NY Observer > BBC

60 Months in the Red Zone

Felix Gillette, Matt Haber and John Koblin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:10:48 -0400

“It’s the oft-stated phrase that truth is the first casualty of war,” said Michael Ware, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, on the telephone from Iraq. “In this war, as in every other conflict, everybody lies to you. Your government is lying to you. The Iraqi government is lying. The insurgents are lying. The militias are lying. The U.S. military is lying. Even the civilians lie. Or in the best case, there’s confusion and exaggeration. The truth is the most elusive thing in war, particularly in an insurgency.”

Sixty-two months into the war, this is the language of the American journalist in Iraq. It’s not the only language; there are others: Cyclical, monotonous, brutal, strategic, hopeful. But slowly, as Iraq slips from the front pages and Web pages, today’s news starts to sound like yesterday’s; violence explodes; a spectacular military success, or failure. Casualty lists grow until they become incomprehensible, and then unreadable, unquantifiable. Against that metronomic numbness, 90 American journalists (according to a November 2007 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism) continue to work a dangerous war that becomes a harder and harder story to sell to Americans. As the American press corps gets older, wearier—and simultaneously younger and more untested as the veterans leave—there are truths that some of the reporters of Baghdad have learned about the war in Iraq. read more »

Bloomberg on Hillary Clinton's Dream

Katharine Jose — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:35:13 -0400

In case you missed it, here (courtesy of Em Whitney) is a bit of Michael Bloomberg's Friday interview with the BBC in which he explains his opinion that the long Democratic primary is bad for John McCain:

Although journalists on this side of the Atlantic have more or less stopped asking the question, Michael Bloomberg was once again pressed for his position on presidential politics during an interview with BBC Newsnight last Friday. read more »

Man Booker Prize Celebrates 40th Birthday With 'Best of the Booker" Award

Joe Pompeo — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:46:10 -0500

It was 1993 when Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was honored as the best novel to have ever won theMan Booker Prize for Fiction in the prestigious literary accolade’s 25-year history. Now, Booker has announced it will present a second one-off award, “The Best of the Booker,” to celebrate its 40th anniversary, the BBC reports. A panel of judges will select six eligible books before handing the final decision over to the public, which can vote for their favorite novel via the Booker’s Web site starting in May. Each year since 1969, the Booker Prize has rewarded what it deems the year’s best novel written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland -- in addition to the acclaim and a boost in book sales, the winner also receives 50,000 GBP. Last year, the honor went to Anne Enright for her novel The Gathering, and in 2006, it went to Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss. Both authors have been able to embark on worldwide book tours as a result.

Doctor Who Producer Dies

Felix Gillette — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:05:52 -0500

Sad news for Doctor Who fans. The British sci-fi show's first producer, Verity Lambert, an influential and respected force in scripted television in the UK, passed away last night at the age of 71.

"Lambert was also the BBC's only female producer in 1963 when she worked on the time-travel drama that grew to become one of the UK's most popular TV shows," reports The Guardian. "She died last night following a long illness, but was 'working right up until the end', according to the BBC."

BBC Layoffs Postponed, Strike Averted (For Now)

Observer Staff — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:51:48 -0400

According to Guardian Unlimited, the BBC has postponed for a few more weeks their plans to start mining their ranks in search of 1800 redundancies.

"Bectu, the National Union of Journalists and Unite had threatened to ballot their members from this afternoon if the BBC went ahead with an immediate call for redundancies from today," reported The Guardian's website.

"In a letter to unions this morning, the BBC said it still planned to press on with the plan, but would wait two weeks to give it time to hold talks with them," the report added.