I’m midway through one of my occasional trawls of the world’s newspapers and magazines, searching for new markets for my work. It’s a dispiriting exercise. Every year publications seem to devote less space to hard-hitting foreign features and photojournalism, with one apparent exception. Women’s magazines are better known for fashion than foreign corresponding. But browsing [...]
I recently met a Filipino journalist in General Santos City who doesn’t carry a reporter’s notebook. What Joseph Jubelag carries is a “Reporter’s Notebook And Safety Guide”. It is distributed by the International News Safety Institute, a group set up “to help journalists survive the story”. The notebook is prefaced with advice on how to [...]
Today, I walked through the near-deserted Rajaprasong protest site in a state of disbelief. I went to interview the last remaining Red Shirts—many of them women, children and elderly—who had sought refuge in Pathumwanaram temple as troops stormed this area of central Bangkok on Wednesday. With dozens of their comrades dead, and their leaders either [...]
Three journalists were among the dozens of people injured in today’s violence in Bangkok. Courtesy of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT)—which lies inside the Red Shirt protest site at Rajaprasong—here are some safety tips for reporters working in this increasingly dangerous city. I should stress that this is not an official FCCT comminique, [...]
One person was killed and scores injured in the latest violence in Bangkok last night. The M-79 grenades which caused the carnage were, said the government, fired from the direction of Lumphini Park, where thousands of red-shirt protesters remain encamped. The reds deny firing them. The fact remains: someone lobbed high explosives into rush-hour crowds, [...]
Two more people, a soldier and a civilian, have died of injuries from Saturday’s clashes in Bangkok between the army and red-shirt protesters, bringing the death toll to 23. Anyone living here is also aware that Thailand is currently racking up a second and far higher body count. Road accidents killed 114 people and injured [...]
Shocking video footage of U.S. helicopter gunships killing a dozen people, including two Reuters staff, in Iraq in 2007 has caused global outrage. So has the Pentagon’s shameless response: a tepid expression of regret, followed by a war-is-hell shrug. But outrage was conspicuously lacking from a statement issued by Reuters chief David Schlesinger. I asked [...]
One of the last rituals of the Buddhist year in Thailand is also one of the most unpopular: the draft. Every young Thai man must present himself for military service and, if he is not stupid or desperate enough to volunteer, can be drafted by lottery. He will then spend up to two years in [...]
I see a lot of photographers wearing or carrying hard hats to the red shirt protests. But the essential gear is a set of earplugs. Today the reds threw out a solid wall of noise as they rolled down Silom Road, home to the Patpong night market, on trucks and motorbikes. Whistles, horns, foot-shaped plastic [...]
So who’s winning then: the red shirts or the yellow shirts? Hard to tell, I know, but perhaps a glance at their protest strategies will help us decide. First, the yellows. In 2008, they not only mustered their largest forces during the cool season, but then chose to occupy Suvarnabhumi airport—one of the largest air-conditioned [...]