As he publishes Irreconcilable Truths, a definitive retrospective of his life and work, he will be joining us in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow to reveal the stories behind some of the most iconic images of the second half of the 21st century.

“Does the Pubic Still Care?” was the poignant title of the discussion on conflict and disaster reporting which was chaired by Ben Parker at the Frontline Club on Thursday 23 October. The event was organised by the Oversees Development Institute and Humanitarian Policy Group. Channel 4 News anchor, Jon Snow, and senior reporter for the People and Power programme on Al Jazeera English, Juliana Ruhfus, were joined by experts in aid and development, Marc DuBois, former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Eva Svoboda, research fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute.

The event was being followed online #crisisreporting

The relationship of dependency and power that exists between aid agencies, the public and the media was the core focus of the evening. Using examples from Gaza to Haiti and East Timor, the panel illustrated the crisis and development each of these elements has undergone and how it has affected the other.

To begin the audience was taken back to the 1984 Ethiopia famine with Michael Burke’s compelling documentary report. Parker, who has worked in media and humanitarian aid for 20 years, opened the discussion with the following question:

“Can a news moment like Michael Burke’s piece happen again? . . . Can it ignite the public? Can it change the course of history in a small way? . . . Does TV in that same way still exist?”

Snow’s initial response was an affirmative yes. He used examples from the last four years of public response to make his case. For example, the 2010 Haiti earthquake saw the emergency fund raise it’s second largest ever donation. Snow said, “The stream is certainly not dry and I would argue that our connected digital world is making it easier for us to draw attention.”

DuBois similarly dismissed public disaster fatigue and focused on the power of compassion, saying “disaster is inherently compelling . . . compassion is alive and well”.

Ruhfus instead argued that the quality of giving has changed. She referred to the lack of clarity and neutrality in today’s media reports and national aid donations.

“The ‘us’ and ‘them’ that was very simple when Michael Burke made his films has totally shifted. . . . I am the enemy. I am no longer the ‘saviour’ and that’s a similar fate that aid agencies are dealing with too.”

Ruhfus implied that in the past aid agencies were able to function in an apolitical sphere. Svoboda’s standpoint was somewhere in between, to her mind although 9/11 had a negative impact on aid agencies they were always politicised. She argued that despite being more complex, today there are more actors, more competition and, importantly, more accountability. All four of the speakers agreed that more people in the world are aware of what is going on around them than ever before.

The discussion turned to the ever-present Ebola crisis and its slow journey to UK headlines. This highlighted the question of responsibility between the aid agencies and the media to expose conflicts and disasters adequately. Snow asked his fellow speakers, “How far did the aid agencies go in persuading governments that there was a crisis?”

In return he was asked by Svoboda and DuBois how many reports were not picked up by the media. Svoboda said, “Very often you will be faced with people who just don’t care, with states that don’t care about their international obligations.”

Snow clarified the media’s stance, “We are not in the field to raise money or bring relief in any form, but to tell the story.”

Despite his positive outlook Snow admitted the failure of the media coverage on Ebola and thus the insufficient pressure on the UK government. He expressed his frustrations as a journalist with failed government policies. Of the current humanitarian crisis caused by ISIS he said:

“ISIS is a direct consequence of our people, by our people I mean us Westerners. Somehow we made this mess. Of course it was there ready to be made but at least we could have left it to them to make it.”

Ruhfus looked to the public as a key factor and blamed too much negative foreign reporting. She said, “We are in a massive trap as news broadcasters. What do we do? We are loosing our audience because we are telling the ugly truth. How do we respond to that? Do we start making the bad news sound good?”

The media’s metamorphosis has prompted aid agencies to create more of their own media bridging the gap between the two. DuBois expressed his belief that traditional forms of media were no longer adequate. “Being detached and neutral does not sell anymore, people want something authentic.”

When the audience joined in the debate, one member called for a separation between conflict relief and disaster aid stating that the public is far less engaged in the former.

Another pressing comparison was made between development versus emergency aid. Svoboda outlined the dilemma of aid agencies regarding this. “You pass from a crisis into this development and state building and you want to believe it and you ignore the facts that it’s not as stable as you want it to be,” she said. She also called for realism and modesty above all else in her field. “Their needs to be honesty about what can be done, and that’s not always easy because aid org need the money to do the work so how do you do that by selling a story.”

Another audience member observed that given the number of critical issues in today’s world the definition of what constitutes a ‘crisis’ is diminishing. Whether it continues to undermine itself is another question. In any case, the evening ended on a positive note with Snow heralding the current ‘golden age of journalism’. While there may not have been clear answers, the right questions had been asked.

You can watch and listen to the event again here:

L-R Jon Snow, Gabrielle Rifkind and Giandomenico Picco

Snow introduced the discussion with a statement. He said with reference to war:

“You are not dealing with a conflict, you are dealing with a people.”

With this, the human and humane undertone to the evening’s discussions were set. Evidently a central theme in their book, Rifkind described how her and Picco’s shared understanding was that in conflict resolution, “whoever you are dealing with, underneath there is a human being”.

Rifkind said they named the book after McNamara’s iconic film The Fog of War. McNamara, former US United States Secretary of Defense, admitted to never getting “into the mind of the enemy”. Evidently, this is a shortcoming alien to Picco’s approach. Despite himself being kidnapped four times, he spoke unscathed about the art of negotiation.

While Rifkind emphasised the complexity of each conflict resolution process, Picco focused on the need to engage with important players. He said:

“You have to enter the mind of the individual, understanding his narrative first . . . his personal narrative.”

He gave examples of negotiating with Rafsanjani and later Khatami by focusing on their individual character interests. The idea that Iran, where Picco and Rifkind first met, sits outside possible conflict resolution was debunked by Picco with the little known fact that Iran has negotiated with the West 12 times in the last 30 years. And according to Picco, “we, the West, have always got what we wanted.”

Thus the concept of the impossibility of a truth but rather an individual truth was brought to light. On the term impartiality Picco fervently said, “I do not like to use words that do not exist.” He continued to highlight the need to be discerning:

“Listen a lot and listen very carefully, bearing in mind that most of the things that are said are not relevant or not true, and every individual is profoundly different. . . . Trying to define people by groups is not very productive.”

Snow agreed and pointed out that “the best journalists are politically motivated. . . . They want to change the world.” To which Picco responded:

“As long as you take your side and take responsibility for what you say and what you do, the world changes.”

In retrospect, Picco referred to Cold War conflict resolution as a kid’s game in comparison to what it is today. Rifkind explained:

“In the Cold War it was much easier to have moral clarity, who was right who was wrong. . . . We still want goodies and baddies.”

This dichotomy has been weakened and Snow challenged mainstream media in the West which is currently and wholeheartedly siding with Ukraine. He offered up a Russian insight into the conflict and Rifkind added:

“With the idea of the Ukraine leaning towards the EU we are immediately more sympathetic. . . . If you are serious about managing conflict you have to put competing narratives into the same space.”

Towards the end of discussions, Picco notably expressed hope in future Saudi–Iranian relations, predicting talks between the two, pointing to the intelligent people on both sides.

One audience member wanted to know the potential audience for the book. Rifkind answered, “Of course we would like people at the centre of power to read it because it is a different way of thinking about conflict.”

The evening’s questions could have carried on well after closing time. In the book signing queue that followed someone asked Rifkind, “Why do you do what you do and why carry on doing it?” She responded tellingly, “Its easier to live in a world with conflict if you can find a way to get involved.”

Watch the event and listen again here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-fog-of-peace

This event is organised by Lacuna: A Writing Wrongs Project.

‘What I have most wanted to do . . . is to make political writing into an art.’ – George Orwell

Chaired by Maureen Freely, English Pen president, the panel will discuss the role of the arts in promoting human rights and social justice issues.

Freely joins Lacuna editor Andrew Williams, IceandFire artistic director Christine Bacon, Keats House poet Laila Sumpton and photographer and disability rights campaigner Lesley McIntyre in a discussion about creativity with a social and political purpose.

The event will be a celebration of the role of the arts in promoting human rights and exposing injustices and will feature a performance from IceandFire’s upcoming production, The Island Nation, on the Sri Lankan Civil War and a short film on Lesley Mcintyre’s work.

This event is organised by Lacuna: A Writing Wrongs Project. A new online, subscription-free magazine that aims to challenge indifference to the suffering of others and promote human rights through literature, art, photography and creative multimedia content.

Photograph Lesley McIntyre. A young woman’s hand is cut while she protests outside the Greenham Common military airbase, where America stored nuclear weapons from 1983 until 1991. An American soldier tries to free her hand where it is caught in the barbed wire perimeter fence.

www.lacuna.org.uk / @lacunamagazine

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-fog-of-peace

In war there is rarely a single action or answer that will bring peace. As we are seeing with the conflict in Syria, the process of negotiation and resolution is incredibly complex. As the focus swings from intervention to international conferences, how do you begin to forge an agreement?

In a unique account of the process of conflict resolution, The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution offers an insight into psychological theories, geopolitical realities and first-hand peace-making experience.

The authors will be joining us to share their analysis of international diplomacy and the complexities of conflict resolution. They will be exploring the question of intervention and examining the impact of the changing nature of warfare and technology.

Chaired by Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow.

With:

Gabrielle Rifkind is the director of the Middle East programme at Oxford Research Group. She is a group analyst and specialist in conflict resolution immersed in the politics of the Middle East. Rifkind combines in-depth political and psychological expertise with many years’ experience in promoting serious analysis and discreet dialogues with groups behind the scenes.

Giandomenico Picco served as under-secretary general of the United Nations and was personal representative of the secretary general for the United Nation year of dialogue amongst civilisations. He led the task force negotiations to end the Iran-Iraq war and the freedom of Western hostages from Lebanon. Over decades he helped securing the freedom of 127 individuals unjustly detained from 4 different countries.

Your wonderful and kind messages mean so much to us, as has your friendship, council and support over so many years. There is no prize in our trade that we could ever value as much as your belief in us.

– Vaughan and Pranvera Smith

 

Thank you to Stewart Purvis, Richard Gizbert, Tina Carr, Emma Beals, Allan Little, Mani, Stuart Hughes, Richard Sambrook, Jon Snow, Marina Litvinenko, Martin Bell, Tom Fenton, Anthony Loyd, Lyse Doucet, Bill Neely, Lindsey Hilsum, Charles Glass, John G Morris, Salim Amin, Liz Palmer Gary Knight, Jon Lee Anderson, Jeremy Bowen, Matt Frei and Jean-Jacques Gonfier.

A distinguished panel of journalists gathered at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 27 November to celebrate its tenth anniversary and to reflect, with great humility, on the past ten years of reporting from front lines around the world.

(L-R) Lyse Doucet, Shoaib Sharifi, Jon Snow, Bill Neely, Anthony Loyd

Bill Neely, international editor at ITV News, began on the sobering note that although we [journalists] “really try our best…in many respects I think we’ve failed:”

“I think we have to be damn humble about what we do and what we’ve failed to do… In 2001 in Afghanistan when the Taliban ‘fell’, we walked away and went to Iraq and somehow behind our backs the Taliban came back and we didn’t notice. Then in Iraq we covered a successful invasion, we risked our lives and did our best, and then somehow the Brits lost Basra…who was there? I certainly wasn’t – there were very few of us there.”

Similarly, he said, journalists were not in Benghazi when the American ambassador was assassinated:

“Where were the date lines from? Cairo, London, Washington… And as a result of us not being there, the policy was wrong.”

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, talked about how, in preparation for a BBC Newshour’s 25th anniversary celebrations, she had come across pictures and memories of when she had been in Pakistan and Afghanistan 25 years ago:

“I was coming back to the very origins of the people who inspired the Frontline Club…the brave young men who inspired the club.”

“25 years ago, war was a war on children, it was a humanitarian war, a war when even women took up guns… As one French philosopher said ‘the only lessons of history that we learn is that we don’t learn the lessons of history.’”

Far from shying from the spotlight, mediator for the evening Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow, said the thing that sticks most with him is the same obsession he had in the decade before the Frontline Club – Iran:

“Although shots were not fired, Iran was a front line too. But, as Bill has said, we have fallen into the trap of believing what the outside powers tell us. The demonisation of Iran is easily done…but too simplistic… We’ve never wanted to do anything about it. All we want to talk about is nuclear, and nuclear is a completely bankrupt conversation. As journalists we fail to talk truth to power.”

Shoaib Sharifi, an Afghan journalist who has worked with national and international media outlets in Afghanistan for more than ten years, said that he thought the reporting by journalists in Afghanistan when the Taliban was in control was much better than reporting now:

“In the last ten years, I don’t think we as national and international journalists have learnt anything significant that has affected the war…. We could have done so much better if we hadn’t followed the line of ‘what makes the 6 o’clock news.’ I would pitch really human stories but then hear from a fellow correspondent ‘I don’t think it will make the 6 o’clock news.’ Who are these people making the news agenda, that flows all the way down to Kabul?”

Although Anthony Loyd, the award winning journalist and roving correspondent for The Times, disagreed that journalists shouldn’t be as humble as Neely made out, he too was shocked by some recent journalism:

“Although I haven’t seen the full Panorama [alleging the murder of civilians by British soldiers]…if I wrote a story as weak as that my editor would tell me to go out and fucking stand it up – do some proper journalism.”

Far from being a raucous celebration of the brilliance of journalists, the evening was a thoughtful reflection on the incredible bravery and selfless commitment of journalists and also on their ability to be mistaken, to fail to talk truth to power on occasion and to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The question of what has actually been learned from the Iraq war ten years on was put to a panel chaired by Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow at the Frontline Club on 20 March 2013.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former UN ambassador and now chairman of the UN Association started by saying that “Iraq is not in the state that we would have wanted it in 10 years on; bad mistakes were made in the aftermath of the invasion.” However, he hoped that the war would be given objective judgement in the Chilcot enquiry and the mistakes would be looked at, to which Snow suggested that there would be a danger that the verdict would never come out.

Rt Hon Jim Murphy, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence explained that there are lessons learned but there are also consequences of decisions made at the time that could not be predicted.

“I think I’ve had less than half a dozen emails and letters saying we need to do anything about Syria. I think one of the consequences of what’s happened over the last decade is the default reticence that’s now captured in the public’s mind in the UK.”

"Iraq and Afghanistan have created a permanently unpopular concept of intervention." RtHon Jim Murphy #FrontlineClub

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) March 20, 2013

Jack Fairweather, author of A War of Choice and former Daily Telegraph correspondent, said that he was happy to hear about a greater reticence for going into Syria:

“Thank God. . . . There is no doubt in my mind that intervention does not equal what we think it means. . . . Budgets are poured into issues around which diplomats on the ground . . . rarely have a deep grasp of these very complex tribal situations. . . . The answer is not to plonk down ten thousand – a hundred thousand – troops and spend 5 billion. Soldiers are not nation builders. Nation builders are the Afghans and Iraqis themselves.”

Caroline Wyatt defence correspondent for the BBC said that there were basic errors made in the Iraq operation from the beginning.

“We had a lot of questions about did we understand enough – should you invade places where you don’t necessarily understand the people, the culture the religion and other sensitivities? . . . I remember going in with the military . . . there were almost no translators so practically nobody could talk to the people of the country they were going into. Not being able to talk to people is a pretty fundamental difficulty.”

Caroline Wyatt on invading Baghdad: "We thought that it wasn't a bad thing but we had questions about the reasons behind it." #FrontlineClub

— Sally Ashley–Cound (@AllyAsh) March 20, 2013

Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph‘s chief political commentator said that how the government and press dealt with information throughout the war in Iraq has made him very sceptical of believing anything in the future.

“It’s completely transformed me as a journalist. . . . I instinctively believed in the British state and I found it very hard to accept that the state intelligence service could get involved to create the idea for an invasion. I found this utterly shattering when it became clear afterwards.”

Greenstock added that we have learnt that “it’s probably a mistake to knock around the world removing other people’s leaders. The people of the country now only have the legitimacy to remove the leaders. . . . The caution of Obama [in Syria] comes from as much as he’s watching the Iraq experience.”

Cutbacks to the British and European armies mean that an invasion on the same scale as Iraq is no longer possible Snow said:

“The very fact that we’re no longer able to do what we did is probably a terribly good thing because it now means that will only ever be able to do . . . things to other people’s countries if virtually every other country agrees to come along with you and do it within the rule of law. . . . We won’t be able to go to illegal wars any longer.”

Listen to Jack Fairweather on the greater understanding of what soldiers do ten years after the start of the Iraq war:

Listen to Caroline Wyatt on the lessons learned from Iraq:

Listen to Peter Oborne on the lessons learned from Iraq:

You can watch the event again here:

On 14 June, Iranians will go to the polls to vote in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s successor. As debate around the elections begins to heat up we will be joined by a panel of experts to talk us through the power struggles and the state of opposition movements.

Although Ahmadinejad cannot run again, he has made clear he has no intention of ending his second term quietly. Our panel will be examining the power struggle at the heart of Iran’s political system and how it will play out in the lead up to the election.

A crackdown on the media has already been seen, with the arrests of 15 journalists at the end of January. With opposition leaders still under house arrest following the disputed 2009 elections, we will be asking if, once again, we will see protests on the streets of Tehran.

Chaired by Azadeh Moaveni, a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.

The panel:

Mehri Honarbin-Holliday is senior research fellow at Canterbury Christ Church University and fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS. She is the author of Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society and Masculinities in Urban Iran.

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by the Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.

Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and author of Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/presidential-elections-in-iran

Despite hundreds of thousands of people having taken to the streets of London and elsewhere to voice their opposition to military action in Iraq, on 19 March 2003, air strikes on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad began.

What followed was a US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s government, and marked the start of years of violent conflict. Ten years on, in a debate chaired by Channel 4 News’ Jon Snow, we will ask: have lessons been learned?

The legacy of the Iraq War changed Western foreign policy, but with talk of Northern Africa becoming a new front in the war on terror, have the mistakes of Iraq been sufficiently ingrained on the consciences of populations and governments? To what degree is the impact on relations between the Middle East and the West still felt?

We will also be examining what has been heard at the Chilcot Inquiry and why we are still waiting to hear the findings.

Chaired by Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow.

The panel:

Caroline Wyatt has been BBC defence correspondent since October 2007, covering the work of British Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003 she was embedded with British troops reporting on the war and its aftermath in and around Basra. Previously she has been BBC correspondent covering Paris, Moscow, Berlin and Bonn.

Rt Hon Jim Murphy is Labour Member of Parliament for East Renfrewshire. He is currently the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence and has previously served as Secretary of State for Scotland.

Jack Fairweather is the author of A War of Choice: Britain in Iraq 2003-9. The Daily Telegraph’s Baghdad and Gulf correspondent for five years, he was an embedded reporter during the Iraq invasion, winning the British equivalent of the Pulitzer prize for his reporting. Most recently he has been the Washington Post’s Islamic world correspondent. He is a fellow of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, and is working on a history of the Afghan war.

Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph‘s chief political commentator and author of The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock is chairman of the UN Association in the UK, the strategic advisory company Gatehouse Advisory Partners Ltd and Lambert Energy Advisory Ltd. He was a career diplomat from 1969 to 2004, developing specialisations in the Middle East, Transatlantic Relations and the United Nations. He served as UK Ambassador to the UN in New York from 1998 to 2003 and as UK Special Envoy for Iraq, based in Baghdad, from 2003 to 2004.