With speakers:

Stephen Grey, investigative journalist embedded with British troops in Helmand and author: “Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege“, and “Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program”

Guy Smallman, photojournalist, recently returned from Afghanistan

Seumas Milne, columnist, the Guardian

And others

Monday July 13, 7pm

Friends Meeting House (small hall)

173 Euston Road, NW1 2BJ, opposite Euston station

Map: http://tinyurl.com/p33vhf

All welcome!

Hosted by Media Workers Against the War / Stop the War Coalition

www.mwaw.net / www.stopwar.org.uk

Speakers appear in a personal capacity

For more information and flyers: tel 0207 801 2768

With speakers:

Dahr Jamail, independent journalist in Iraq and author of “Beyond the Green Zone“

Nick Davies, award-winning Guardian journalist and author of “Flat Earth News“

Kim Sengupta, defence and diplomatic correspondent, the Independent

Lindsey German, national convenor, Stop the War Coalition

Venue: The Old Lecture Theatre, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street (2 mins from Oxford Circus)

Date and time: Thursday April 10, 7pm

Called by: Media Workers Against the War

Tickets: £5, £3 (concessions)

On April 9, 2003, Baghdad “fell” to US troops. The event was welcomed by a torrent of gushing media coverage. When Saddam’s statue was toppled that day in Firdoz Square, the British media unleashed a string of superlatives. But Robert Fisk called it “the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima“.
Five years on, we have to say: the media have hardly changed in the way they lap up propaganda from the military and the government. The collusion of senior media editors in the blackout on Prince Harry in Helmand last month gave the military a propaganda coup, boosting the notion that Britain is fighting a glamorous and just war.

This event will ask how this has happened and how we can change the situation.

Buy your ticket for this event now:

For more information, email info@mwaw.net

Background information on Dahr Jamail:

Chemical weapons in Fallujah: How he broke the story

“I have interviewed many refugees over the last week coming out of Fallujah at different times from different locations within the city. The consistent stories that I have been getting have been refugees describing phosphorus weapons, horribly burned bodies, fires that burn on people when they touch these weapons, and they are unable to extinguish the fires even after dumping large amounts of water on the people.”

Dahr Jamail on Democracy Now, Nov 29, 2004

His new book: What the reviewers said

Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq
www.beyondthegreenzone.org

“While so much reporting from Iraq has remained embedded and wrong, Dahr Jamail’s courageous truth-telling from the frontline has been a beacon.”
John Pilger

“Essential for anybody who wants to know what is really happening in Iraq. A book which reports what Iraqis endure and what has happened to them during the occupation.”
Patrick Cockburn, foreign correspondent, The Independent, author, The Occupation

“From the earliest days of the war, Jamail has been a human conduit for the voices of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. In the face of tremendous personal risk, his commitment to the crucial, principled task of bearing witness has never wavered, and this extraordinary book is the result.”
Naomi Klein, author, The Shock Doctrine and No Logo

“What is chilling about Jamail’s accounts is the routine destructiveness of the US forces; how they demolish nearby homes after a roadside bomb, leave unexploded munitions in the fields of farmers who don’t give information, bulldoze orchards. Livelihoods destroyed, families displaced every day, incubating hatred. One of the worst episodes occurred when Jamail’s friend was caught by chance at prayer time in a mosque when worshippers were shot dead, with children trapped in the mayhem: a holy place desecrated in a US operation. We may know nothing of such routine details of the prosecution of this war, but these are the stories filling the Arabic media.”
Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian

Mounting political and commercial pressures are affecting the freedom to report as never before. Hear leading journalists, broadcasters and union campaigners on why an unfettered media is central to democracy, and how we can mobilise to defend freedom of information and expression

Saturday 26 January 2008
9.30am-4.30pm
National Union of Journalists
308 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8DP
(King’s Cross Underground)

Speakers include:
Alan Johnston, former BBC correspondent in Gaza, recently held hostage, on covering conflict
Martin Bright, New Statesman political editor, on the anti-terror laws
Peter Wilby, former editor, Independent on Sunday, on the Murdoch empire
Granville Williams, media commentator & CPBF, on media ownership
Victoria Brittan, freelance journalist and author, on the narrowing news spectrum
Jo Glanville, editor, Index on Censorship, on secrecy and censorship
Heather Brooke, freelance journalist and author, on the Freedom of Information Act
Joy Francis, managing director, the Creative Collective on reporting diversity
David Crouch, Media Workers Against the War, on bias in war reporting
Jeremy Dear, NUJ general secretary, on defending quality journalism
Chris Frost, NUJ ethics council, on fair reporting
Tony Lennon, BECTU president, on the crisis at the BBC and wider implications
Paul Mason, Newsnight correspondent, on how BBC journalists are organising
Aidan White, general secretary, International Federation of Journalists, on the fight for media freedom world-wide

Download the full conference programme here

Tickets: £10 / £7

Download a registration form here

NUJ ADM fringe meeting, Birmingham

Islamophobia, the media and the “war on terror”

Thursday April 12, 6.30pm

Speakers:
Michelle Stanistreet/Steve Usher, Express and Star
Andrew Murray, chair, Stop the War Coalition
Pete Murray, NEC member
Somaye Zadeh, BBC World Service BECTU activist
Venue: Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham
(200m from conference)

Directions: Turn left out of the hotel, go past New Street station on your left, through the underpass, left along Moor Street to Carrs Lane (on your left).
All welcome! More details: tel 07801 789 297