Author: |Posted: 6:29 pm on 27/02/09
Category: World News Blog
When foreign journalists work abroad, our secret weapon is the local journalist we work with. We call them fixers for good reason. Without them we’d be broke. We have them lined up, ready for action, right across the globe.
“Secret” weapon being the operative word, because these guys work behind the scenes, making stuff happen. The expectations we place on them are roughly of the same order as those the world is placing on Obama. And when fixers deliver, we make good telly.
Robert Chamwami, our fixer in Congo, deserves a special mention from me as our trip there in November was the second time I’ve worked with him. Both times I’ve won awards. read more
Author: |Posted: 5:03 pm on 27/02/09
Category: World News Blog
News of the type the foreign correspondents are too modest to blog about: Channel 4 News has scooped the prestigious Royal Television Society award for best International News Coverage.
The entry? Jonathan Miller’s reporting on the Congo crisis last autumn. His team there were Senior Foreign Producer (now C4 News Foreign Editor) Ben de Pear and Cameraman Stuart Webb.
Watch one of their films below - an important world exclusive in which we uncover evidence of an apparent massacre of civilians by rebel forces.
The killing fields of Kiwanja (6 November 2008). The report contains images some viewers may find distressing. read more
Author: |Posted: 8:47 am on 27/02/09
Category: Snowblog
Emerging at half past midnight last night from an awards do in London’s west end, I felt unusually unexcited about the prospect of cycling home. I decided to bung the machine in a cab and pay my dues.
Putting a full-sized cross-breed bike in a cab is remarkably easy. It fits exactly behind the driver’s screen with the wheel turned in, then you prop it up with your foot on the crossbar.
Author: |Posted: 6:30 pm on 26/02/09
Category: Snowblog
I’ve just been down to RBS to interview the new chief executive, Stephen Hester – an excellent interview, on Channel 4 News tonight (see extended interview below).
Author: |Posted: 4:55 pm on 26/02/09
Category: World News Blog
Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s new finance minister, has got to have about the toughest job in the world.
His mission: end the meltdown and deliver on promises made by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to pay civil servants and kick-start Zimbabwe’s moribund economy.
The trouble is, he’s got no money and rich countries aren’t prepared to bankroll Zim’s phoenix-like resurrection as long as Robert Mugabe remains president. That’s because there’s no guarantee any new money won’t end up in the pockets of the president’s cronies.
Mr Biti remains hobbled by the fact that it’s Mugabe’s man who still holds the purse-strings: Gideon Gono, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. read more
Author: |Posted: 2:05 pm on 26/02/09
Category: Snowblog
A breakthrough for Channel 4 News yesterday: our first ever interview sourced from Twitter.
Author: |Posted: 12:15 pm on 26/02/09
Category: Snowblog
I turn on the radio to find that the government is launching a fund to sap up the toxic debts of the banks. Not just the banks we own, but others too.
Is it still beyond the realms of reason to ask whether some of these specific debts could not be unwound to find out how they were put together?
Author: |Posted: 6:41 pm on 25/02/09
Category: Snowblog
I have spent the morning in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
How so? Well, courtesy of the Canadian High Commission, I was invited to chair a major Afghan conference addressed by government ministers and others and, indeed, the governor of Helmand, who featured on Channel 4 News the other night (see Tuesday 24 February).
Author: |Posted: 1:08 pm on 25/02/09
Category: Snowblog
I often run out for a bunch of grapes and a few nuts about an hour before Channel 4 News. This time I ran into an Irish builder who recognised me. He was putting up a wooden hoarding for a 30-month rehab job on a neighbouring Victorian block of flats.
I asked him how things were. He said terrible. It seems that he is living week to week. Each week he and his workmates learn who has been hired.
Author: |Posted: 12:20 pm on 25/02/09
Category: World News Blog
A scathing report today from the man tasked by the UN to investigate extra-judicial killings by the Kenyan police.
“Kenyan police are a law unto themselves and they kill often and with impunity,” said Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur.
How refreshing to find a UN official who talks straight. I hate to indulge in national stereotypes, but maybe the fact that he’s Australian has something to do with it.
