Asia-Pacific
James Whitlow Delano in Burma
Digital Journalist publishes pictures and words from contributing photographer James Whitlow Delano. He was in Burma working on another assignment when Cyclone Nargis hit. For ten days he was able to travel the Irrawaddy River Delta and photograph what he found, Few western journalists managed to get in to the country, and those who did […]
Bangladesh boat project bags Sony
The BBC Bangladesh Boat Project has won the Sony Multiplatorm Radio journalism award. Ben Sutherland, one of the reporters on the project, writes about the experience for the BBC Editor’s Blog. He says it wasn’t just the amazing stories they helped tell, it was how they told them, Not only was the method of getting […]
CNN man in Burmese chase
CNNs man in Myanmar, Dan Rivers, left the cyclone stricken country last Friday after being pursued by Burmese authorities. He credits his ability to evade capture upon the incompetence of those in hot pursuit. He defaced his passport, hid under a blanket and thinks he may have finally escaped due to the impatience of a […]
Andrew Harding deported from Burma
He’d only just arrived, but the Burmese authorities weren’t having any of it. Andrew Harding was hoping to report on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, but he was on the next plane out when ‘irregularities’ were spotted at border control. AFP quotes the state run New Light of Mynamar newspaper, “A journalist who is working […]
40 years ago
James Pringle reported from Vietnam for Reuters, Newsweek and the Times during the American War. Writing for the Asia Sentinel he remembers a tragic event in the Cholon district of Saigon 40 years ago today. Pringle was Reuters bureau chief, but was out of the country on May 5, 1968. A day that would claim […]
Journalist death threats in China
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China released a statement today condemning online death threats received by at least ten foreign correspondents in China following a campaign on the web and in the state-run media following media coverage of protests in Tibet. Melinda Lui, President of the FCCC, talks about the threats in Newsweek Magazine today. […]
Does the West love to hate China?’
[video:brightcove:1509865726] With recent events in Tibet raising questions about international support for the Olympics, a recent panel debate at the Frontline club discusses the possibility of boycott. The panellists are Shirong Chen from the BBC World Service, Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch, The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall and Liu Weimin from the Chinese Embassy. Isabel […]
Newseum receives Laos remains
According to Richard Pyle at the Associated Press a time capsule consisting of the remains of war photographers shot down over Laos during the Vietnam war will be preserved in a time capsule at the Newseum in Washington D.C. “museum devoted to the history and practice of journalism,” Ten years ago this week, a U.S. […]
Photojournalist Dith Pran dies
The photojournalist Dith Pran died last night in a New Jersey hospital. Pran first became known to the wider world in 1980 when the New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg published his book The Death and Life of Dith Pran. The book was later made into the film The Killing Fields. Pran worked as a […]
Virtual Vietnam Wall
The Vietnam Wall monument in Washington D.C. commemorates the lives of 58,256 American soldiers killed during the Vietnam War, or as the Vietnamese call it the American War. This week the wall goes online. Footnote.com is an interactive representation of the wall. the site seems to be having some teething problems at the moment, but […]
Beijing bashes foreign media
After expelling the few remaining foreign journalists from Tibet last week, the Chinese government has attacked foreign media for what it sees as biased reporting. The International Herald Tribune has more, “At a time when China is promising to become more open with the world, this is a big disappointment,” said Jocelyn Ford, a freelance […]
Getting into Lhasa
On the MSNBC World blog Bo Gu, an Assistant News Producer at NBC, describes how she managed to get into Lhasa last Sunday, “The House of Shambala? No way, I’m not going there,” said the Tibetan taxi driver, his wrinkled, tanned face looking nervous. “It’s really chaotic in Lhasa now,” another taxi driver said as […]
A day in the life of a Burmese journalist
Aye Chan Myate, who was until recently a senior editor with a weekly journal in Rangoon, writes in The Irrawaddy what it’s like to be a working journalist in Rangoon. Doesn’t sound a whole lot of fun, In our newsroom, only the management desk and the copy-typists worked with computers. We reporters and editors had […]
In Vietnam we looked like this…
Googling around for a picture of Sydney Schanberg for the previous post I discover this interesting wee site consisting of polaroid portraits of foreign correspondents and others who passed through the AP bureau in Saigon during the Vietnam war. Neal Ulevich has compiled the images here including the one above of Frontline Club regular Philip […]
Korean variations
NBC News correspondent, Ian Williams is blogging the visit to North Korea of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, I was on a press bus, and could only guess what the orchestra was thinking, until I spoke to Michele Kim, violinist and assistant concertmaster, whose parents hail from North Korea. “I was a little bit apprehensive […]
Why Tet Matters
Stanley Karnow, who wrote “Vietnam: A History” and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1991, talks about the Vietnam War in the Washington Independent. As Vietnamese people prepare for Tet and the year of the rat this coming Thursday, Karnow compares the conflict to the present day situation in Iraq, I sensed that […]
Liu Heung Shing’s China
Liu Heung Shing is the only ethnic Chinese to have won a Pulitzer prize for photography. He shared the 1992 spot news prize with AP Moscow colleagues. Liu spent much of his journalistic life as a foreign correspondent in places like Los Angeles, New Delhi, Seoul and Moscow. Liu is profiled in China Daily today. […]
Benazir Bhutto 1953 – 2007
[video:brightcove:1111466957] Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, was assasinated earlier today in Rawalpindi. Six months ago, at the Frontline Club, she was interviewed by George Arney of the BBC World Servive about the future for her country.
AFP launch Asia Media Award
Agence France-Presse announced the launch of the Kate Webb Award last night in Hong Kong. Kate worked for AFP in Asia for sixteen years. The New Zealand born foreign correspondent covered many wars, coups and conflicts throughout the region. Notoriously, she was captured by North Vietnamese soldiers in Cambodia in 1971. Along with five others, […]
China crisis
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China sends a letter to members today detailing the treatment dished out to three Swiss journalists and their Chinese assistants in two separate incidents while reporting from the Chinese sticks earlier this week. Swiss TV reporter Barbara Luethi relates the story of her interrogation at the hands of plain clothes […]
Getting the story out
Writing in Ha’aretz, Yotam Feldman tells it as it is, or was, and how he got the story out of Burma, It’s 4 A.M. at Bangkok airport. Minutes before my plane is to lift off for Rangoon, I get a call on my mobile. In loose English with an Asian accent, a screaming voice says, […]
Mark Forbes wins ASTSS Media Award 2007
A couple of weeks old maybe, but here’s Mark Forbe’s, who works as a foreign correspondent for The Age, accepting the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies 2007 Media Award for his reporting from Indonesia, Forbes received the award for his coverage of the Garuda Airlines crash at Yogyakarta Airport in March that killed […]
Scribe in sculpture
According to PhilStar, plans are afoot in Manilla to erect a sculpture in honour of Philippine STAR founding publisher and foreign correspondent Maximo Soliven. Speaking at Manila city hall on Wednesday Mayor Alfredo Lim said, “We are already talking about putting up a statue of Max Soliven along the Baywalk. He is one of the […]
Dodging the goons in Rangoon
Scouring the net for Burma-related stuff – there’s getting less and less from the ground – I come across Frontline’s Ben Hammersley and an intriguing wee snippet from the year 2000’s where are they now file, When I got to Rangoon Airport, I knew I would be searched. I had been followed all afternoon – […]
Swedish journalists feel the Burmese heat
Several Swedish and Danish news media outlets said on Monday they had been contacted by Burmese regime officials urging them to withdraw their reporters from the country for their own safety. link Meanwhile Reporters without borders lay into the Burmese junta once again, “Several other correspondents of foreign news media, including Reuters and Agence France-Presse, […]
The Saffron suppression
The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win [a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta ], said: ‘Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.’ Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has […]
Burmese Junta detains journalist
Authorities in Burma were detaining a journalist reporting for a Japanese newspaper for the third day Sunday, his family members said. Min Zaw, a Burmese national working for The Tokyo Shimbun, was taken from his home early Friday by plainclothes security personnel who said he would be held temporarily for questioning. Family members said his […]
Burma 29 September 2007
Only the milita who surround the journalist are willing to be interviewed. When he asked them what they thought, as Buddhists, of the fact that the junta had shot monks, they replied that it was not the monks who were demonstrating, but rather people desguised as monks, paid by powerful westerners to plant the seeds […]
Not Twittering but CBoxing the saffron revolution
Twitter might be the trendy kid on the microblogging market, but it’s CBox that’s getting used. Here’s a ‘live’ sampling, 28 Sep 07, 17:43 Ko Hla: Protesters are shouting slogan on 33rd street (between 83rd and 84th Street) in Mandalay. 28 Sep 07, 17:40 forthecountry: Myanmar PM Soe Win is well in SG hospital. http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_162156.html […]
Burma cuts the net
But, The Irrawaddy continues to get information out from sources on the ground (I’ve added relevant links) Rangoon; Afternoon—Trucks loaded with troops raided the offices of Burma’s main Internet service provider, Myanmar Info-Tech, located at Rangoon University (Hlaing campus) around noon on Friday in an effort to cut all public access to the internet. The […]