Four years later and over 1200 members signed up to the Frontline Club, we don’t hear that being said. Nor do we hear anyone saying that the Frontline Club is a place that exalts the journalism of the past and diminishes the journalism of the present.  

What was often debated at one of the 200 programmes and screenings held in 2007 at the Frontline Club – a staggering output – and a tribute to our dedicated hardworking programmers at Paddington–is the celebrity-driven news agenda and eroding commitment to hard-hitting documentaries about international issues. 

That reality was driven home in a study that was unveiled recently at the News Xchange Berlin international broadcast news conference. According to Influence Communications, a Montreal-based firm that has developed software that can track the coverage of 632 million new items around the world across all media platforms, Paris Hilton going to jail was the 13th most covered story in the world through November. And right behind it at number 12, again throughout the world, was the Madeleine McCann saga.  Iraq, the American presidential campaign, Iran, and Afghanistan did top the rankings but Darfur, Lebanon, and global warming didn’t make the top 15.  Paris Hilton even topped the Queen in the survey of leading international newsmakers. 

Yet this holiday season let us celebrate the exceptional journalism being done by so many brave and resourceful journalists, many of whom are active members of The Frontline Club. This is not one of those end of year rankings or listings of achievement but instead an acknowledgement of some of those by-lines and reports that caught my eye in recent weeks. If members reading this would like to add to the list, please send along your list.

•    Marie Colvin in the Sunday Times reporting on the streets of Basra on the escalating violence against Iraqi women for “un-Islamic behaviour.”

•    David Loyn of the BBC and Stephen Grey of the Sunday Times with British troops as they retook the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala.

•    Tim Hetherington’s dramatic pictures in Vanity Fair from an extended assignment covering the ferocious US military’s battle against the Taliban in the Korengal Valley. He had to endure a four -hour walk after breaking his ankle.

•    Chris McGreal in the Guardian tracking down the embattled Burmese monks regrouping in their villages, recounting tales of torture and brutal beatings by the Junta.

•    Christina Lamb’s riveting eye- witness report in the Sunday Times aboard Benazir Bhutto’s bus after an assassination attempt that killed more than 100 people in Karachi.

In recent months, some of the best-known correspondents in British and American media have weighed in on this issue both in Paddington and more recently at our second Frontline Club event held in New York.

For John Burns who presided over the New York Times Bureau in Baghdad and lived and worked through the dangerous times, the view of Robert Fisk that what he and others practiced was “hotel journalism” is “nonsense.”

But he has to concede that few news organisations could afford the phalanx of armed guards around its fortified bureau that enabled the New York Times and its reporters to make its daily but limited runs through the “red zone”. He feared and still fears that the New York Times will “run out of luck” and sustain casualties that would make it impossible to continue its presence in Baghdad. Burns made his comments at the Frontline Club in mid-September.

Burns claimed that Iraq is the most “comprehensively covered war in history.” But sitting in the audience the night that Burns spoke was John Laurence whose reporting in Vietnam was for many of us the most memorable of that war. To this day, I can still recall some of his individual reports about “Charlie Company.”

I asked Laurence what he thought about Burns’s claim. And after further reflection, he emailed this to me: “How do you cover a war well without witnessing it? Burns explained that journalists in Baghdad allow themselves no more than a quarter of an hour in any one place. How well, I wonder, can you cover a war when all the time you have in the streets or in someone’s home or office before you pack up and move on, protected by professional guards, is 15 minutes?” He said that one could argue that Vietnam, without the danger of being kidnapped and beheaded, was better covered.

What no one disputes is the terrible price paid by Iraqi journalists who’ve been killed while working for Western news organisations or for their own fledgling TV stations and news agencies. In what INSI president Chris Cramer has called “the most dangerous war in the history of journalism,” more than 235 journalists and media workers have now lost their lives in Iraq most of them Iraqi and most of them murdered because of their work.

There you are driving by Kosovo Polje when you come across the monument commemorating the 1389 Ottoman Turk defeat of Serbia. On this  spot a young Communist leader named Slobodan Milosevic inflamed an angry crowd shouting: ” Nobody either now or in the future has the right to beat you.”

One hundred metres away you turn onto a country road, past the Field of Blackbirds, leading to an unmissable shocking electric pink and navy trimmed modern building housing the Kosovo Institute for Journalism and Communication or KIJAC as it’s called.

KIJAC opened its doors in January 2006 and is about to award post-graduate degree diplomas to its first crop of 23 students. Inside there’s a state of the art facility, equipped with the latest in digital technology, including a video conferencing system that is markedly superior to others I’ve seen.

It’s taken a committed Norwegian journalism school backed by the Norwegian foreign ministry in partnership with an American journalism school in Nebraska and the Ministry of Education in Kosovo to make this happen. More than 2 million euros plus some deft diplomatic manoeuvring by the former OSCE Dutch media adviser, Willem Houwen, who stayed on in Pristina after the war and became the first Head of School.

The students are mostly young working journalists, many of whom juggle their day jobs with enrolment in the Institute. About half come from print, many from Koha Ditore, Kosovo’s best-known newspaper that gained international prominence during the NATO war with Serbia in 1999. The others come from broadcasting and the new media. (There are now 30 television stations, 100 radio stations and 17 newspapers in Kosovo). Many work for RTK, the remade state broadcaster that appears to be struggling to become independent.

KIJAC has taken strides toward becoming a multi-ethnic journalism school. Houwen says they’ve already had four Serb journalists studying at KIJAC. When I was there visiting, a young Macedonian Serb journalist, who’s been working in Pristina, said that she was considering enrolling and said that what was happening at KIJAC was hugely important to the Balkans.

But will better-educated and trained KIJAC journalists be able to practice what they’ve learned, especially in a Kosovo that wants its independence from Serbia.

The International Crisis Group that closely monitors Kosovo noted recently that Kosovo was “likely soon to declare its unilateral independence in the absence of any alternative, and that Europe risks a new bloody and devastating conflict.”

In fact, it hasn’t made much difference because I’ve been using most of my free time, to finish a journalism book (with City University Professor Heather Purdey) that draws on the contributions of many leading journalists, including so many of our Frontline Club members.

It must be said that there’s no money in any of this, and the contributors have agreed to write 6,000 words for the greater good of educating aspiring journalists. Even Vaughan Smith is pounding away on a chapter as he juggles the business of running Frontline with preparing to return to being a Frontline cameraman in Afghanistan. Some prospective contributors reacted in John McEnroe style when told there was neither money nor any prospect of remuneration in this: “You cannot be serious!”

What has struck me in researching all of the topics that are covered in this book is what a wealth of journalistic material we’ve already established in our Frontline Club archive. While we make no pretence of being a “BBC College” and don’t think of ourselves as a centre for continuing education, the fact is that the Frontline Club in less than four years of existence has provided anyone interested in media and journalism with valuable articles (from this increasingly newsy newsletter) and video recordings from scores of sessions.

What strikes you as you trawl through our website is the impressive roster of leading journalists and media observers who’ve made time to write for us and to take part in debates and conversations at Paddington.

Any teacher of journalism and media worth their while should make the Frontline Club website a mandatory read. For example, if you wanted an inside account of how BBC News dealt with Alan Johnston’s long hostage nightmare, you could read Fran Unsworth’s compelling piece about how she and her newsgathering team dealt with this crisis.

Now if we could only find a way to make available (online) all those powerful documentaries that attract so many standing-room-only crowds at the Frontline Forum. The screenings and the conversation that follows – sometimes more heated than enlightening, at other times inspiring and stimulating – have been one outlet for us wet, dispirited Londoners.

Faas, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his photography, is now 74 and confined to a wheel chair. He nearly lost his life in Vietnam – the place that made his reputation as one of the great defining journalists of the war. He’d gone back there two years ago to be part of a gathering of Vietnam-era journalists and to help train young Vietnamese photojournalists.

He and Tim Page, another legendary Vietnam War photographer, along with other photojournalists including Gary Knight, have established an Indochina Media Memorial Foundation and raised money and donated their time and shared their expertise. But Faas suffered a blood clot in the spine while there and is lucky to be alive.

Old friends and competitive rivals of Horst Faas need not worry that he’s lost any of his wit, cantankerous behaviour, and trenchant, often controversial views about photojournalism and the world of media.

Faas is scathing about the Pentagon’s restrictions on shooting pictures of dead or wounded American soldiers in Iraq. He notes that the iconic pictures of American soldiers in Vietnam could never have been taken if the Pentagon had imposed the same rules demanding signatures and approvals.

Nor could he have co-edited with Page one of the finest and most moving books on photojournalism – Requiem. None of his or Page’s photographs is displayed. Instead every photograph published in Requiem was taken by a photojournalist who was killed in Vietnam, including pictures rarely or never seen that were taken by fallen Viet Cong or North Vietnamese photographers.

Faas isn’t a knee-jerk critic of the military; indeed, Faas to this day defends much of the censorship that he endured in Vietnam. “We had it from day one,” he says. He also practised what he called acceptable self-censorship that saw him putting down his camera rather than taking pictures of the blown-up bodies and severed limbs of American soldiers.

But he said that many soldiers were “grateful for the drastic pictures” taken of them in combat because they showed “the reality, their fears, their pain, and their frustrations.”

IWPR had already relocated Haider and her family to Damascus after an earlier death threat.  Why Haideri decided to go back to Mosul (she wasn’t on assignment) is unclear, but whatever her reasons the gunmen were waiting for her.

In Afghanistan, within days of Sahar’s murder, Zakia Zaki was shot dead while sleeping in her own home with her 8 month old son and Sanga Amach, a 22 year-old presenter was murdered close to her new western-backed TV station. As those who promote safety in journalism are pleading for more support to train local journalists, these murders underline the terrible truth that no amount of training can stop contract killings of local journalists.

The gunmen and their paymasters know they won’t be arrested or put on trial and that the surest way to stop reporting they don’t like is to kill the messenger. And it can be no coincidence that women journalists were targeted in countries where forces with a perverted view of Islam have decided to end the role of women in media. Beyond wringing of hands and despairing there are hard questions for organisations and governments that finance and train local journalists. And what responsibilities do they have to provide lifetime support to the families left behind?

IWPR has already made an initial contribution and established a “Sahar Journalists Assistance Fund” but the wanton killing of local journalists may mean a restructuring of the IWPR training programme. Tony Borden, IWPR’s Executive Director, says he is “faced with the dilemma of death or despair, to continue or give up.”

Is it time that more effort to engage the powers that be to nurture independent journalism? At the very least those officials whose duty it is to uphold the law must commit to bringing those who kill with impunity to justice.

The Frontline Event in Kiev was a debate about the performance of the Ukrainian media since the Orange Revolution but there was no mention of Gyorgy Gongadze’s beheading 7 years ago. Most press groups believe he was murdered for his harsh criticism of the Kuchma government. Despite international pressure and plenty of suspects it’s unlikely that anyone will be prosecuted. And will Sahar al-Haideri’s or the Afghan journalists’ murderers ever pay for their crimes. What can be done?  That’s the question that no press rights group can answer.

IWPR is a not-for-profit media organisation that trains local journalists in conflict and post-conflict areas since establishing itself during the wars in the where until recently I served as a trustee.

MySpace and its ambitious rival, Facebook.com are the leaders among social networking websites. Wikipedia tells us that social networks are where interactive users submit their personal profiles, write blogs, create groups and upload and download music, photos, and video.

But if MySpace and the video phenomenon YouTube are mostly about swapping and sharing things trivial, amusing, or hilarious, they’re also a force in politics and a must stop for American presidential candidates. MySpace has just created its “Impact” channel with unfiltered information about all the hopefuls- frontrunners, dark horses, and no-hopers- they’re all there.

For video coverage, the place to go is YouTube’s “YouChoose 08” where an unguarded comment captured on a mobile phone and spotted by a blogger or political action group can destroy a political campaign. John McCain’s “That old Beach Boys song ‘Bomb Iran’. Bomb, bomb, bomb…” quip has been seen more than a million times and has put him and his campaign on the defensive.

So how does all this relate to the Frontline Club. Some of you are already aware that the latest Vaughan Smith brainchild is the Frontline Club Network – our own online network for connecting members whether they’re on assignment, freelancing, or working on media projects. As best we can determine this is the first dedicated online journalism professional and social network.

The Frontline Club Network is at what one of its architects, new media journalist Ben Hammersley, calls alpha testing stage. But those of you already signed up or about to will see its potential. There are all the obvious features of the other social network site-networking, blogging, creating groups built around specific interests and organisations and posting video and photos. Those post-Frontline event discussions can now live beyond the Club bar and engage anyone who saw the debate or watched the video online. Yet the network has greater aspirations related to the overall philosophy of the Frontline Club in championing independent journalism and both showcasing and publishing the work of freelances and independent journalists.

But will the Frontline Club Network, I asked Ben Hammersley, run the risk of debasing, not enhancing journalism standards? After all, how much User Generated Content (UGC) exists out there -material not gathered, processed, and published according to any shared journalistic values? That’s where the Frontline Club can make a difference according to Hammersley and “will hopefully provide a higher quality of content than is usually found on the Internet. It’s less about UGC than about helping traditional journalists transition to a digital marketplace as individuals.” 

Not that Vaughan and Pranvera don’t have enough on their plates in Paddington but the idea of starting up in New York and playing a role in provoking a trans-Atlantic journalistic and media debate was irresistible.

There was plenty of encouragement for a Frontline U.S., especially from the 10% of Club members who are U.S. based. They told us one of the things they sorely missed were evenings at the Club in Paddington. 

But even with all the goodwill from our repatriated members, what we needed was a reliable partner with deep journalistic roots in America.  We found one in the Overseas Press Club, a venerable institution now in its 68th year and best known for its prestigious awards for outstanding “foreign reporting.” 

That chemistry clicked and our first big event in NY was held on April 16th, a date made ignominiously memorable because of the massacre that morning of 32 students and faculty on the campus of Virginia Tech. It was also the day after the worst torrential rains in New York in more than a century.

Still, more than 150 journalists and media people flocked to McGraw Hill in mid-town Manhattan to watch Channel 4’s Jon Snow chair a rambunctious panel that included the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Pollock, the NY Times’s Roger Cohen, Documentary producer Jon Alpert (who just won an OPC award for his Baghdad ER), David Marash of Al Jazeera’s new English channel, Deborah Amos of National Public Radio, and David Loyn of the BBC. 

The topic  – “Talking to the Enemy” may not have lent itself to any hard and fast conclusions but it did serve as a springboard for clashing views on many journalistic issues.Was Jon Snow “talking to Iran and its Foreign Minister at a time in the stand off over the captured British sailors because British diplomacy had failed” or as Roger Cohen (who loathed the notion of journalists playing diplomats) suggested was Snow used by the Iranians for their own purposes?  Robert Pollock had no difficulties declaring enemies of the U.S. “his enemies” while Loyn, Amos, and Marash challenged Pollock’s ideas and the airing the views of sworn enemies.

One successful, well-attended event doesn’t guarantee that Frontline NY is a certainty, far from it.  We got a reality check the next morning  told what it would cost to buy and renovate a Paddington-quality building in what many feel is the place for us to be in NY–Hell’s Kitchen.  

But the Club’s extraordinary events programme and  news-pegged gatherings with lead journalists and critical thinkers did leave an impression. Aryeh Neier’s, the president of the Soros Foundations and Open Society Institute, noted that Frontline London had staged over 500 events in its 3 plus year when he introduced our NY event.

Anyone who wants to help make this happen in NY should contact us.  Knowing Vaughan Smith as I do, it’s not a matter of if but when.

Apart from the FT,  few British newspapers gave the findings the attention they deserved.
The newspaper coverage didn’t say why this INSI enquiry is different from other studies of deaths of journalists such as the recentl report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The INSI enquiry includes the deaths of all media personnel including interpreters and drivers. The CPJ doesn’t record their deaths. Nor will you find their names listed on the Freedom Forum’s glittering Journalists’ Memorial in Washington.

As a not-for-profit organization, INSI provides free and low-cost safety training for local journalists. Killing the Messenger documents that three out of every four journalists killed around the world are murdered in their home countries pursuing stories that their governments or organised crime don’t want published.

But INSI’s work can’t continue unless it gets more financial support from the news industry. It is indefensible how few newspapers have been willing to pay 1000 Euros ($1,331 or £678) to become members and support training and improved safety practices for the local journalists and stringers on whom they rely.

Only the Guardian, FT and Boston Globe have become members. Not a single Murdoch newspaper has put any money into the fund. Nor have the wealthy German papers. In the U.S. there have been no contributions from newspapers such as the Washington Post and USA Today.

I’ve heard it said at major international conferences dominated by the newspapers (IPI and WAN conferences) that safety is really an issue for the more exposed television news crews than it is for print reporters.

Killing the Messenger sets the record straight: nearly the same number of print journalists and broadcast journalists have lost their lives over the 10 years that INSI compiled its figures.
There are now 1000 members of the Frontline Club. Many of you work for major newspapers and broadcasters. The next time you see your Editor (or Executive Producer) ask why your own paper or network isn’t a member of INSI.

Let me know what they tell you and we’ll publish their explanations next month.

In fact, Knight and Nordland represented 100 percent of the world’s journalists covering the story when they were there. That’s right: as far as they could determine, they were the only recognisable journalists there reporting. How can this be? In a world of wealthy and powerful 24-hour news channels and networks, in a media world of committed documentary-makers, in a world of hungry freelancers, more than 2 million displaced people living in refugee camps are getting virtually no coverage.

Newsweek magazine deserves credit for bankrolling what was an expensive and time-consuming assignment. And it devoted four pages in both its domestic and international editions to the story. Knight and Nordland proved what tenacious and resourceful journalism is all about by overcoming all the obstacles to getting to the Darfur story. How they accomplished this and what they found is compelling listening and viewing on the Frontline video recording of their presentation. (www.frontlineclub.com)

It’s worth a reminder that the tragedy unfolds out of view while we’re being force-fed the media gluttony of Shilpa and Big Brother, Anna Nichole Smith, and Britney Spears.

For those who do take the risks to get to the Darfur and witness what is a complicated story now that the rebel groups are so badly divided themselves, there’s no guarantee that their stories will be aired or published.

Knight despairs about the celebrity-driven media market in Britain. Along with Mort Rosenblum and Simba Gill he plans to introduce a new serious quarterly international news magazine called Dispatches later this year that will feature reportage and photography from the sharp edge of journalism.

If mainstream journalism isn’t interested in Darfur – apart from admirable journalist-commentators such as the New York Times‘s Nicholas Kristof – is there anything that can be done to support freelancers who can’t afford to travel to Khartoum or N’Djamena and find a way to get in? What will it take to underwrite more independent filmmakers such as Phillip Cox, who first showed us the unfolding tragedy more than three years ago?

This is where the Frontline Club could make a difference. All it needs is to establish a fund for the coverage of humanitarian crises. A survey carried out by the Reuters Foundation and the Fritz Institute several years ago found that journalists, especially those living outside North America, would accept money from an “independent” source. Who is independent and what funders expect from their investment will always be an issue. But if the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation or any other reputable foundation wants to empower the Frontline Club to ensure that crises on the scale of Darfur don’t go uncovered, then surely the lesser evil is informing the world.