Frontline forum – Frontline Club

Inside Out – January 2008

John Owen — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

When we began recruiting members to the Frontline Club, we were often told that it would never work. After all, the sceptics said, why would you want to become part of a club that catered to war journalists and ex-hacks who would bore you with their tales of near death experiences?

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.

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

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

â€¢ 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.

â€¢ 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.

â€¢ 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.

Inside Out – November 07

John Owen — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most important debates in journalism is far from over at the Frontline Club. It’s about whether the war in Iraq and the dangerous conflicts in Somalia and Gaza and elsewhere have made it nearly impossible for correspondents and news teams working for “western” news media to do their jobs.

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.

Inside Out – September 07

John Owen — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

August finds me like most other Londoners who for various reasons are not on holiday in some exotic clime grumbling constantly about the dismal weather. And those of us in London are the lucky ones. No flash floods, no hurricanes, no monster storms, no death defying heat waves. But that said, we’d still like to see the occasional sunshine and enjoy the pleasures of warm summer nights. Not this summer. It feels like late autumn out there.

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.

Inside Out – August 07

John Owen — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

They don’t make them anymore like Horst Faas. Anyone who had the privilege of hearing Faas at two recent Frontline Club events held in association with The Associated Press would have come away with that feeling.

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.”

Inside Out – July 07

John Owen — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I started writing this en-route to Frontline’s first event in Kiev amid rumours that Alan Johnston would finally be released. The nightmare for the Johnston family, his loved ones and colleagues looked set to end. At the same the staff of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) were just coming to terms with the murder in Mosul of Sahar Hussein al-Haideri, their “top reporter in Iraq”, and a 45 year-old mother of four. A group affiliated with al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunna, has claimed responsibility.

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.

Frontline’s future

Vaughan Smith — Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have just come back from New York where the Frontline Club has put on its maiden US event. I was also looking into the possibility of opening a sister club along the lines of the London club.

The event we held focused on our duty, as journalists, to cover the other point of view in conflicts in which our home countries are involved. Chaired by Jon Snow and with David Loyn, who recently “embedded” with the Taliban on the panel, it was everything we hoped it would be.

As for opening a venue in New York, it could work. We will have to find suitable premises and the funds to acquire them. We will be keeping our eyes open for both.
Our events are working well and we would like to take them wherever in the world they are wanted. Success in the richest country in the world would help us sustain events in poorer ones. Frontline Russia for example currently has no income stream.

We are keenly aware that the Frontline Club can only thrive if it is both relevant and useful to its members. The Club’s real value is not in bricks and mortar but in creating relationships that benefit all.

If we can innovate in a way that supports our members, that in turn, benefits the Club and so allows us to offer more to our members. This is a virtuous circle.
We have several initiatives in the works with this end in mind.

Firstly, we have decided to start offering our events room in the daytime to members to run their own training courses. The idea is that we shoulder all the organisation and all members have to do is teach. This will allow experienced members to organise workshops and teach their skills to a new generation, creating an extra stream of income. Early next year we are launching the Frontline Club Award, which can be won by any journalist or operator, regardless of media discipline. It will be judged by a panel of Club members who will select winners that reflect Frontline values: work that made a difference, demonstrated integrity, courage and independence. Panel members will nominate the work for inclusion and the awards will recognise the best work at the sharp end of journalism.

More importantly still, we have been developing our website and during the next six months several major changes should help it become an invaluable resource.

The idea is to create a site that will become a natural home for our members on the web. A place where they can offer their services, showcase their work, post their blogs and link to their home websites. As our members post good content on our web pages we will attract ever-greater numbers of online readers and viewers who will, in turn, will be directed back to our members’ pages.

This development will benefit those of you who are on staff with major media orgnisations, offering a natural home to promote your independent work such as blogs and books. But it will especially help freelances, who we see as the lifeblood of independent journalism.

As the quantity and quality of online content at frontlineclub.com grows, we can sell advertising space on our website, redistributing the proceeds to those providing the content. In the early days this will mean members have an opportunity to develop their profile and reach far larger audiences with their electronic offerings, be they photographs, stories, videos or blogs.

As we develop and revenue streams pick up, Frontline-generated revenue should become an increasingly important source of income for our members, particularly for freelances. This effort is in tune with some of the earliest aims of Frontline. As Frontline News in the 1990s we set out to create a television news agency that championed the work of independents working in war zones.

We are now looking at developing an online news channel where individual journalists control their own content and level of participation while benefiting from associating with others who meet the highest standards of their profession. In the last half-decade the world, especially the media world, has changed enormously.

I believe that increasingly individuals will be able to win their own audiences and achieve their own income streams to support their journalism, their content and their brand. Media NGOs have a vital role to play in the community we are building and we will impove their ability to support the best journalism.

We are now close to being able to deliver the first stages of this vision for our members. and want you all to be part of it. The road ahead will not be totally smooth. We need to find more funding to be able to offer all the services we have outlined and need to generate the advertising and commissions that that will sustain the venture long-term.

But I am convinced that the vision is achievable and that supporting journaIism by strenthening the practitioner is the key to our success. We will keep you all informed of developments over the coming months.

Inside Out – May 07

John Owen — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

So would a Frontline Club and Forum work in the United States? If so, where? In New York? In Washington? That’s a question Vaughan and Pranvera Smith and many of us involved in the Frontline Club since its inception have asked ourselves.

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.

Inside Out – February 07

John Owen — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Two years ago, CBS News introduced its “Public Eye” forum as part of its re-launched and revamped website. One of the publicity grabbing things it did was to shoot video of a CBS News editorial meeting and post it on the website. The notion was that the public could then see for itself how the news bosses at CBS and the programme producers decided what stories were considered and chosen for the Evening News, as well as for other CBS programmes on air and online.

But CBS News did this, to my knowledge, only one time because it became clear that like all newsroom discussions, the process is messy. Rather than revealing an admirable transparency, the web-casting of the meeting raised troubling questions about the intellectual quality of the discussion and the breadth of sources for story ideas.

Keeping that in mind, we at the Frontline Club don’t intend to shoot video of our twice monthly (often raucous) editorial meetings. If not for the civil and cultured presence of Club Chairman Graham Greene, these meetings would, as they still often do (lubricated by some fine wine) become even more argumentative.

Cramped around one of the small Club tables are Gavin MacFadyen who heads the Centre for Investigative Journalism and helps shape the Frontline Confidential series, Duncan Furey, coordinator of IWPR’s Uganda project and a consultant for the Frontline Club, Ron McCullagh, the head of Insight News Television and myself in my role as Forum Chairman. From the Club are Pranvera Smith (about to give birth as I write this) the Club Manager, Lydia El-Khouri, sharing Club duties with her work at the Media Diversity Institute, and Marina Calland and Kavita Sharma who manage the programme.

It is this editorial meeting that tries to identify what issues, newsmakers, and themes ought to be showcased at the Frontline. There’s often heated discussion about whether we’re jumping on editorial bandwagons and neglecting unpopular issues that aren’t getting proper media exposure. We’re also conscious that we must uphold our charitable mandate. Judging by the attendance at our screenings and most events, we are (collectively) getting it mostly right, and also thanks to the hard work and long hours put in by the Smiths, Lydia, Marina, and Kavita, we have put the Frontline Club on the London media map.

But we’re all too self-critical to rest on our laurels. If you think that we could do better, let us know. But be specific: tell us what else we ought to be spotlighting and what journalists and presenters you’d like to see appearing at the Frontline Club and chairing our events. Indeed, if you’d like to sit in on a meeting and argue for a particular story, let us know.