The first casualty?

"Still alive"

2007-04-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Palestinian President has said that kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston is still alive.

"Yes, I believe he is still alive," President Abbas said in Stockholm. "Our intelligence services have confirmed to me that he's alive."

President Abbas said he knew which group was holding Johnston, but refused to give details.

Ransom for Johnston

2007-04-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

Today Alan Johnston's kidnappers have demanded £5 million for Johnston's safe release. Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas claims that there is no evidence to suggest that Johnston has been killed.

'‘We don't have any information that can confirm that authenticity of the statement’', Haniya said, adding that the Palestinian authorities are still looking for proofs. '‘We are following this affair. We are examining all avenues to confirm the authenticity of this information but for the moment it is not confirmed.’'

Yesterday Johnston parents appealed publicly once more. Graham and Margaret Johnston issued the statement as a response to the unknown group’s claims. '‘We make a heartfelt appeal to anyone who may have knowledge of Alan's situation and well-being to contact the authorities in Gaza. Our son has lived and worked among the people of Gaza for the last three years to bring their story to the outside world and we ask every one of them to help end this ordeal.'’

The BBC issued the following statement to addressing the claim that Johnston had been killed: "The BBC has still had no independent verification of rumors concerning Alan Johnston. We continue to be highly concerned for his safety and are working closely with the Palestinian and British authorities to seek urgent clarification. Our thoughts are with Alan's family, and we appeal to those who have taken him to release him unharmed."

Standby for further developments, updated as the news comes in.

Johnston. Dead?

2007-04-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Three hours ago the Jerusalem Post reported that a previously unknown Palestinian organisation identified with al-Qaeda has claimed that it has killed missing BBC reporter in the Gaza Strip, Alan Johnston.

The Palestinian Interior Ministry said it was checking the report but raised doubts as to its credibility. According to the ministry, recent information suggests that Johnston, who was kidnapped a month ago, is alive and well.

In the last month there have been protests, petitions, poster campaigns, personal pleas from Johnston's family, demands from the BBC and the chief of the UN urging for the release of the war correspondent. For the first time in media history, three channels simulcast. The BBC, al-Jazeera, and Sky News all broadcast a special live programme on the dangers facing journalists in Gaza.

The world is calling for his safe return home but this latest news could be the beginning of the end.

Curiosity kidnapped the correspondent?

2007-04-02T06:03:00.000-07:00

BBC war reporter Alan Johnston has now been missing for three weeks. Yesterday hundreds of journalists gathered in protest demanding that the 45-year-old be released. His assumed kidnap is the longest period any foreigner has ever been held in Gaza.

In yesterdays Guardian there was an ad published with 300 signatories asking that he be freed. The petitioners include Sir David Frost, BBC director general Mark Thompson, CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, Jon Snow, Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys and Sir Trevor McDonald. There is also an online petition launched by the BBC at Alan Johnston petition

Monday's Independent ran a news feature stating that Johnston had been begged to take a break after three years in Gaza but he was unable to stop.

Palestinian journalists protest against Johnston's abduction

Change your life

2007-03-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

Since embarking on this little voyage of discovery I have forsaken the Bronte sisters, Hunter S Thompson, Hemmingway and Orwell in favour of devouring anything any war reporter has ever had to say. Some are frankly dull, others are challenging but there are a few that have really grabbed me and transported me into the hyperreality of the world of war.

I had to immerse myself in it physically, I longed to see it and smell it. I went to the Imperial War museum, the closest I could get to anything like war from this western utopia that is relatively all I have ever known.

I did the ‘trench experience’. Shushing my companion, I closed my eyes in the drafty funereal façade letting the words of Jackie Spinner, author of Tell them I didn't cry wash over me, “The first mortar sailed over our heads, we barely glanced up. It seemed too far away. The second mortar shot over us, we looked up. 'That was close' I said, the words barely out of my mouth before a large crack and a flash of fire exploded over us. We looked at one another for a split second, a collective recognition on each of our faces. We were going to die”. I wanted to feel the cost of truth.

A piece of the berlin wall that stands outside the Imperial War museum in London

Dear Anonymous

2007-03-16T07:16:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your contributions. You are shaping the debate, I will gradually be addressing all the issues you raise.

I know there are more anonymees out there, every time you hit this blog it inspires me to do more.

As long as you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.

Kx

Stop the war?

2007-03-16T06:52:00.001-07:00

There is a People's Assembly on Tuesday, 2:00 - 8:00pm at Central Hall Westminster in London. If you feel strongly about this, don't just say what you think in the pub go and be counted.

Stop the war

Iraq after Saddam

2007-03-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

The Road to Kerbala is being screened at the Frontline club on Monday at 7.30pm. The film offers "insight into the heart of the long-oppressed Shia community of Iraq" as we are able to journey with them on a pilgrimage that was banned by Saddam. I'm told that it is excellent. I'll be there!

Tickets are £5 and you must register to book at Frontline club

A love like no other

2007-03-15T20:54:00.000-07:00

I recently e-mailed Philip Knightley, an inspiration for this blog, telling him about it and asking if he could contribute his thoughts. He kindly offered to answer some of my questions but warned me that he has spent over 30 years immersed in the topic and he is yet to be free of it.

Mr Knightley recommended that I see a review in this weeks Mail on Sunday of a book by Anthony Loyd, Another Bloody Love Letter. Knightley described Loyd as "a war junkie, hooked on war reporting who loves the risk", and critique James Delingpole appeared to agree labelling Loyd "Britain's boldest, louchest war reporter".

Delingpole speaks of Loyd as the master of an art, "He'd had this odd feeling they were about to drive into a minefield... this is the sort of life-saving intuition it takes a war correspondent years to hone". Though it almost feels as if he is describing a game when he speaks of the "powers of Loyd's sixth sense" and explains that "within every battle there is a well-kept secret: 'The shared and terrible love of it all.'"

When reading the review I am struck by Delingpole's juxtaposition of the perceived glamour of war alongside the true grit and grime somehow unseen by mavericks like Loyd, "War offers to some men a seduction that no other experience can quite match".

Fighting fire with fire

2007-03-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

"Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that, once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated war officers, weak, incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations - all take their seat at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war."

Winston Churchill, quoted in a letter to The Times

Coffee?

2007-03-13T04:41:00.000-07:00

I read War reporting for cowards last week and literally could not put it down.

Chris Ayres had me hooked right from the very first paragraph, "Waking up, of course, shouldn't be a difficult or traumatic process. For the first twenty-seven years of my life I had done it every day without even thinking. Open eyes. Yawn. Scratch balls. Look up at the ceiling. Climb out of bed. Waking up in a Humvee on the front lines of an invasion, however, is different."

Mr Ayres' story is incredibly accessible, despite being set in a completely alien environment. His attitude is refreshingly honest. Ayres actually did my course at my University which he describes as the "Fame Acedemy" of journalism schools second only to Columbia (the X Factor? I can only assume). He describes Islington in 1997 and the lecturers. Everything that he experienced a decade ago remains almost the same today in a different form, the pub is now the Queen Boudica and the lecturers have changed but the ethos is as strong as ever. Perhaps finding these things in common made it easier for me to relate to his experience in Iraq. His words took me right there.

As soon as I finished, I sent him an e-mail. He replied the next day: "Kat - alas I live in LA, although you're welcome to meet me for a coffee here!"

Shooting the messenger

2007-03-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

There is counter on the International News Safety Institute website. Three days ago it rested at 20. On the 31 December 2006 the count had reached 138.

This is the number of journalists killed in war zones every year.

296 is the sum of deaths since January 2005, just over two years ago. I recently came across the obituary for Terry Lloyd one of ITN's most experienced correspondents who was killed after 20 years in Iraq on March 22 2003. When reading this I felt some deja vu for the response I had to the death of Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. Surely we shouldn't be shocked if a person who has spent years playing Russian roulette gets a fatal hit.

Lloyd's death was described as tragic "one can be certain that he would not have entered into a foolhardy enterprise". He was killed in "friendly fire", shot under the guise of an oxymoronic phrase that has always been lost on me, by our own troops whose whole purpose is to restore peace to a nation. I am unable to define such a thing as an act of "foolhardy enterprise" when Lloyd's job description dictates danger.

The first ever comprehensive journalist safety survey says: "Two journalists killed every week over last 10 years".

News Safety Institute

World record deaths

2007-03-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday there was an article in the Financial Times entitled "Killing of journalists escalate to world record levels". The FT website charges a subcription so I will post the article tomorrow when I am able to scan it.

EDITED 13/03: What is said in this piece is covered by other posts, I am still trying to figure out how to post the map. Bare with me!

Documentary at Frontline

2007-03-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

This Sunday there will be a screening of The General's War at the Frontline club followed by a Q&A with director Olly Lambert. The show begins at 4.30pm costing £5.

The screening is said to have "unprecedented access behind the scenes of NATO’s war in Afghanistan", following the commander-in-chief at the frontline of the 'War on Terror'.

You will travel though wild and dangerous territory with Canadian troops, assisted by US Special Forces, as they try to implement the General’s orders to win over the Afghans.

"Sometimes hilarious, occasionally tragic, this is an unexpected real-life insight into the lives of frontline soldiers reminiscent of MASH and Catch-22."

Frontline club

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?

2007-03-05T05:04:00.000-08:00

An anonymous response to "Do you feel like you know enough?" that points out the authority of a war reporter as "the only window" to the world of war made me think of Janet Cooke, one of the most famous journalists found to have fabricated stories.

Cooke won a Pulizer Prize for her story "Jimmy's World", which appeared in the Washington Post in September 1980. When it was discovered that the story was fraudulent Cooke resigned and the prize was returned. More recently Jack Kelley a correspondent for USA Today was found to have fabricated around 100 stories including an account of a high-speed hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2003.

Famed sociologist Jean Baudrillard wrote a controversial and widely misunderstood book entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. He believed in hyperreality which is a postmodern concept explaining that everything we experience second hand (i.e. through television, writing, photographs or word of mouth) never really existed.

Anything that is reported to the public is merely a reproduction of what was experienced, we must trust journalists to present an accurate account of what it is that they see.

Jack Kelley is Exposed
Report on Janet Cooke's prize winning tale

War reporting just isn’t my thing

2007-03-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

A little about me, I’m a 22-year-old who favours Grazia over the Economist. I have always loved to write, anything, and I am endlessly nosy. Combining these passions I found my niche, journalism. This blog began as an academic task. When asked to create a blog on a current affairs issue my first thought was, “The demise of Britney Spears’ hair” or on a wider scale “Can curls really be the new straight?”

A friend mentioned the matter of the war reporter death toll rising and the affect this is having on independent coverage from war zones. I was intrigued, but this was not something I would usually consider writing about. Every time I open up a newspaper and try to understand what is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon so much past knowledge is assumed that I tend to shy away from the subject feeling ignorant to the issues and ashamed that I don’t know more. I feel that I have a basic understanding but I am nowhere near confident enough to vocalise an informed opinion.

By choosing to tackle this subject I forced myself to jump in at the proverbial deep end and I assume that I will have to ask a lot of seemingly obvious questions along the way. Aside from my choice of publication and enthusiasm for hair I like to think of my attitude as more Jane Austen than Jessica Simpson and I am alarmed at how much I have missed because of my anticipation to enter the debate. I didn’t want to appear stupid. But I have come to realise that too many abstain from offering opinion with my same excuses. I find it impossible to believe that anyone could fail to be interested in this topic.

If you’ve found yourself lost in all the jargon, I urge you to come join me on this journey of discovery. And if you are far more knowledgeable and worldly you may at the very least find my little blog an amusing insight from a relatively humble being. This has surpassed the original purpose and become a conquest to extinguish my own ignorance to a very real affair. I invite you to learn with me.

In the next few weeks I intend to interview journalists and casualties of war, review books, address any issues that arise in the press, attend events at organisations and relay it all for you and your comment.

Passion for the truth

2007-02-28T09:30:00.000-08:00

Today I found a speech by a world renowned Middle East correspondent for the Independant Robert Fisk, on the role of journalists. He offers his original perception that journalists are "the first witnesses to history" and denounces this as wrong. An Israeli war correspondent had dashed this whimsy when she put it to him that journalists are there to monitor the centres of power, challenge authorities who are going to war and killing people, telling lies to do it. Fisk compassionately declares that "war is not about defeat or victory, it is about the total failure of the human spirit".

The seven times British International Journalist of the year conveys his astonishment for the hypocrisy of society shielding the public from any real violence, "television will not show the horrors we've seen." He points out how ironic it is that the same government who sends troops to kill civilians excuse the publication of photographic evidence out of "respect for the dead". Fisk questions why it is that we allow violence in the form of cinematic entertainment but hide from the reality.

He goes on to brand the relationship developing between reporter and government as “parasitic”, it is seen as unpatriotic to question your countries foreign policy. He opens a copy of the Los Angeles Times and dissects an article written in Washington: "Great place to write about Iraq", he muses. Fisk quotes from the piece dozens of sources that all originate from the government, "US authorities say, US officials say, US authorities believe," etc. Eloquently exemplifying the issue, war is harsh and brutal for all involved but if we are not able to report from the scene, "What’s the point in having reporters? Forget it, we can employ the government or they can employ us!"

Robert Fisk

Do you feel like you know enough?

2007-02-27T15:20:00.000-08:00

"Despite scouring two national newspapers every day, listening to the radio, surfing the web and watching TV news, I have absolutely no clue how the war is going."
- Letter to the editor, The Guardian, London

A quote taken from Philip Knightley's
The first casualty

Blair and Bush can say what they like

2007-02-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday veteran war correspondent Patrick Cockburn was published in the Independent declaring that Iraq is too dangerous for outsiders. Cockburn describes Iraq as "the great crisis of our era" that television has found impossible to cover. He points out that Iraqi insurgents and militias have done Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush a favour by killing and kidnapping journalists. When Tony Blair claims there is progress in Iraq there is no way of knowing if this is true as Iraq is now virtually a "media-free zone". Blair and Bush can say what they like.

Cockburn identifies the fundamental problem facing cameramen being that by the very nature of their trade they are unable to go undetected with the equipment. But important events are going unrecorded.

The emphasis on this war being like no other before is great. Iraq is worse. Earlier this month the Swedish media held a seminar following the death of war correspondent Martin Alder. There is a huge effort being concentrated on how to cover the news without more deaths. Television companies are giving up on coverage and this is presenting a turning point. This year the Royal Television Society's award went to Iraqi cameramen. There is a movement toward training local people as cameramen and developing the technology that enables all work to be elicited by one person transmitted digitally to news rooms, ditching the colonial approach of four man teams.

Following so many deaths it is reputed that foreign journalists spend their time in the Green Zone. The Rory Peck Trust was set up in 1995, named after a freelance cameraman who was killed in Moscow, to support the families of freelance cameramen. It has since extended aid to writers. Cockburn briefly touches on the personal loss he has suffered as many of his friends have been killed in war zones. He also recounts viewing a tape that not only demonstrates the brutality of war but more specifically the violence endured by those trying to bring the truth home, “The lens of the camera covering his last moments of life was smeared with blood.”

To see the original article: War Reporting Iraq: Only locals need apply
For more information on The Rory Peck Trust