Journalists that aren't dicks or c*nts

[klang]

I used to like Fisk ,but, his lying about a situation I was involved in has soured me to him.

what was that, if you don't mind sharing?
always been quite partial to Fisk....

 

[Artaxerxes]

Me dad, god rest him.

 

[dylanredefined]

what was that, if you don't mind sharing?
always been quite partial to Fisk....

It was a throw away comment about how the playground outside Basrah palace was being torn down to park British tanks on.
It wasn't it was being torn down as it was in poor repair and hated by the locals anyway. Basrah palace had been built as a huge fuck you to the population
of Basrah after the rebellion. The playground had been propaganda used for photos ops of smiling kids thanking the regime for installing order etc. Locals believed it to be boobytrapped during the war and a local found some landmines stuck under a hedge nearby when he decided to do some gardening.
So a bit petty.
There is some form of spook who is the spitting image of Fisk and fucking hated having that pointed out
The Army did not like Mr Fisk and I remember the fact he was in Basrah was on orders and how we were to avoid antagonising him. Officialise for we all know he hates us try not to make us look worse.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I like Dawn Foster.

 

[trabuquera]

It depends what you want to read about. With the best will in the world, journos who actually know their beat and will align with your worldview (I think only the first part really matters, but whatevs) are thin on the ground. You are always better off reading a locally-produced paper/blog than the musings of half-briefed posers who've been helicoptered in for the Big Push, or opinion-merchants pronouncing on the state of the world from the safety of their desk, on any story.

Just a few - out of tens of thousands of good journalists who really do exist worldwide, whether you agree with them or not ...

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (Mideast)
Martin Chulov (war, wherever it might be)
Nima Elbagir (Sudan, Horn of Africa)
Alma Guillermoprieto (Mexico, Lat Am)
Misha Glenny (global crime)

you could try Global Voices - which is an aggregator / portal which yes gets Soros money, but also gives new platform to hundreds of journos worldwide whose work would never see the mainstream press

But srsly: just because a news report doesn't align with your own views does not necessarily mean that it is false or that the journo is a waste of your time.

 

[Orang Utan]

Dan Trilling

 

[nino_savatte]

Richard Norton-Taylor's pretty good.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

I enjoy Jonathan Miller on CH4 perhaps because he reports on places I've visited in SE Asia. He always goes to the heart of the matter.

This week he got an interview with Mr "Kill'em All' Duterte, president of the Philippines.

 

[Sirena]

Pilger and Fisk.

For UK stuff, C.J. Stone was very good (especially for counterculture). And a man called Andy Worthington.

 

[danny la rouge]

We need to build a basic feedly list as a resource for us all. That'd be A Good Thing.

 

[Jimathon]

Gary Younge is a good bloke.

 

[gawkrodger]

jason Burke
ed vulliamy

 

[JimW]

Misha Glenny (global crime).

Good shout, read his book McMafia which was excellent.

 

[agricola]

Peter Oborne

 

[krtek a houby]

I used to like Pilger, Fisk. Haven't read anything by them in ages. Years ago, I guess I liked Liam Fay and Gene Kerrigan. That chap who wrote Blair's Wars, he's good. And I used to like Johanna Hari. But that all went pear shaped.

 

[Beermoth]

Aditya Chakrabortty writes good stuff for The Guardian

 

[DaveCinzano]

Pilger and Fisk.

For UK stuff, C.J. Stone was very good (especially for counterculture). And a man called Andy Worthington.

90s nostalgia

 

[DrRingDing]

We need to build a basic feedly list as a resource for us all. That'd be A Good Thing.

I've been wanting to propose that but havent worked out how best to do it.

 

[DotCommunist]

SEYMOUR! normally gets a read weekly. I don't know if he is personally a dick or a cunt by I find his acerbic style amusing.

 

[danny la rouge]

SEYMOUR! normally gets a read weekly. I don't know if he is personally a dick or a cunt by I find his acerbic style amusing.

I read him too, but via Twitter.

I'd bet he's personally a bit of a dick.

 

[DaveCinzano]

The nature of the job is that journalists, good journalists, must rely on their sources. They must build relationships with people who can provide them with tips and intelligence and perspectives and analysis. They need to convert these relationships and the information coming out of them into insightful and timely news stories.

Sometimes this means building rapport with people they might not like. Sometimes this may mean evaluating information provided by someone they perhaps do like, and deciding on balance that it is wrong or inaccurate.

In other words, a good journalist doing good work will sometimes publish inaccurate news stories - such is the nature of current affairs. The mark of a great journalist is being able to acknowledge those mistakes, reference them and correct them in their future work, and to do so in a way which helps provide the reader with as much clarity and transparency as possible, whilst protecting sources.

Less-than-great journalists, when confronted with such mistakes, will be overly defensive, huffy, deny there was a problem, swear blind what they published was accurate, or even blame their source, as though they themself were just some innocent bystander.

 

[isvicthere?]

Should the question not be "why do so few on the left produce readable and engaging news output?"

No. Next.

 

[Idris2002]

Mark Ames.

Is a shit. I used to read his freesheet when I was in Piter all those years ago, and it was even more scummy in real life than on the internet.

But he does write the occasional good thing, now and then. And the podcast he does with Dolan has been pretty good so far.

 

[Ungrateful]

Thought Tim Franks did a reasonable job as the BBC's Middle East correspondent, especially as, I seem to remember, his first day coinciding with his senior BBC partner, Alan Johnston's kidnap. Tim Franks later wrote an interesting report on how political pressures from all sides try to influence news coverage, from 'Zionists are running the BBC' to typical 'BBC anti-Semitism attacking poor benighted Israel'.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Mark Ames.

Is a shit. I used to read his freesheet when I was in Piter all those years ago, and it was even more scummy in real life than on the internet.

He sounds a real sweetheart:

We have been pretty rough on our girls. We’d ask our Russian staff to flash their asses or breasts for us. We’d tell them that if they wanted to keep their jobs, they’d have to perform unprotected anal sex with us. Nearly every day, we asked our female staff if they approved of anal sex. That was a fixation of ours. [...] It was all part of the fun.

 

[gawkrodger]

it should be noted he has since apologised and said he was a right twat (obv. not that it excuses the actions in the first place)

 

[Orang Utan]

I've been wanting to propose that but havent worked out how best to do it.

Who will decide who gets struck off the list for ideological crimes?

 

[Ming]

Jeremy Scahill is worth a look. Did great work exposing PMC's in Iraq (Blackwater mainly) and the drone program under Obama.
Democracy Now is a really good news source (Amy Goodman and crew).

 

[classicdish]

My favourite BBC journalist is Orla Guerin.

 

[oneflewover]

David Conn, works hard showing the dirty side of football.

He has been a good friend to Hull City in the past, but feel now, he has let us down. Posts passim.