The film also reveals for the first time how the Salafists make their own rules, as they round up and punish those who infringe their strict interpretation of Islamic law. This film examines how the Salafists implement what they see as God’s law in Bizerte, and how far they are prepared to go to impose it on others. From Tunisia to Egypt and beyond, Salafists pose a serious challenge to authorities. The battle for influence and control is only just beginning.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Zuhair Latif, the BBC Arabic reporter on The Battle for Bizerte. Zuhair Latif is a Tunisian journalist who has 17 years of experience in broadcast journalism, covering conflicts in many countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kosova, Chechenya, and East Timor. The Q&A will be chaired by BBC Arabic TV presenter, Makki Helal.

This screening is organised by BBC Arabic.

Hacks/Hackers is a global movement where hacks (journalists) and hackers (developers) meet for talks, demos, hackathons and socials. It started in San Francisco and New York in 2009 and there are now 30 meet-up groups across five continents. The goal of Hacks/Hackers is to create a “network of journalists and technologists who rethink the future of news and information”.

All are welcome to attend. We ask that new members join our meet up group here.

Speakers for this month’s meet up are still being confirmed. So far we are able to announce:

1. Creating a mobile-first site of ‘topical funny stuff’

Martin Belam, Us Vs Th3m.

Us Vs Th3m launched in May. It’s a site of ‘topical funny stuff’ designed to be read on a mobile phone. The idea for the site came out of a one-day ideas workshop at Trinity Mirror (which publishes the Mirror newspaper) in April. Five weeks later, the site was up and running, with the team of four/five based next to the Mirror’s digital team. Martin Belam will talk about creating the site, and sharing lessons from the first few weeks.

About Martin Belam:
He one of the people behind Us Vs Th3m, a new mobile-first site from Trinity Mirror. He will be well known to Hacks/Hackers regulars. He has been working in digital product development, information architecture and user-experience design, for organisations like the Guardian, Sony, Vodafone and the BBC. He writes about user experience, journalism and digital media at MartinBelam.com.

2. Telling the story of Firestorm

Jon Henley and Robin Beitra will take us through the creation of Firestorm, the Guardian‘s multimedia story on a bushfire in Tasmania. Henley will talk us through the storytelling and Beitra will be able to explain how it was built.

Jon Henley was the writer on Firestorm. A senior Guardian feature writer and former foreign correspondent, he has reported for the paper from more than 20 countries and was for 10 years its chief Paris correspondent. His work has been shortlisted for several awards including Feature Writer of the Year (British Press Awards) and Best Digital Innovation (Foreign Press Association, for the Twitter-based series Greece on the Breadline telling the stories of ordinary people in Greece’s economic crisis).

Robin Beitra is a software developer with a background in creating museum installations and online games. As part of the Guardian Interactive Team he now works on a wide range of multimedia projects for the website, and was a core member of the Firestorm team.

Lightning Pitches – 3 minute windows into the worlds of:

Alex Wood, Tech City News
Tassos Stevens, Coney

Also an early heads up: Hacks/Hackers July Meetup will be on whistle blowing. Keep an eye out for further announcements.

This event is organised by Granta.

In the new issue of Granta magazine, themed Betrayal, veteran war reporter Janine di Giovanni writes of her recent trip to Syria, the people she encountered there and their stories of life in a country torn apart. Janine di Giovanni has reported on more than a dozen wars for nearly twenty years. She is an award-winning reporter and author, and the former president of the Jury of the Prix Bayeux for war reporters. Her latest book is Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love. ‘Seven Days in Syria’ was supported by funding from The Nation Institute.

She is joined by Frances Harrison who lived in Sri Lanka for 4 years, working as BBC Correspondent and Bureau Chief. She is one of few Western journalists to have travelled extensively in the war zone reporting on the Tamil Tigers during the peace process and one of only a handful of outsiders still in touch by telephone with people inside the conflict area at the height of the fighting in 2009. For many years she worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC posted in South Asia, South East Asia and Iran. She has worked at Amnesty International as Head of News and while writing Still Counting the Dead – her acclaimed book about the Sri Lanka conflict – she was a visiting research fellow at Oxford University.

With readings and conversation focused on the Syrian and Sri Lankan conflicts moderated by Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, this event explores the ethics of venturing into war zones, the line between truth and fiction and how to tell the stories of war.

Wednesday 21st November saw the World Photography Organisation hold the first PhotoTALK event at the Frontline Club; a new series of talks which will take place around the world.

Chaired by Stuart Smith of SMITH design, the panel for PhotoTALK with WPO: The Funding Game consisted of Canadian photographer Donald Weber who recently won first prize in Current Affairs for the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards; World Photography Organisation Academy member photojournalist Carol Allen Storey and World Press Photo winning photojournalist Laura Pannack.

Weber started things off by talking about how applying for grants has changed the way he works:

“It’s turned me into a writer, I certainly wouldn’t call myself a writer but writing about my work has forced me to articulate my ideas in a stronger way… If I’m able to say exactly what I’m doing not only does it allow me to get a grant or apply for a fund but it also allows me to contact a magazine, or a gallery and say this is what I’m doing, this is why I’m doing it and this is why frankly you should be giving me money to go and do it.”

Pannack who has worked with charities such as Save the Children then spoke about making the most of the time that she was given access to people on a trip to South Sudan with Oxfam International

“I knew they were funding my trip so I really wanted to take advantage of it and I really wanted to work with them and just go out there and find more stories. When you’re given that access and given that funding you just have to run with it and be like ‘wow, I’m out here I just have to find everything.’”

Allen Storey, who left her job as Creative Vice-President of Worldwide Marketing for Chanel six years ago to take up a career in photography and now works with NGOs, spoke about how access was the most important thing for her when she was starting out:

“I knew I was going to fund it myself and the most important thing was access so that’s how I got started… I would not have been able to get commissions [with Save the Children and UNICEF] which allows me further access to the kind of work which I want to make without having a portfolio of work showing and illustrating that I’m prepared to bust my ass to go out there and work hard.”

A discussion then stemmed from questions put forward to the panel from the room and on Facebook.

Allen Storey answered the question ‘How do you know who to approach for funding if you’re a fine art photographer?’

“You have to also ask yourself ‘Who else would be interested that I could share this with?’… And that’s really important because at the end of the day publishers will say to you…’Who is going to buy this book?’…How you approach that, how you put your body of work together, how you organise it and the story behind it is all part of how you’re going to position it and get it out there. The most important thing to have in your own mind when you’re talking to people… is that they’re going to ask you ‘Why should I support this project?’ And you should be able to respond to that in a very sincere and convincing way.”

But there are less structured routes to funding, as Weber found whilst on an expenses only trip to Kosovo in 2009 with the Organisation for Co-oporation and Security in Europe:

“It was a six week assignment to go and photograph the first independent elections of Kosovo…’We’ll pay for your flight, you’re food’ that’s essentially all it was. I still wanted to do it because I wanted to go to Kosovo…but I needed to find a way to make a little bit of money. I was driving by [the National Library of Pristina] and thought that’s an archive, this is a brand new country, what’s the point of an archive, it’s about history… So I went in there, I said this is who I am, this is what I’m doing, this is what the project’s about. I’d made some cheap prints at the local print shop and gave it to them and said you guys should really own this because this is a part of Kosovar history… I ended up selling 12 pictures.”

Pannack:

“I think that for me defines funding…I don’t think there’s an answer to funding. As photographers, if we want to shoot something we’re going to go and shoot it and we’ll find the money, we’ll work in a bar or do what ever we want to do. I think what Donald is saying is that he used his initiative. He looked at the main question: who does this interest? Who is this going to benefit? Is it going to benefit a museum, is it going to benefit a world organization, is it going to benefit a major brand and then approaching those people and saying ‘look, I have something that you might want and I need some dollar to pay my rent right now so lets do an exchange.”

To launch the new series, Channel 4 invites you to an exclusive talk: ‘Reporting Social Change’, introducing a line-up including reports on Indonesian anti-smoking activists trying to stem the epidemic of child smoking, British Somali businessmen ignoring the continuing threat of suicide bombers in Mogadishu to start up a flourishing sector, and a police crack-down on clubbers in Mumbai.

Unreported World correspondents Marcel Theroux, Jenny Kleeman, Ramita Navai, Seyi Rhodes, Aidan Hartley, C4 News anchor Krishnan Guru Murthy and Series Editor Monica Garnsey will be present to introduce extracts from the programmes and talk about the highlights, challenges and dangers of reporting on new kinds of conflict.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/third-party-event-broken

Organised by the Greenpeace Energydesk

With the UK’s Energy bill on the verge of coming before parliament and world leaders preparing for the latest climate summit, this time in Doha; some are worrying about the ability of a struggling media to play an effective role in the debate on energy and the climate.

As the press struggles to recover from a collapse in advertising during the recession and the damage done by the phone hacking scandal and subsequent inquiry the discussion will examine the challenges facing journalists reporting on an area of great scientific and economic complexity. The event will ask what impact those challenges have on the wider policy debate over energy and climate change and what – if anything – should be done to improve the discussion on this crucial area.

Chaired by editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, an expert panel will be exploring whether our journalism is up to the debate over energy and climate change.

With:

Angus McCrone, chief editor of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. He works closely with BNEF’s 120-strong team of analysts and researchers covering sectors such as wind, solar, biofuels, carbon and energy-smart technologies, also writes and presents on a wide range of topics including overall clean energy investment, project finance, public markets and policy-making.

Ben Webster, media editor of The Times since July 2011. He joined The Times in 1998, working on the newsdesk from 1998-2000 as night news editor and then assistant news editor. He was Transport Correspondent from 2000 to 2009 and Environment Editor from 2009 to 2011.

David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change. Previously he worked on energy strategy at the World Bank, and design of infrastructure investment projects at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He has a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.

Dr Alice Bell, senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London and writer interested in science in society. She has taught science communication at Imperial College London and UCL and is currently based at the former, running a course on energy and climate change.

Tom Burke CBE, environmental campaigner and founder of E3G (Third Generation Environmentalism). He is environmental policy adviser to Rio Tinto and visiting professor at Imperial College London and University Colleges, London.  He is a Senior Business Advisor to the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change. He has recently been appointed to the External Review Committee of Shell. He is formerly the executive director of Friends of the Earth and an advisor to three Secretaries of State for the Environment.

On April 26th, Cambodian anti-logging activist Chut Wutty was killed by military police near one of the protected areas he was monitoring. The shooting was one of the most shocking episodes in the fierce battle to save the country’s forests from destruction by powerful, corrupt elites who have accumulated vast wealth from their plunder while the people remain devastatingly poor.

Wutty worked with many communities who find themselves in the firing line, fighting for their rights and those of the forest. This exclusively commissioned film explains why they stood firm in the face of extreme intimidation and state-sponsored brutality, and why he was willing to pay the ultimate price to protect the forest from the march of the loggers.

A showing of the ten minute film will be followed by interviews with colleagues of Wutty’s about their cause and the threats they face. This will then be followed by a session chaired by Global Witness on the links between natural resources, corruption and conflict in Cambodia and elsewhere internationally.

Chair by Christopher Mitchell, Managing Director of OR Media Ltd and Chair of the Global Witness Trust. He is an award-winning writer, producer and director whose films, mostly on international affairs, have been shown on most of the world’s leading TV networks. He has written for the Sunday Times and Independent on Sunday, and been a visiting lecturer at Oxford University, the Royal College of Art and the National Film School.

With:

Mike Davis, Head of the Conflict Resources Campaign at Global Witness.

Markus Hardtke and Sen Samnang, who have both worked with Wutty to protect Cambodia’s forests and other natural resources from destruction for many years.

19.00 Keynote speaker: Gavin Sheppard, marketing director, Media Trust.

19.30 Panel discussion: The future of newsgathering and the changing media landscape

Change in the media landscape is constant. Technology and new media has enabled both journalists and citizens on the street to actually break news themselves. With a smart phone or iPad, one can discover, capture footage and report news instantly.

Journalism has entered the digital revolution – the age of mobile and crowd sourced street reporting. With the emergence of citizen journalists becoming a trusted source, how will media organisations adapt their newsgathering methods and maintain readership?

Consider media reports from countries like Sierra Leone or Syria. The authorities have not shown any responsibility to protect journalists or those independently newsgathering and reporting from the scene. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, ten journalists have been killed in Syria since November 2011 – two of which were British nationals working as independent newsgatherers. What can be done to ensure the safety of citizen, independent and career journalists?

Moderated by:

Nikki Bedi, a television and radio presenter of Indo-Anglian descent, began her career in Mumbai as both a stage and television actress. Spotted by Channel 4 she moved into broadcasting and has worked in India, the U.S.A and now the UK; hosting her own chat show on Star TV, film shows for Universal’s channel The Studio and NOW TV and she now works for the BBC. She is a regular interviewer alongside Clive Anderson on Radio 4’s Loose Ends, works on Radio 2, can be seen on To Buy Or Not To Buy on BBC1 and currently presents her own nightly radio phone-in show Nikki Bedi on BBC London 94.9. She can also be seen reviewing the papers on Sky News.

With:

Paul Lewis, special projects editor for the Guardian. He joined the Guardian as a trainee is 2005 after studying at Cambridge University and Harvard University. He currently runs teams of journalists at the newspaper working on a range of investigations. He recently led Reading the Riots, a major research project into the causes and consequences of the England riots, in collaboration with the London School of Economics. London-based he lectures across Europe about the use of social media in journalism and teaches a masterclass in investigative reporting. This year he was nominated for both Reporter of the Year and the Orwell Prize for Journalism, named Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards 2010 and won the 2009 Bevins Prize for outstanding investigative journalism.

Matthew Eltringham, editor of BBC College of Journalism. He was previously Assistant Editor of Interactivity and Social Media Development at the BBC. He developed programmes to bring social media skills to all journalists within BBC News and extended the BBC’s involvement in social media. In 2005 he set up the user-generated content (UGC) Hub – an innovative award-winning team that has developed expertise in digital editorial engagement with social media and user-generated content.

Mark Evans, head of home news at Sky News. He has been a journalist for 20 years, working in local, regional and national newspapers before joining the TV world with Sky News in 2001. Since then Sky News has further developed into a multi-platform organisation, leading the way in the provision of news for the web, radio, hand-held technology and in HD on TV. His position as head of home news puts him on the news front line, pushing those innovations while maintaining Sky News’ second-to-none record in editorial content.

Gavin Sheppard, marketing director at Media Trust and Community Channel, he leads the organisation’s marketing and communications services, including training and resources, media volunteers and Press Association partnership Community Newswire. In 2009 he launched Media Trust’s pioneering digital media work with communities across England, Community Voices, which is currently working throughout the UK. He has more recently also led on the development of a UK-wide community reporters network newsnet, which will support the production and distribution of quality local news over the next three years.

Ravin Sampat, editor at Blottr. He previously worked within the editorial team at DMGT on their local community hubs LocalPeople and ThisIs. Prior to this, he spent two years in India working as the editor of a lifestyle magazine, freelance copywriting and consulting. He is currently leads the editorial team at Blottr, and is responsible for curation of editorial content and recruiting new contributors.

In partnership with Media Trust. 

Photo credit: Emma Suleiman

The Emirates Centre for Human Rights cordially invites you to its inaugural conference exploring “Reform in the Face of Human Rights Abuse in the United Arab Emirates”

It’s one of the most corrupt countries in the world and widely criticised for its human rights record but this year Azerbaijan is hosting Eurovision – one of the most glitzy TV music competitions in the world.

But what do we really know about Azerbaijan? What impact will this glitter invasion have on a country unused to being on the international stage? This oil-rich former Soviet republic bordering Iran, Turkey and Russia is undergoing rapid modernisation, forging strong new ties with Europe while retaining its roots in the East.

As Eurovision prepares to come to town, we find out what makes this country tick – exploring Azerbaijan’s rich cultural heritage through the eyes of our Azeri speaking presenter. From music to food, from the winding streets of the old city to the soaring skyscrapers of the modern town.

It’s a country of contrasts and contradictions.

With Eurovision pointing the international spotlight on Azerbaijan young Azeris are hoping for more freedom of expression and genuine moves to democracy. But how realistic is this?

We talk to the bloggers and flashmobbers at the forefront of calls for change – and we put their concerns to an MP.

We find out why the war with Armenia 20 years ago still casts a long shadow – to the point where Armenia has pulled out of the contest.

We look at the challenges of hosting an event like this and ask Eurovision officials whether it should be held here at all.

Duration: 50′