Category Archives: Journalism

Calling Middle East bloggers

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BEIRUT — Tak­ing a break from all the news, I’d like to throw some­thing out there and see what gets picked up.
Would you like to be part of the B2I team? (Which, at the moment, is me.) Would you like to blog on Iraq, Syria, Egypt and the rest of the Mid­dle East? Would you like to make some cash while you’re doing it? (Assum­ing peo­ple donate, of course.)
I’m look­ing for one or two peo­ple who can help me out here with cov­er­ing Iraq, Syria and Egypt, although I’ll enter­tain other locales or if you move around. Some­one to blog from Wash­ing­ton or New York about how news in the Mid­dle East is play­ing would be great, too.
The ideal can­di­dates should be ener­getic, hun­gry and have some jour­nal­ism train­ing. Flu­ency in Eng­lish is a must, as well as the abil­ity to look at things as objec­tively as pos­si­ble. I want to con­tinue to give obser­va­tions and news as it’s seen, not as how most peo­ple want it to be seen. No left– or right-wing true believ­ers need apply.
If you’re a free­lance jour­nal­ist in the region and want to have a wider out­let than some of the trade jour­nals might offer, please con­sider sign­ing up. I’m work­ing out out a donations-sharing sys­tem, by which you would reap rewards for your work. It’s not much, but it can help.
Best of all, you get to be part of a blog that single-handedly started the the idea of reader-funded con­flict report­ing. B2I is still a strong brand and peo­ple in the jour­nal­ism world know it. It’s still read at news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines in New York, Wash­ing­ton and else­where. Here’s your chance to get some expo­sure, if you need it.
If you’re inter­ested, please email me with a CV, a cover let­ter and three writ­ing sam­ples.
Thanks very much,
The Management

Coverage of the Conflict

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BEIRUT — Well, the sit­u­a­tion up north has set­tled into a stand­off, despite a bout of gun­fire on Mon­day. The var­i­ous Pales­tin­ian fac­tions are try­ing to nego­ti­ate an end to this cri­sis, and the Lebanese gov­ern­ment has given them time to get the job done. But while sev­eral politi­cians, such as Druze leader Walid Jum­blatt, have said the mil­i­tary option is off the table, we may very well see more vio­lence before this is over. Lebanon sim­ply can’t allow these guys to walk away, as I’ve men­tioned before.
The group con­tin­ues to refuse to hand over any of its fight­ers. “This is impos­si­ble,” said Fatah al-Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha via tele­phone from inside Nahr el-Bared.
I’ll be head­ing back up, prob­a­bly Tues­day, to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion. In the mean­time, here are some of the sto­ries I filed over the last week:
* Lebanon, Syria Point Fin­gers in Recent Vio­lence (Wash­ing­ton Times)
* Lebanese army assault cheered, but raises fears (San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle)
* Bod­ies pil­ing up in assault on camp (San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle)
Another one on the for­eign fight­ers in Fatah al-Islam is due out tomor­row morn­ing.
*UPDATE 5÷30÷07 2:13:53 AM:* And here it is! Sorry for the delay. Been busy here tak­ing care of daily life that got put on hold while the North caught fire. Right now, things are more or less quiet, with the occa­sional exchange of fire. We’ll see how long it holds.

Scene from the North

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Here’s the story I filed for the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle last night,giv­ing you a sense of the scene up around the Nahr el-Bared camp. It’s grim:

Across the street, black smog bil­lowed over the camp while half a dozen build­ings blazed. Sniper fire crack­led in the air as the army pounded the camp with 120mm mor­tar and tank shells. Fatah al-Islam mil­i­tants responded with rocket pro­pelled grenade launch­ers and machine-gun fire.
Dense orange groves sur­round­ing the camp were scorched from explo­sions while the army seemed to method­i­cally lob shells on a spe­cific sec­tor of the camp, set­ting a num­ber of build­ings on fire before mov­ing on.
Con­di­tions in the camp — a mis­er­able war­ren of alley­ways and cin­derblock homes hous­ing between 30,000 and 40,000 peo­ple – are grim. A source at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in New York said it was impos­si­ble for camp med­ical work­ers to get to the dead and wounded. Water and elec­tricty have been cut off and about 50 for­eign­ers — many of the West­ern­ers — are hun­kered down as their embassies work to get a cease fire in place so they can be evacuated.

I’m head­ing up in a cou­ple of hours. Word is a UN con­voy is going to try to get into the camp.

Snapshot of journalsts’ dangers in Iraq

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One of the “commenters”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2007/05/dmitry_chebotayev_russian_phot.php#comment-211984 in the “post about Dmitry”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2007/05/dmitry_chebotayev_russian_phot.php below wanted to know how many jour­nal­ists who had died in Iraq were for­eign and how many were Iraqi. Well, the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists has just such a list.
Of the 101 jour­nal­ists killed in Iraq, 79 were Iraqi. The oth­ers included 12 Euro­peans, three from other Arab coun­tries, two from the United States and five from all other coun­tries.
That the vast major­ity of jour­nal­ists killed — as well as the “38 media workers”:http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/Iraq/iraq_media_killed.html, which includes trans­la­tors and the like — are Iraqi is sig­nif­i­cant. Like the Iraqi civil­ians, the local jour­nal­ists there are the ones who are most affected by the vio­lence that per­me­ates their coun­try.
Four­teen jour­nal­ists died in 2003, the year of the inva­sion and the tra­jec­tory has been mostly point­ing up in the num­ber of deaths each year: 24 in 2004, 23 in 2005, 32 in 2006 and now 8 in 2007.
For a cap­sule account of each jour­nal­ist who was killed, here are the links:
* “for 2007″:http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed07.html#iraq
* “for 2006″:http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed06.html#iraq
* “for 2005″:http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed_archives/2005_list.html#iraq
* “for 2004″:http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed_archives/2004_list.html#iraq
* “for 2003″:http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed_archives/2003_list.html#iraq
(Note, the links include jour­nal­ists killed in places other than Iraq as well.)

Dmitry Chebotayev, Russian photographer, killed in Iraq

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Dmitry-Chebotayev-AP.jpgIt’s been a fatal week­end for for­eign cor­re­spon­dents.
On Sun­day, the day the plane car­ry­ing Anthony Mitchell of AP was found, Dmitry Cheb­o­tayev, a Russ­ian pho­tog­ra­pher for EPA and Russ­ian Newsweek was killed in Diyala province along with six U.S. sol­diers, with whom he was embed­ded.
As the Com­mit­tee to Project Jour­nal­ists said in a statement,

The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists mourns the death on Sun­day of Dmitry Cheb­o­tayev, the first Russ­ian jour­nal­ist to be killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led inva­sion in March 2003. Cheb­o­tayev, a free­lance pho­tog­ra­pher embed­ded with U.S. forces, was killed along with six Amer­i­can sol­diers when a road­side bomb struck a U.S. mil­i­tary vehi­cle in Diyala province, north­east of Bagh­dad.
Cheb­o­tayev was on assign­ment for the Russ­ian edi­tion of Newsweek mag­a­zine, report­ing on the efforts of U.S. forces to con­trol roads in Diyala province, Leonid Parfy­onov, edi­tor of the magazine’s Russ­ian edi­tion, told CPJ. Cheb­o­tayev had been in Iraq for more than two months.
…
Cheb­o­tayev, 29, had free­lanced for sev­eral news agen­cies, includ­ing the German-based Euro­pean Pressphoto Agency and the inde­pen­dent Moscow daily Kom­m­er­sant. A sam­pling of his pho­tos can be viewed on his Light­stalk­ers pro­file page. Light­stalk­ers is an online net­work of pho­tog­ra­phers and other visual jour­nal­ists that serves as a direc­tory, data­base, and resource cen­ter.
At least 101 jour­nal­ists and 38 media sup­port staffers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led inva­sion in March 2003, mak­ing Iraq the dead­liest con­flict for the press in CPJ’s 26-year his­tory. Seven embed­ded jour­nal­ists have been killed since the war began.

He last logged into Light­stalk­ers five days ago. His loca­tion is listed as Baqoubah, Iraq, and his travel log shows that he worked in Rus­sia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, Chech­nya and Iraq. My friend Bill Put­nam, another pho­tog­ra­pher, offered advice to him regard­ing embed­ding in Iraq. It’s another sad day for jour­nal­ists in the tight-knit world of Mid­dle East cov­er­age, after the loss of Anthony on Sat­ur­day.
Six sol­diers and a jour­nal­ist killed in one blast makes me sus­pect it was an awfully big IED that hit a Bradley fight­ing vehi­cle, rather than a humvee, which holds five guys, tops. I’m just spec­u­lat­ing, though.
I hope I don’t have to do any more posts like this. Rest in peace, Dmitry and Anthony. You will be missed.