British forces has ended.’  ‘Ended’ is somewhat different from ‘cancelled’, of course.

This is a tough war for journalists. It’s expensive to cover (Yon’s readers step up to help meet his costs) and dangerous to do so outside an embed. At the same time, the business model for newspapers is in meltdown, and the public (and editorial) appetite for this sort of news is limited. As a consumer of news from Afghanistan, my feeling is that embedding broadly works – we get reportage like Yon’s where we mightn’t otherwise. Reporters, in turn, have the latitude to say broadly what they like – without compromising opsec. The MoD, meanwhile, gets to say who comes out to theatre. It might not perfect, but it’s better than no embedding. What do you think?

Meanwhile, if you’re in London next week – there’s an event at the Frontline Club with an excellent panel that might interest you, and which will certainly reflect on these issues:

Access Denied: “Fighting in Gaza and Sri Lanka and the recent unrest in Iran all raised questions about how journalists can do their job when governments deny access.The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have also provoked concern that the Ministry of Defence is aided in the task of managing the flow of information by the fact that it is frequently impossible for journalists to reach and report from the frontline of the conflict.”

The story of the MPs expenses has not yet drawn to a close, the Daily Telegraph revealed last night.

Andrew Pierce, assistant editor of the newspaper that broke the milestone story, said that journalists were still working with the data.

Referring to the team working on the scoop, Piece said: “They are still in the bunker, if that gives you a clue.”

The story, which according to Piece covered 240 broadsheet pages of the Daily Telegraph, took a close working team of journalists to produce, based away from the newsroom in what was known as “the bunker”.

“They were working morning noon and night. Only a handful of people knew what was going to be in the newspaper the next day.”

He added that it was old fashioned journalism at its finest and that the newspaper and website had benefitted significantly during the four weeks the story ran.

(L-R) Pierce, Alton, Greenslade, Brooke and Tall at Frontline Club, courtesy of Priyal Sanghvi.

Speaking to an audience in London last night, Pierce said that the task of going through the data was hard work but it paid off.

“It was our job to go through the lot, and I’m glad we did look at every single person.”

The newspaper decided to go through the unorganised information systematically, and each splash coordinated with a different theme.

“We started with the cabinet, then the shadow big hitters and then husbands and wives, where we discovered the term flipping.”

“Then we discovered the accountancy fees which gave us extraordinary momentum.”

Pierce said the team were shocked to discover some of the items the MPs had been claiming for.

“When the Daily Telegraph acquired this information, we had no comprehension of the level of abuses.”

Pierce defended claims that the Daily Telegraph had been involved in a bribe, saying, “Fleet Street has survived on leaks for years.”

Media commentator and Guardian blogger, Roy Greenslade, chaired the panel and speculated that the newspaper had paid their source £75,000.

Pierce refused to confirm any sum, denying that money had been involved. He also insisted that he wasn’t involved in this stage of the process.

Roger Alton, editor of The Independent congratulated the Daily Telegraph on their “flawless job”, and said the paper was setting the agenda for every other news organisation in the country.

The panel speculated that the story could expand to expenses of the European Commission and the salaries of the BBC.

Heather Brooke, FOI campaigner and Stephen Tall, Lib Dem activitst, also attended the event which took place at the Frontline Club in London.

Yesterday a group of students from Northwestern University joined a worldwide huger strike in support of the Roxana Saberi, an American journalist imprisoned in Iran for espionage.

Saberi’s plight has brought world-wide condemnation of the Iranian government, after she was sentenced to eight years in prison in a closed trial that lasted only one hour. A reported 225 people have signed up to the “Free Roxana” campaign, after the Northwestern graduate started her own hunger strike in protest on April 21.

“The main point is to create awareness about the situation Roxana is facing and what many people are facing in Iran,” said student David Caratelli.

Saberi’s story is the latest example of how journalists around the globe are being persecuted for their profession. Fittingly, yesterday also marked World Press Freedom Day, instituted in 1997 by the United Nations General Assembly to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press as enshrined under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the past year, 60 journalists and media workers have been killed, 29 kidnapped and more than 900 attacked around the world. “Journalists been killed while trying to lift the veil of secrecy that governments seek to wrap around their military actions”, said Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists.

Speaking at a debate at London’s Frontline Club on Friday, he argued against the motion “Governments at war are winning the battle of controlling the international media”.

“The war on terror has been accompanied by a war just civil liberties and independent journalism,” he said, citing numerous instances of journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan facing persecution. But despite the actions of repressive governments the world over, he argued that “the voices of those suffering are given life by journalists”.

Yet his point was hotly contested. Andrew Gilligan, the controversial Evening Standard columnist, argued against the motion, claiming that war correspondents today are so desperate for stories that they latch on to anything that they would normally dismiss as rumour or government spin.

He said: “The real problem for reporting on combat situations and the reason that so many stories from Iraq were wrong is simply this: wars create a sellers market in news”. Citing the practice of embedding journalists with troops in combat situations, he said that war creates a “sellers market” for news where journalists routinely succumb to a pervasive form of self-censorship.

“Even the most independent-minded journalist in the world is not disposed to write unkind things about somebody in that situation. No one needs to threaten or be threatened,” he said.

His co-speaker James Shea, Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of the Secretary General NATO, also countered the argument that web 2.0 technology is undermining government control of information.

“These days, everybody can be a reporter on reality”

“And if the profession has been democratised, why can’t the government also therefore enter the profession as a reporter on its own activity?”

He cited new NATO TV channels and the use of articles by eminent ‘experts’ in papers as examples of how the government is bypassing the media to get its message across and winning the war of words that has grown out of the war on terror.

Yet the most compelling of all the speakers was and Alan Fisher, a London correspondent from Al Jazeera who has reported from war zones around the world, most recently during Georgia’s war with Russia in August of last year. 

Descrying the debate’s Western-centric view on the success of the media, he said:

“People tend to think that if a tree falls in the forest, and an American broadcast network isn’t there to record it, did it really fall?”

Discussing the coverage of the war in Gaza, which prompted the theme of the debate, he said that Al Jazeera had been the only channel able to give full coverage of the bombings because it was prepared to tap the vast resources of local journalists already living on the strip, unlike many outlets which relied almost exclusively on Israeli news reports.

He also argued that the proliferation of international news outlets meant there are “more ways of accessing the truth” that ever before, creating a more varied and exciting perspective on international events. He said:

“We challenge authority more than ever before an we continue to and that is why the government cannot win.”

The UK National Commission for UNESCO and the Press Freedom Network have convened today’s debate at the Frontline Club on the motion “Governments at war are winning the battle of controlling the international media”.  The proposers are Andrew Gilligan (Evening Standard) and Jamie Shea (Private Office of the Secretary General of NATO) and the opposers are Jeremy Dear (General Secretary, National Union of Journalists) and Alan Fisher (Al Jazeera English). William Horsley is the debate chair.

My interpretations of what was said by the speakers:

• Wars create a sellers market in news; demand increases but supply reduces in times of war.  Wars are confusing.  It’s in the interest of those running the battle to keep things confused.  Embeds provide most of the reporting on ongoing wars as  in Afghanistan.  This makes news much more uncontroversial than they should be (Andrew Gilligan)
• The voices of those suffering are given life by journalists.  War on terror has been accompanied by a war on civil liberties.  Journalists have risked their lives and been killed as they try to lift the veil of secrecy. Despite censorship, a complete blockade of news is not possible given the existence of mobile ‘phones, computers and the Internet (Jeremy Dear)
• “No pictures, no news” – governments are quick learners.  Do governments make mistakes?  “Yes”.  Do they learn from their mistakes?  “Yes”.   Governments keep the journalists always occupied – keeping them in constant briefings, so they cannot go off and find out things for themselves! We no longer need to work through the media – governments create their own media networks – such as NATO TV.  Instead of using the press to get the message out, we now use pundits who are sympathetic to our cause. “Anyone can be his or her own journalist”. The profession has become democratised – so why cannot governments join in?  A good press helps those of us in government who believe in accurate information (Jamie Shea)
• Journalists can now report immediately from the frontline; in the old days ‘geography’ mattered, but this is no longer true.  Governments are losing the battles because there are now more ways of accessing the truth than ever before – the bloggers and the twitters…  But the answer is not simply as a result of these new technologies.  Technology is one of our biggest assets – it is getting smaller and better all the time (Alan Fisher)

My thoughts and comments from the floor:

• There was a tendency to imply that journalists are the arbiters of the truth.  But are they?  I think not.  We all bring parts of ourselves to the truths that we espouse.
• A key theme, though, is the distinction between “independent journalism” and “public sector broadcasting” – independent voices are really important
• I liked the comment from the floor that “journalists are concerned with their own greed”!
• I echo the thoughts of a speaker from the floor who said that African governments are taking advantage of so-called press freedom – many African peoples do not have a choice
• Much of the debate is indeed ethnocentric – despite global telecommunications
• An African channel about whom the joke is “not wrong for long”!
• Relationships between governments and the free press have to be based on mutual respect (Jamie Shea)
• I would agree with Andrew Gilligan that very few people can actually get to the frontline of war zones – and therefore that professional journalists have a key role to play
• I enjoyed Alan Fisher’s comments on the Georgia-Russia war – journalists on the ground can directly contradict what government spokespeople are saying
• Do governments collude in disinterest? Is that why we don’t hear much about continuing violence in places such as DRC?
• From the floor: “credibility has nothing to do with truth”
• From the floor: “Deep in the Congo forest you cannot use your mobile ‘phone”.
• From the floor: “In many countries, to get a SIM you still need to give your identity”
• How many African countries really support freedom of the press?
• In so many parts of the world, local journalists do not have the power actually to report because of government restrictions
• Jeremy Dear emphasised the fundamental importance of journalists supporting each other in the face of oppression from governments
• Andrew Gilligan: “bloggers have no credibility and little reach”

Who won the debate?  In favour: 38; Against: 15; Abstentions: 9.

For those with a love of food, drink, journalism (or at least foreign correspondents) and time in London, the Frontline Club has become a home from home. (As long as your home has a bar). From Journalism.co.uk: “It’s not finished yet, but FrontlineClub.com’s new look has soft-launched.”

Unfortunately, I cannot blog about anything anyone said at this event tonight.  All I can reveal is the prime rib was tasty but the potatoes were under cooked.

Hey fellow faircommentors!

First of all I think we all deserve a big pat on the back for the presentation on Thursday. If I do say so myself, I think our hard work paid off and we all did a very good job.  I think the outfits and the music and dramtics really bought it to life. Ok so we ran a few minutes over but hey, it was packed with info and I hope the audience learnt a lot… I definately learnt a lot from my research!

I thought some of the questions in the Q&A session were interesting, one particularly got me thinking; it was something like ‘ what’s wrong with a state having complete control over their media?’. I think we did well to answer it and illustrate that control is not always a bad thing but it’s how extreme they are when they exercise that control.

Certainly from my perspective, looking at Israel’s realationship with the press during the Gaza conflict, it seemed like Israel were being pretty liberal with their media. The Israeli consulate set up Twitter feeds, a blog, facebook group and even a youtube feed…encouraging the public to have their say and get involved. But in actual fact it can be argued that this was just a clever PR tool used to give out the exact messages that Israel wanted to give out. If they wanted to be totally open then surely they would have let international press into Gaza?

I found this interesting video on the Frontline Club blog. It’s a debate between about the media’s role – or lack of it – in the recent conflict. It features the head of international news from the Guardian, Al Jazeera correspondent, Channel 4 correspondent, a Journalist from the Jerusalem Post and in the middle of it all an Israeli affairs minister, who comes under some tough questioning.

It’s long but interesting and I think helps to understand the effect a state can have when exercise media control in such an extreme way. Check it out . Also faircommentors were there any questions you think we need to answer in more detail on this blog?

http://www.fromthefrontline.co.uk/blogs/index.php?blog=5&cat=75

As I go on holiday tomorrow morning, I am about to take my SIM card from my Blackberry and put it in an old mobile phone, shut down my laptop- there’s only internet cafes where I am going – and pack two and half books to read. I am going to be offline for a week.

Only recently, I asked whether I am addicted to the web. My brother put it to me yesterday that all this social media actually “rewires the brain”. My partner thinks there is not much difference between my constant Twittering /blogging at home and my ten year-old nephew’s obsession with his PSP Playstation which his parents constantly have to drag from him.

So, here I go, just about to turn it off….and yet I won’t find out what happened when Robert Scoble met up with Jeff Jarvis at the Frontline Club at 7.30 this evening. I have just noticed a comment from a concerned person warning Jarvis that the club is closed.  

And my community on Twitter is growing so nicely, the more I block people the quicker it grows. And Peter Kimkeeps pushing my list of companies using social media to market themselves in the UK. And I have leapt up to around 165,000 on the Technorati rankings. And, after 190 postings in five months (some truly dreadful), I am only just beginning to find my voice.

No, it’s off! And These Digital Times will be all the better for the break.

Ooo… I got all excited about tonight’s The Restaurant on BBC2 and then got distracted and didn’t watch it properly. And missed who got kicked off! (Now I know it was Harriet and Mike) None of them seemed to do very well serving at Oxbridge formal hall… I wouldn’t go into business with any of them. I’ve got an odd soft spot for the Welsh Wok even though it’s clearly destined for disaster. Someone pointed out on the first episode that the Welsh ingredients limits it slightly (lamb, leeks, erm…) I found a fellow The Restaurant addict today (who has a few bizarre theories about some of the couples) and now I feel I’ve let him down by not even paying attention to tonight’s outcome. 

Now I’ve got Ann Widdecombe on in the background. She’s the MP for my (old)hometown of Maidstone so I’ve always followed her movements with interest. This current ITV programme is really odd. I’m not sure who she really is anymore. In my mind I just get a vision of Victoria Wood’s Christmas sketch when she pretended to be Ann, in a Santa outfit, with this wonderful chorus of ‘ann widderCOMBE, ann widderCOMBE’. I’d love to get hold of that on DVD… but I’ll make do with it on YouTube:

And then I saw the Real Ann on the back of her campaign trailer once with a megaphone – it looked as much as a parody as Victoria Wood’s sketch. Victoria Wood is a genius. I’ll save embedding the Brief Encounter clip for a later post (think I need to add Victoria to my favourite media list) … 

Other favourite Ann moments (comprehensive list): the time she told Louis Theroux off for sneakily talking to her mum when her back was turned, when she told the Guardian Weekend Magazine that she used to weigh seven stone (spot the slip in the headline!), when I had to guide her car into a parking space at a local church fete, when she came to my school assembly (even at a young age I knew there was something not quite right with her politics). 

Certainly the figure I see has changed, from barely seven stone until my early 30s, despite eating like a horse, to eight-plus when I entered parliament, to nearly 12 in 2002, when I knew the health I so rejoice in would be threatened. That year I did two diet challenges, and decreased to nine stone four. I know when I retire the weight will fall away because the parliamentary lifestyle is so profoundly unhealthy, but I wouldn’t like to be six stone 12 again. 

(Ann on what she sees in the mirror, December 2006) 

Tomorrow sees me in London for Journalism.co.uk’s web training with Graham Holliday, of the Frontline Club. We’ve been told to come armed with Gmail and Yahoo accounts. Tick. Annoyingly, I’ve left my phone charger in the office so will be sans mobile phone for the weekend: what a liberation… I think.  

Right, I’m trying to re-download Firefox, sort all my Apple bugs on their forums (maybe it’s all because my start-up disc is nearly full) and get onto the Delicious page to try out automatic bookmarking. It just won’t load. Grrr.

As this piece from the journalist website Frontline Club reveals Twitter is a new media tool that can help journalists do their jobs more effectively and get on to breaking news stories much quicker.

Winner of the Frontline Club Journalism Award John D McHugh is interviewed at the Frontline Club, London, about his award-winning work from Afghanistan.

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Fantastic talk last night at the Frontline Club all about the Congo.

The panel was great; Michaela Wrong of the Financial Times and New Statesman; Marcus Bleasdale, a photojournalist who has worked in the Congo for 10 years; Dino Mahtani from the Financial Times and Reuters, and Mulegwa Zihindula, spokesman for President Joseph Kabila from 2002-2004.

And the discussion really got firey. One Congolese man stood up, introduced himself as a journalist, and then tried to flog his yet-unpublished book. Another embarked upon a rant about how Rwandan president Paul Kagame was all to blame. Insightful stuff.

But the most dramatic moment was when a British film-maker accused the panel of indulging in “the pornography of disaster”. It was as if she had come prepared to make her speech, for the accusations she levelled at the panel were completely without foundation: she said there was no context to the discussion, when they had spent 90 minutes putting the issues into context. She said that coverage was all about finding a dying child and talking through it’s last minutes (particularly directing her venom at Radio 4’s series of programmes about the DRC). And she slated the rest for showing graphic images that drove away investors and thrilled in it’s depiction of the horrors of war.

But she completely missed the point. The whole idea of “demystifying the Congo” is explaining how, with the war directly killing so few, so many are dying of treatable diseases and hunger. And forums like this are the perfect place to “demystify” the Congo; indeed putting everything into context and debating the causes and solutions. As Marcus Bleasdale so succinctly put it, perhaps we are dwelling on the horrors of it, but while children are dying in their millions, then we should continue to force the issue to people’s attention.

Last night at the Frontline Club there was an interesting discussion about African media, and how the rest of the world portrays Africa.

And they began by asking whether it mattered how Africa was portrayed.

This struck me as a bizarre note on which to start; how could it not matter, when trade, development and essentially all hope lies upon how we see Africa? I am not arguing against those who said that Africans must learn to work for their country’s good themselves, but if they start off by believing that they can exist in a bubble, then they are destined to fail.

Last Friday I was at the Frontline Club to see photographer Sean Smith talk about his images and film “Iraq: Apache Company”.

“The Guardian’s award-winning photographer and film-maker Sean Smith spent two months embedded with US troops in Baghdad and Anbar province. His harrowing documentary exposes the exhaustion and disillusionment of the soldiers” – The Guardian.

Take a look at the film above to see what it was all about.

After much prevarication I have begun blogging for The Frontline Club. I sort of said I’d do it ages ago but gradually got cold feet. It’s fun blogging for its own sake. No need to wonder whether what you’re saying reflects badly on anyone else. Or whether discussing which music to listen to while driving through burning villages is inappropriate. If people don’t like what I say then they can disregard me as an idiot, and that’s that.

The Frontline Club though is for serious journalists. People who discuss reporting restrictions in Bolivia or which brand of body armour is better for stopping an AK-47 round. That made me feel slightly self-conscious. Like most journalists I have a nagging doubt that one day someone is going to find me out. Who appointed you a gatherer of news, they might say. Or what qualifications do you have? Sometimes I forget the name of the president of Tanzania. Or confuse Equatorial Guinea with that other one.

Often the closest I get to a frontline is calling a photographer from my coffeeshop and asking her what she can see.

But then my coffeeshop almost became the frontline a couple of weeks ago as youths streamed out of Dagoretti chasing opposition supporters. I have been to Darfur and Mogadishu more than most of colleagues here in Nairobi. And my writing goes in a newspaper so I guess that makes me a journalist. (I take my definition from Damien Hirst defining art as anything in an art gallery.)

For now, I’m not sure how it’s going to work. South of West will keep going for some of my more irreverent or political stuff. African Safari might focus a bit more on what it’s like to be a journalist in Africa. But they might end up being the same thing. We’ll see.

from www.frontlineclub.com

“He said it in the context of having first poured scorn on university journalism courses, saying – to a mix of laughter and faint boos – that “you can learn to be a journalist in three weeks.” I’m going to ignore that prejudice to deal with his point about the way in which would-be journalists must work for free, or very little, in order to obtain jobs. (…)Only the rich can afford to work for months without pay on magazines – and at newspapers, TV channels and radio stations.“

@ “Exploitation scandal: why do we allow young journalists to work for nothing?“

MexicoReporter.com is now also appearing as a blog on the Frontline Club, a website for a London-based club for journalists, media professionals and foreign correspondents.

With Prof Sumantra Bose (LSE), Sunanda Deshapriya (Free Media Movement in Sri Lanka), Nadaraja Kuruparan (ABC Radio Network, Sri Lanka) and Juliana Ruhfus (Al Jazeera International).

Moderated by George Arney (BBC).

Watch the video of the conversation here

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