Carroll kidnappers demanded $8m

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 April 2006 at 10:13
Tags: ABC, Iraq, Journalism, United States, War reporting

The man who negotiated the release of American journalist Jill Carroll has said that her kidnappers were demanding a ransom of $8 million.

Speaking to the American television network ABC,  Sheikh Sattam al-Gaood, a former business associate of Saddam Hussein and supporter of the Iraqi insurgency, described the kidnapping of the freelance working for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor as “a mistake”.

Al-Gaood, who was one of the people thanked by Carroll’s family following her release, denied that he had paid the ransom demanded by her kidnappers, but had instead arranged to pay for widows and orphans of Iraqi insurgents.

Reporter who refused to go to Iraq joins Al Jazeera

Posted by Martin Stabe on 4 April 2006 at 12:28
Tags: Al Jazeera, Journalism, War reporting

Al Jazeera International has added Richard Gizbert to its lineup of journalists for its launch, whenever that may be.
Gizbert will present Listening Post, a programme examining what the world’s media — everything from blogs to major outlets — covers (or fails to cover). The programme will be produced by Manchester-based Moonbeam Films, which was also behind BBC4’s media programme The Desk.

Gizbert, a long-time London-based freelance for ABC News, won an Employment Tribunal hearing for unfair dismissal after the American network did not renew his contract when he refused to go to Iraq. At their annual meeting last month, the National Union of Journalists decided to back Gizbert in the expected appeals by ABC.

(Contrary to some reports, it is unlikely that Gizbert’s defection to the Qatari network will incur the wrath of his Canadian compatriots.)

Yesterday, Five News presenter Barbara Serra joined the Qatar-based network. In recent months, the upstart channel has been aggressively recuiting high-profile English-language broadcasters. Stephen Cole, a former senior presenter for BBC World, will co-anchor from London with Felicity Barr, who joined joined from the ITV Evening News. Barnaby Phillips joined from the BBC to serve as a Europe correspondent based in Athens. Lauren Taylor, ex-ITV, is another London-based corresponent for the new channel. Sir David Frost will host a a weekly interview-led programme on al Jazeera, and former BBC Africa correspondent Rageh Omaar will host a daily documentary programme, Witness. David Foster, formerly of Sky News, will present from Doha. Also on the Al Jazeera roster are former ITN News at Ten editor John Pullman, and former ITV foreign editor Al Anstey and his deputy Nick Walshe, as well as ex-Tribune editor Mark Seddon.

A similar poaching spree has been occurring in the United States. Lucia Newman, previously Havana correspondent for CNN, will report from Buenos Aires and Mariana Sanchez will report from Caracas. In a column published in yesterday’s New York Daily News, the ormer presenter of ABC’s Nightline, David Marash, explained why he had joined Al Jazeera. Marash, who will anchor Al Jazeera International from Washington, wrote: “Al Jazeera International will do fewer stories each half hour than our cable news competitors, and our selection is likely to be different. Hopefully, this will allow us to probe a little bit deeper into stories that matter, to add some real value to your information bank.”

There have been rumours of a row between AJI and the established Arabic-languge rolling news channel. Al Jazeera MD Wadah Khanfar has been appointed director-general of Al Jazeera Satellite Network, a new umbrella for the two channels.

Journalist freed in Iraq

Posted by Martin Stabe on 30 March 2006 at 13:33
Tags: Iraq, Journalism, Online, RSS, United States, War reporting

American journalist Jill Carroll, who was held in Iraq for nearly three months, has been freed. The Christian Science Monitor is posting updates on its web site as details emerge about their reporter’s release.

There is also an RSS feed for updates on the story (RSS).

Inside this week’s Press Gazette

Posted by Martin Stabe on 30 March 2006 at 13:23
Tags: ABC, BBC, Citizen journalism, Daily Telegraph, Economist, Guardian, Journalism, Mirror, Mobile Phones, NUJ, New Media, News of the World, Online, Regionals, Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Times, War reporting

Some highlights from tomorrow’s Press Gazette:

The owners of the Daily Telegraph, the Barclay Brothers, have discovered that their ploy bringing libel cases under French criminal law — a tactic most recently deployed against the Times — cuts both ways. The Sunday Telegraph has paid out to the estranged father of comedian Jimmy Carr after his lawyers threatened drag the paper before a French tribunbal.

George Galloway has threatened to publish pictures of Mazher Mahmood after the News of the World’s “fake sheikh” attempted one of his famous sting operations on the controvertial Respect MP. (The Guardian’s Duncan Campbell today has more on the foiled “sheikh-down”.)

A former Times fashion journalist, Emily Davies, is at the heart of a plagiarism row after an American publisher gave her a £515,000 advance on a book. In a statement to us, Davies admits “genuinely accidental misattribution” of parts of the book proposal — but says there is “a dirty tricks campaign” to discredit her. Lawyers have stopped us from publishing Davies’s publicity photograph.

Regular Dog readers already know this, but the Guardian’s web site will make £1 million profit this year. This emerged at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit, where Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow enthused about citizen journalism.

Roy Greenslade told a Newspaper Society conference that regional newspapers need to challenge to the online competition from the BBC. His most recent Daily Telegraph column is adapted from the speech. We hear that Greenslade, who recently resigned from the Telegraph, has some super-secret online project for the Guardian up his sleeve.

Multichannel television on mobile phones set to be launched by mobile network O2 within a fortnight, and if the results of a recent pilot of the service in Oxford is anything to go by, news is set to be one of the most popular offerings.

New Economist editor John Micklethwait says he wants to double the magazine’s circulation to 2 million readers worldwide over the next 10 years. Speaking of new magazine editors, we also have an interview with Matthew D’Ancona of the Spectator — he’s into punk rock, apparently.

The National Union of Journalists is backing Richard Gizbert, a London-based correspondent for ABC News, who was sacked after he refused to go to Iraq. The American television network is appealing against an Employment Tribunal ruling that Gizbert was unfairly dismissed.

Cost concerns prompt cuts in US papers’ foreign bureaux

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 28 February 2006 at 10:32
Tags: Journalism, Newspapers, United States, War reporting

It’s not the dangers, or so it’s claimed, but the cost these days of maintaining news bureaus in places like Baghdad and Beijing that is provoking a big cutback in the foreign coverage of many American papers.

One of the papers closing down its Baghdad bureau is the Boston Globe. It is giving up the room in the Hamra Hotel for which it has been paying but which has been empty for the past six months. A spokesman for the Globe admitted they could no longer afford to maintain the necessary security.

Two other papers cutting back their foreign coverage are the Baltimore Sun and Newsday. The Sun has closed its Beijing and London bureaus. Closing the British bureau — which dates back to 1924 — was a hard decision, admitted foreign editor Robert Roby. The cutbacks leave the Sun with just three foreign bureaus – Johannesburg, Moscow and Jerusalem — each with just one member of staff.

Newsday is closing its Beijing bureau, which is one of its oldest – dating back to the early 1960s. But it has not had a staff reporter in China for more than a year. It has an office in Baghdad – but nobody has staffed it since December. The paper has even shut its bureau in Mexico City.

Why reporters go to war

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 February 2006 at 13:03
Tags: International, War reporting

In the wake of the kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor freelancer Jill Carroll and last week’s injurty of ABC presenter Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt, American journalists are debating why so many reporters are willing to take dangerous assignment to cover warzones.

Writing in the Boston Globe, University of Maine journalism professor Michael Socolow recently argued that a major reason so many hacks yearn for war assignments is that the industry rewards taking dangerous risks:

There is a dirty little secret in journalism: War reporting is the fastest way to get ahead. The trade-off is obvious. In exchange for putting one’s life on the line for a story, a journalistic organization will reward that courage with a promotion. Being in the right place at the right time is the essential journalistic value, and war zones always qualify as “right” places. Nothing burnishes a journalistic résumé like time spent “in country.”

Yet the combat journalist is not motivated solely by careerism — if at all. An enormous amount of ego gratification is involved as well. The heroic ideal of the globe-trotting war correspondent provides an inspirational model. Whether it is Edward R. Murrow on a bombing mission over Berlin or Christiane Amanpour dodging bullets in Sarajevo, the public display of courage attracts a certain kind of idealistic yet narcissistic personality.

It’s primarily an affliction of young hacks with few family committments, he writes, noting the recent case of the London-based veteran ABC News correspondent Richard Gizbert, who won an employment tribunal case when he was sacked after refusing to go to Iraq.

At the time, the former BBC correspondent Martin Bell, who acted as an expert witness in Gizbert’s case, said the case would be important for younger journalists who might not refuse an Iraq assignment for fear of losing their jobs.

• NPR: The risks and rewards of war reporting