The panel discussion ‘What Does Trump’s Presidency Mean for the Rest of the World?’ on 25 November clearly highlighted this as it careened wildly, swerving from the global implications and election autopsies, to passionate debates over racism and fascism.

Journalist and author Laurie Penny damned the evening as a ‘normalising’ discussion about ‘a fascist’. Echoing this, Shelina Janmohamed (a commentator on Muslim social and religious trends) urged the audience to think about the framing of the stories told. ‘The way we talk about identity,’ she argued, referring to the coverage of the trial of Jo Cox’s murderer, ‘…affects real peoples’ lives’. There is a potential ‘ripple’ effect on women’s rights movements globally, she argued, legitimising misogyny as ‘locker room talk’, disregarding women’s place in society, and signalling that it’s okay to talk about your daughter in ‘repulsive’ ways.

Trump’s rhetoric around climate change has some fearing the death of climate politics. He talks about ‘setting free coal,’ says Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for the New York Times. But, this won’t go far: ‘No one’s going to invest in coal, it’s not worth their money,’ Erlanger argued. Many countries are ‘invested in a cleaner world’ for their own reasons, so ’just because the president thinks it can happen’ it doesn’t mean it will.

Having previously referred to NATO as ‘obsolete‘, will Trump oversee a shift in the global security landscape? Dan Roberts, The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, argued Europe will be ‘looking after itself’: for Trump, world security isn’t ‘an American problem’. Erlanger demurred, pointing out that the USA’s NATO membership isn’t altruistic, but in American ‘interests’. President of the British International Studies Association, Inderjeet Parmar, agreed, ‘I don’t think America’s retreating’.

Author, broadcaster, and the chair of the event, Michael Goldfarb asked if Trump caught a ‘wave’ that’s sweeping the world. There is a ‘systemic’ element, Parmar mused; the populist surge is the ‘unravelling of an order’ unable to sustain the ‘Western’ dream. But did Trump’s supporters see themselves as part of a larger wave? One audience member disagreed, arguing that many who voted for Trump sought a conservative supreme court, and didn’t consider the ‘world economy’ or ‘globalism’.

To what extent Trump fulfils his campaign promises remains to be seen. ‘The office has a moderating influence’ argued Alex Sundstrom of Republicans Overseas UK, he will ‘tack to the centre to get stuff done’. Janmohamed disagreed, arguing that his appointees are ‘proof that he’s going to make good on those statements.’ Parmar, however, saw compromise ahead. ‘The education of Donald Trump is going to be the title of a really great book,’ he quipped, ‘that education began as soon as his election was through.’

                                                             – Oliver Bullough

Following the release of the Panama Papers and with David Cameron hosting a major conference in London aimed at tackling cross-border corruption, the Frontline Club held a timely debate on how best to investigate – and combat –transnational organised crime, money laundering and tax evasion.

Drew Sullivan, co-founder and editor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), began by highlighting the common misconception that corruption has little impact on the everyday lives of most people.

“When you think of corruption in England you think that someone stole some money but in developing countries such as Bosnia, Moldova, Ukraine Russia, when you have corruption it can significantly impact the economy and destroy lives.”

Citing the role the UK plays at the heart of the global money laundering system, author and journalist Oliver Bullough, who chaired the debate, said that one of the most amazing things about the Panama Papers, was “that it was able to connect people not being paid in Azerbaijan with people buying flats in Knightsbridge”.

Merion Jones, former head of investigations at BBC Newsnight, said that with billions of pounds funnelled through British accounting firms and out to tax havens in the British dependencies, “London is at the core of this theft”.

“You can’t find the people involved, their money is invisible, the companies often disappear, and that what was so great about the Panama Papers. It gives us a chance to dig in after these corporate villains and find out what they’re really doing, that which is technically illegal and what is immoral.”

Daniel Balint-Kurit, leader of the Special Investigations team at Global Witness, stressed that while it is easy to write off “fantastically corrupt” countries, the issue of offshore-companies was pervasive and widespread and affected companies and people here.

The phrase "fantastically corrupt" seems appropriate, and it's neither Nigeria nor Afghanistan, but here. https://t.co/sY6fDi9q79

— Peter Hiett (@NotAsGoodAsPete) May 11, 2016

“What we do know is that companies registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVIs) are an established vehicle for corruption.”

What many people don’t understand, said Sullivan, is that the so-called ‘criminal services industry’ is a multi-billion dollar industry that is not just operating in British overseas territories but in almost every country around the world.

“There’s an entire second economy out there that the developing world uses and it’s the offshore industry.”

According to Sullivan, we are witnessing “the largest transfer of wealth from poor countries to the rich countries since the Conquistadores” and that is why the revelations in the Panama Papers are predominately centred around businesses based in the developing world.

With an estimated $300 billion dollars moving from the developing to developed world each year worldwide, the knock on effect of this massive transfer of wealth is not only to bankrupt these source countries but also create a huge discrepancy between the amount of money sent back in aid versus the amount of capital taken out of the country.

“It is a bit like bailing out a sinking boat with a teaspoon,” said Sullivan and “you are going to end up with some really poor countries that are really unstable, which in turn creates a very dangerous world and an unstable nightmare that is going to blow up and some point in our faces.”

For Balint-Kurit,while many of the companies involved in these operations are based in London or listed on the London stock exchange, the legal and financial systems that support them, coupled with “a lack of curiosity from investors and completely moronic arguments from the powers-that-be” have made holding those responsible to account almost impossible.

“There is supposed to be the principle of open justice in this country but now we are seeing it privatised.”

Daria Kaleniuk: "In Ukraine we can't get our stolen assets back or even tell our #anticorruption story b/c of operation of UK legal system."

— Chido Dunn (@chidodunn) May 11, 2016

What is required, said Balint-Kurit, “is a cast iron rule that corporate structures need to be transparent from the very top,” revealing who their investors are down to the private contractors they employ.

The major problem with the system, said Holly Watt from the Guardian, “is that it is deliberately very complicated and this why the issue of transparency is so important” so that in the end it will be the commercial advantage to outing these transactions that forces big accountancy firms to “turn game keeper”.

Another problem, said Sullivan, is that as well as being woefully underfunded and understaffed, law enforcement is national while crime is international.

“In the wild there’s no natural predator to these groups and the consequence is that they continue to thrive.”

There is also an assumption that these problems are not inter-connected and can be addressed in degrees at a local level, but if there was one thing the Panama Papers proved said Sullivan, was that in a global world, “other people’s crime is our problem”.

On Wednesday 12 June, the Middle East Monitor launched Ibrahim Hewitt’s new book Memo to the Editor at the Frontline Club. The book is a compilation of letters addressed to the editors of major UK newspapers. It is a critique of how they have misreported major issues in the Israel-Palestine conflict from December 2009 to 2011.

“The purpose of writing the letters has a number of different focuses,” Hewitt explained, “We want to try and educate and inform people; provide a different perspective, an alternative view… I did actually tell the letters editor (of the Daily Telegraph) ‘I know you’re not going to publish this but I’m telling you anyway,’ and that’s the point, I think it is important that the media is aware that people read what they put forward.”

Ibrahim Hewitt

Hewitt was joined by Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East Correspondent, and David Hearst, the current foreign leader writer for the Guardian. The event was chaired by Mark McDonald, a human rights barrister and a founding member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East.

The panelists discussed the book but also broadened the discussion to include media bias in reporting on the Palestine-Israel conflict over the last ten years, particularly regarding coverage by the Guardian and the BBC. McDonald began by asking Llewellyn whether he believed the BBC to be biased in its reporting of the Israel-Palestine question. Llewellyn replied:

“Yes. Absolutely no question about it… After 2000 the Israelis geared up and put so much pressure on the BBC that now their reporting is absolutely bent… The way they question people, the way presenters interpret people, the number of times Israelis get on the air… It’s unbelievable how bent the BBC is at the moment.”

Answering the same question but on his own newspaper, Hearst argued the reason for the pressure was because:

“If you talk to the Israeli Press Attache, he says the enemies of Israel are the BBC and the Guardian.”

He continued that reporting on Israel:

“…is like kicking a wasp’s nest. You have to be prepared to get stung… You have to have an almost Rottweiler approach to the facts…”

It is for this reason that Hewitt’s book is so valuable. For Hearst it is an example of “exactly what we’ve all been doing.”

Discussing the nature of bias present in the media, Llewellyn explained about what he calls “corrective context:”

“When the Israelis bomb Gaza the BBC always says ‘in response to a Palestinian rocket.’ But you have to imagine that Palestinian rocket against their rocket. Nobody ever says that. You know it’s bad they shouldn’t do it, they’re idiots… The next thing is the Israelis are using the weapons of war against these people. The Palestinians are not an army and you know, I’m not pro-Palestinian, I’m looking at it from the human rights perspective. These people are being punished.”

On writing in the Guardian, Hearst explained that:

“When you have half the Israeli cabinet saying there shouldn’t be a two-state solution it seems unlikely there will be one. The peace process has been described as moribund, dead. I think it’s dead… But I can’t write a leader saying that… Because the Guardian is in favour of a two-state solution.”

Hewitt too argued that the BBC is biased:

“There are some sections of the BBC that are clearly biased… There are journalists not asking the questions they should be… Because they provoke uncomfortable answers.”

Listen and watch the full event here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/critiquing-the-medias-approach

This one-day workshop will help you achieve this, guiding you through the essentials of data journalism; from spreadsheet basics, finding stories within the numbers, to eventually building them into a visual representation.

The morning sessions will be covering the basics of data journalism and spreadsheets, with the afternoon being spent mapping the stories found within the data.

Participants will be required to bring their own laptop with a pre-installed copy of a spreadsheet software.

The workshop will be facilitated by data journalist and editor of The Guardian Datablog and Datastore, Simon Rogers. He is also author of Facts are Sacred: The Power of Data.

10-11.30: Introduction to data journalism
11.30-11.45: Coffee break
11.45-1.15: Spreadsheet basics
1.15-2.15: Lunch Break
2.15-3.45: Representing data part #1
3.45-4pm: Coffee Break
4-5pm: Representing data part #2 and questions

The workshop will be held in the Forum on the second floor of the Frontline Club,13 Norfolk Place, London, W2 1QJ.

Image Credit: Oxford Internet Institute, (Dr Mark Graham, Scott A. Hale and Monica Stephens)

//

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

By Alan Selby

Much has happened since this time last year. The 15th of February 2011 saw the first Libyans take to the streets of Benghazi against a brutal dictatorship which ruled over them for 42 years. The events that followed sent shockwaves around the world, led to a NATO intervention and culminated in victory for the Libyan people, albeit at a heavy cost. An estimated 30,000 people lost their lives during the campaign and the dust is still settling following Muammar Gadaffi’s death four months ago.

A panel came together at the Frontline Club to discuss how far Libya has come, as well as what the future holds. A tone of cautious optimism prevailed as each member of the panel delivered their own frank assessment of the work of the National Transitional Council (NTC), as well as its ability to uphold the promise of democracy for the people of Libya. Ian Black, The Guardian’s Middle East editor, steered a discussion which exposed differing views on the NTC’s work to date.

Ahmed Gebreel, deputy head of the Libyan embassy in London, suggested that “The NTC has been established for less than a year, with limited resources, and they’re doing their best.”

However, Khaeri Aboushagor, a Libyan writer and spokesman for the Libyan League for Human Rights, made his view that the NTC has a lot of work to do abundantly clear:

The reality sometimes hits us in the face. The ex-prime minister recently said that Libya is not a functioning state, has no proper army, no proper police and that the militias run the show… Democracy is not just elections. It’s much broader and deeper than that. We have to recognise this, if we deny that problems exist it won’t work.”

Carsten Jurgensen, Libya researcher for Amnesty International, echoed this view as he made reference to human rights abuses which have taken place in detention centres:

“What struck us was that those who committed the abuses were quite open about it… No investigations are conducted. The judiciary is totally weak. Prosecutors say that they can’t go and interrogate the chiefs of the militias. It’s quite worrying.”

The panel also suggested that post traumatic stress is now a real issue facing many of the young men who must now try to re-integrate with society and rebuild their country. However, Dr. Faraj Najem, a Libyan writer and historian, made it clear that the damage runs much deeper than at first glance:

I was horrified when I heard that 400 women were raped, but then it was announced that 8000 women had suffered. We need help from psychologists and social workers. We need to reinvent a culture where we can talk openly about the sexual violence that these women suffered for no reason.”

The panel largely agreed that it will be a long road to recovery, as Rana Jawad, a Tripoli-based BBC journalist and author of Tripoli Witness, observed:

“Overall I am optimistic of the journey Libyans will take, but I don’t doubt for a second that it will be extremely difficult. Anyone who thinks it will happen in the next year or two is quite delusional. It’s a very long process and it’s going to take a long time, but ultimately Libyans are striving for it.”

View in iTunes

In 2007 Luke Harding arrived in Moscow to take up a new job as a correspondent for The Guardian. Not long after, mysterious agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, broke into his flat. He was followed, bugged, and even summoned to Lefortovo, the FSB’s notorious prison.

The break-in was the beginning of a psychological war against the journalist and his family that burst into the open in 2011 when he was expelled from Moscow for reporting allegations that under Vladimir Putin the country had become a “virtual mafia state”.

The first western reporter to be deported from Russia since the days of the Cold War, Luke Harding has written about his run-in with the new Russia in his recently published book, Mafia State. It includes unpublished material from confidential US diplomatic cables, published by WikiLeaks last year, that described Russia as a “virtual mafia state”.

Luke Harding will be joined by a panel at the Frontline Club to discuss his experiences as The Guardian‘s Moscow correspondent and what they tell us about Russia today.

Chaired by James Meek, writer and reporter. He has reported for the Guardian since 1985, between 1991 and 1999 from the former USSR. In 2004 his reporting from Iraq and about Guantanamo Bay won a number of awards, including Britain’s Foreign Reporter of the Year award. He is the author of two collections of short stories and four novels, most recently We Are Now Beginning Our Descent.

With:

Luke Harding, the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent. He was previously the Guardian’s South Asia correspondent in New Delhi, and has reported for the paper from Afghanistan and Iraq. Author of Mafia State: How one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia and the co-author of WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s war on secrecy.

Angus Roxburgh, author and renowned journalist, he was the Sunday Times Moscow correspondent in the mid-1980s and the BBC’s Moscow correspondent during the Yeltsin years. He is the author of The Second Russian Revolution, Pravda: Inside the Soviet Press Machine and most recently The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia.

Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist, co-founder of the secret services watchdog website Agentura.ru and co-author of The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB.

Susan Richards, a non-executive director and founder of Open Democracy and a specialist on Russian affairs. She is the author of two books; Epics of Everyday Life, about the lives of ordinary Russians in the transition from communism and Lost & Found in Russia: Encounters in the Deep Heartland, which covers the period 1992-2008.

Next week we will be joined by the Guardian’s Luke Harding and the BBC’s Angus Roxburgh to discuss their experiences reporting from Russia and whether the country is a Mafia State.

There are two third party events next week; on Monday you are invited to join the Unreported World team as they launch their autumn series. On Wednesday Communications Inc will be bringing together a panel to discuss whether increased media attention on the state of our oceans can help save them.
 

Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.

We will be discussing Kashmir’s future, the changing role of the foreign correspondent with The Guardian‘s Jonathan Steele, torture and the Arab Spring, and the coming presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A series of Film Africa documentaries look at the people of the Western Sahara and a community of women living in exile after being accused of witchcraft. There’s a film about the street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi who, by setting himself on fire, sparked an uprising in Tunisia, and another tells the story of the brother of Private McKinley Nolan and his quest to find out the truth about what happened to the missing G.I.s in Vietnam.

Following on from this month’s #fcbbca discussion on Israel, we will be discussing women and the Arab Spring at Westminster College’s Paddington Green Campus. The focus of our November First Wednesday discussion will be announced on Wednesday 26 October.
 

Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blogor download our podcasts on iTunes.

Video streaming by Ustream

There has not yet been a full revolution in Egypt, but it will be the sense of optimism and possibility of change that brought the country to its current state that will enable the people to overcome the challenges ahead.

There is a need for massive economic change, the army remains "on top and in the driving seat" but British-Egyptian actor, producer and activist Khalid Abdalla said at the Frontline Club on Tuesday that it was his "duty" to remain optimistic because that is what had changed since people took to the streets on 25 January and toppled President Hosni Mubarak 18 days later.

"Right now, in terms of a revolution, in terms of a revolutionary spirit, the ability to go down into the streets in huge numbers to force sweeping change, to believe that that is possible right now, we are in a hiaitus," said Abdalla.

"There is a confusion right now amongst activists and people who were working to make change as to whether we begin to focus on elections, or do we still focus on many of the important human rights issues, like military trials and freedom of speech."

Brian Whitaker, The Guardian‘s Middle East editor from 2000-2007, who is currently an editor on the paper’s Comment Is Free section, said that when he was researching for his book What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East  there was a sense that there was nothing that could be done:

"The real revolutionary change that’s happened is that that has simply gone away. There’s now an attitude that there are things that can be done if enough people get on with it."

Dr Maha Azzam, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House agreed that optimism and energy were "fundamental" in order to carry through change and bring about revolution.

But the situation remains a "mixed picture" because of those elements of society that want security and stability, said Dr Azzam, who said it was important that the activists continue to set the agenda in the face of attempts to quell the opposition:

"The street is in the more powerful position because it can still twist the arm of the military, by which I mean the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, because they are in a vulnerable position. They’re of a dying generation, both in terms of age, but also in terms of its mentality and politics. Each time it’s felt it’s cornered it made concessions. It’s not an easy task to put on the activists, but the street is theirs, the right to protest is a democratic right and so long as they continue down that path, they can embrace thier objectives and push for them."

Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle East policy studies and director of the Olive Tree Programme at City University, said that it was now "completely beyond the power" of Westerners to control the narrative:

"It already was, and now the Arabs have risen up and said even less so because the revolutions were against the dictators that [the West] kept at its convenience."

But no one in the region is buying the idea that more liveral capitalism the way the Europeans do it is the answer, unless the Europeans recognise that they have had certain advantages structurally, globally that are going to have to be given up now.

… the structural changes that will have to be made will go down very poorly with  with the liberal capitalist governments in Europe because they will want to say the poor will have to take the pain in order to restructure the economy and of course the rich have to get richer because you have to encourage them to invest."

Khalid Abdalla agreed that there was a strong relationship between what happened in the Middle East and the crisis of capitalism world over and that what was happening in the Middle East was a "restructuring of discourses" that was forcing the West to reappraise itself, not just its relationships with the region but in many policy areas.

Currently activists are under attack and being accused of being foreign spies or funded by foreign regimes said  Abadalla, adding that there were problems with well meaning people coming from the West wanting to help or donate funds.

First of all there is the major issue that coming to Egypt can be unhelpful because right now it is being used politically, but also secondly,  I don’t think the West on the whole and its NGOs and policy makers have yet woken up to what the revolutions in the Arab world are telling them to realise about themselves and I think that’s something that will take lots of time.