The panel of experts at “Times are Changing”: What Does This Mean for the People of Cuba? on Friday, May 13, provided a nuanced view of the different layers of a society in transition.

The chair of the discussion Juliana Ruhfus, who recently dedicated an episode of her programme at Al-Jazeera English to Cuban economics, invited the speakers to critically evaluate the reporting on the Cuban reality.

“We need to reign in this ‘changing Cuba’ narrative. Yes, you’ve got the private sector, yes, you’ve got a new relationship with the US, Obama and all sorts of European heads of states and foreign ministers going with trade delegations, you’ve got the new foreign investment law. But at the same time for most people this is going very slowly,” Michael Voss, correspondent for CCTV.

Helen Yaffe, a specialist in the history of political economy, pointed out that reporters should be clearer about the underlying motivation of the United States. “The US objective hasn’t changed. And Obama himself is very clear about it. They still would like to see the end of the socialist system in Cuba.” She also noted that this agenda has quietly risen from pressure by other Latin American countries to involve Cuba in negotiations and the historical shortcomings of the US administration.

Emilio San Pedro, who reports on Cuba and Latin America for the BBC, added that the US motivation is also driven by the vision of lucrative investment. “I think they saw the opportunity because of the economic changes.”

Will Grant, BBC correspondent based in Havana since September 2014, also described the welcoming approach of Cubans to the rapprochement. “I think people are very, very tired of the same dynamic, same rhetoric and in that sense this change, whatever it may be, is welcome.”

Mr. San Pedro also admitted that nostalgia plays a huge role in the minds of Cubans, however, the young generation is emerging as a surprisingly rational and pragmatic group.

The panel also discussed an unprecendented protest in front of Ecuadorian embassy last year following an announcement that the state will require visa from the Cubans planning to visit. Mr Voss considers this the biggest popular unrest by Cubans who don’t normally engage in politics.

Pointing to the statistics, Ms Yaffe showed “the average salary in the state sector has gone up by 43% between 2011 and 2015.” Nevertheless, the raise has been uneven. Whereas those in the medical sector have seen their salaries rise two to three times, people in the education sector are still waiting. She also noted the imbalance in covering the country from Havana: “29 % of the Cubans work in the non-state sector and all the focus of the reporting is on those.”

Mr Grant tried to assess the extent of freedom of expression as a foreign correspondent in Cuba and recalled a rather positive story of Cuban medics helping in western Africa during the Ebola outbreak for which he hasn’t been granted access. “They’re protecting themselves, they’re protecting their revolution from a kind of spin (…) So it’s easier just to let the agency to say it.”

He also emphasised that journalists should make more effort to find broader angles and avoid focusing only on the institutional narrative between Washington and Havana. “It’s a very very special time to be here, it’s a very good story. (…)We need to find good new inventive creative ways making sure that the Cuban reality is at the front of what we’re doing.”

We’ll be discussing the credit crisis, financial journalism and scaremongering with Financial Times Assistant editor and journalist of the year Gillian Tett at the Frontline Club tonight. Gillian will be in discussion with BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders. We start at 7.30pm GMT and as usual we’ll be streaming the event live above and on our new Livestation channel where we will also be fielding questions from viewers, so please join in. And don’t forget to download the Livestation software to watch in great quality on your PC or fed through to your TV,

When she picked up her prize for journalist of the year at the British Press Awards recently, the Financial Times’ Gillian Tett claimed the accolade was a vindication for “the geeks” and “anoraks”.  The assistant editor of the Financial Times has been documenting the rise of credit derivatives banking since she was appointed in 2005 to cover the the rather unglamorous capital markets patch. But it was only after the full consequences of the risks bankers had been taking became so catastrophically apparent that Gillian Tett was promoted from “geek” to luminary, regularly making appearances on TV and radio. link

We’ll be discussing the situation in Iran following the disputed election results at the Frontline Club tonight. Specifically, how did hotel-bound foreign journalists report from Tehran and beyond during the election and days and weeks following? We start at 7pm GMT and as usual if you can’t join us in person please come and join us on the Frontline Club broadcast channel or on the Club events page where we will be streaming the discussion. In addition, we now partner Livestation and we will be broadcasting the event with them. To try out Livestation, which gives better quality audio and video than our usual channel and allows a greater degree of interaction, you’ll need to download the software to your PC/Mac.

Joining us will be Channel 4 News International editor Lindsey Hilsum, Behrouz Afagh, head of the Asia & Pacific Region for the BBC World Service, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, one of the last US network journalists to leave Iran and The Times journalist Marie Colvin.

We’re discussing the aftermath of the June 12 presidential elections in Iran tonight. We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST and as usual, if you can’t make it to the Club in person, do please join us online in what should be a fantastic debate. We’ll be streaming the event on the Frontline Club broadcast channel, on this very blog post and on the Events page. Chairing the event will be Robin Lustig, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight and Newshour on the BBC World Service. The panel consists of,

Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and the author of a recent biography of President Ahmadinejad

Sina Motallebi, senior editor interactive programmes for the Persian section of the BBC World Service who left Iran after his arrest in 2003 because of his blogging.

Afshin Rattansi, author and freelance journalist who was based in Iran and is developer and former presenter with Press TV link

If you want to keep with how the story is developing online you could far, far worse than going through Frontline blogger Daniel Bennet’s posts on Iran here and here. More coming soon I’m reliably told… And Club regular Richard Sambrook has been doing sterling work negotiating sources of information from and about Iran.

The Frontline Club starts the Narco Wars season on the War on Drugs on June 23rd. The season is packed with films, discussions and events focussed on the topic of drugs from Colombia to Afghanistan and into South East Asia. Here’s what’s coming up,

– June 23 – Photojournalist Jason P. Howe talks drugs in Colombia

– June 24 – Panel discussion about the impact of the Narco Wars in Mexico and around the world

– June 25 – Screening – Dancing with the Devil by Jon Blair in Rio de Janeiro

– June 30 – Colombia’s parapolitica

– July 3 – Screening – Mexico – Seven days in hell – Alex Nott and Siobhan Sinnerton

– July 8 – Narco Wars: Afghanistan

– July 15 – Narco Wars: Can the war be won?

If the Narco Wars season is anything as good as the short promo film above, put together by Leona Chaliha at the Frontline Club, this looks like a great month of drug discussion and films. Book your tickes early.

Tonight we’ll be discussing the ongoing MP Expenses scandal in the UK and whether or not the story was a triumph of journalism or the chequebook. Roy Greenslade chairs the discussion tonight 8 June and we start at 7:30pm GMT. As usual, if you can’t make it to the Club in person you can watch the discussion and join  in the chat live on the Frontline Club broadcast channel, on this blog post or on the Club events pages,

With each new tranche of revelations about MPs expenses the Daily Telegraph has continued to put on sales and gained kudos for its good old fashioned journalistic scoop. With a story that has shaken Westminster to its foundations the Daily Telegraph has been able to set the news agenda, releasing its revelations ahead of the 10pm news bulletins. The daily diet of scoops is said to have boosted newspaper sales by tens of thousands and web traffic has also increased and no doubt will, in financial terms at least, justify the cost of obtaining the information. But what does the expenses scandal tell us about journalism today? link

On the panel we have Andrew Pierce, assistant editor at The Daily Telegraph, Stephen Tall, editor at large with the Liberal Democrat Voice, the journalist Heather Brooke, author of ‘Your Right to Know’  and Frontline favourte Roger Alton, the editor of The Independent.

The British-Lebanese journalist Hala Jaber will be in discussion with the BBC’s Kirsty Lang at the Frontline Club tonight. She’ll be discussing her work as a journalist in Iraq and her new book, The Flying Carpet to Baghdad. We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST and if you can’t make it to the Club in person, please join us online on the Events page or on the Frontline Club live channel,

Hala Jaber has won plaudits for her courageous reporting from around the world, particularly in Iraq, where she was one of the last correspondents to leave Falluja when it came under heavy bombardment by US forces.

Named foreign correspondent of the year for the second year running in 2006, British-Lebanese Hala Jaber has shown continued commitment to reporting from Iraq, co-winning the Martha Gellhorn Prize for her coverage in 2007.

It was during one of her many visits that the Sunday Times journalist met Zahra, aged 3, and Hawra, just a few months old, who were the only survivors of a missile strike in Baghdad in 2003 that killed their parents and five siblings.

In conversation with Kirsty Lang, of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Hala Jaber will be talking about her experiences reporting war and her struggle to save the two girls – the story she tells in her new book The Flying Carpet to Baghdad. link

Peter Beaumont drops by the Frontline Club tonight to discuss his latest book – The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict – and his life spent reporting from the frontlines of many wars. The Observer Foreign Affairs Editor has had a change of heart of late, see below, and it will be interesting to hear his thoughts on his profession, the risks involved and exactly how and why this change happened. We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST Tues, 12 May. If you can’t join us at the Club, please join us online on the Frontline Club live channel of Events page,

It is not always the big things. Last September, on the eve of an ordinary assignment, I woke up and realised I never wanted to see an airport again. I didn’t want the smell or the sight of them. The grey, boring moments spent waiting in departures lounges I felt had eaten up my life. I didn’t make it to Heathrow.

It was a crisis that had been building for over a year. In my last year reporting from Iraq, something had happened. Rather than seeking the most meaningful stories, I had slipped into chasing the most dangerous ones. And in the process I had become someone I didn’t want to be. Not someone who wrote about the consequences of war, but someone who had become part of its logic. link

Tonight at the Frontline Club we’ll be talking with journalist, author and broadcaster Peter Hitchens about how British politics lost its way. A subject Peter dissects in his most recent book, The Broken Compass How British Politics. We start at 7pm GMT/11am GMT. As usual, if you can’t join us in person at the Club, please come and watch live on the Club Events page or on the Frontline Club live channel. John Kampfner, editor of the New Statesman until 2008 now Chief Executive of Index on Censorship will chair the discussion,

Peter Hitchens talks about the need for a new political compass in a world where traditional boundaries between the Left and Right no longer exist. Left-wingers backed the invasion of Iraq and Tories campaign for civil liberties yet conventional wisdom insists on operating as if the age-old divisions between political parties still apply, argues journalist, author and broadcaster Peter Hitchens.

In his new book The Broken Compass How British Politics lost its way, Peter Hitchens, who writes for the Mail on Sunday, argues that the real divide is between politicians and the electorate and is both a threat to Parliament and to society. Peter Hitchens takes on the “conformist media” for continuing to adhere to such obsolete notions of Left and Right and calls for the re-establishment of proper adversarial politics based on principle.

Peter Hitchens is a journalist, author and broadcaster who worked on the Daily Express for most of his career. He resigned on principle in protest at the takeover by Richard Desmond and now writes for the Mail on Sunday. link

Tonight at the Frontline Club we discuss what happens after Guanatamo with Karen Greenberg, author of “The Least Worst Place: How Guantanamo became the World’s Most Notorious Prison” We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST and as usual, if you can’t make it to the Club in person, you can join us online on the Club events page or on the Frontline Club live channel,

As the Obama Administration moves to shut down Guantanamo, leading American commentator Karen Greenberg, in a wide-ranging discussion with Peter Clarke, until recently one of the UK’s most senior counter-terrorism officials, discusses her remarkable and surprising new book about how the facility was set up, the challenges faced by the Obama administration in unwinding controversial Bush Administration detention policies, and the most pressing counter-terrorism issues faced by policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. link