Frontlines: Snapshots of History - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1903684013 ISBN 13: 9781903684016

Publisher: Ft Pr, 2001

Synopsis

Frontlines: Snapshots of History is an inspired compilation of first-hand accounts of the events and individuals that have shaped and shaken our world.  Think of the major news stories of the postwar era.  Think of the places: the D-Day beaches, Everest, Vietnam, Hollywood, Berlin, and Tianenmen Square. Reuters journalists were there.  Think of the personalities of the last sixty years: Nelson Mandela, Jackie Kennedy, Che Guevara, Idi Imin, Charles de Gaulle, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Margaret Thatcher. Reuters journalists met them. Frontlines relates the personal stories of those correspondents who have found themselves in the most remarkable situations. What was it really like to tread on Chairman Mao s toes, meet Elvis, or report ringside from a Muhammed Ali fight? How does it feel when, in the turmoil of post-colonial Africa, you hear someone being executed outside your prison cell, or when, reporting on the war in Yugoslavia, your jeep is taken out by a landmine?  Written by award-winning Reuters journalists - many of whom have gone on to achieve celebrity status - and supported by breathtaking photography, Frontlines offers eyewitness accounts of the stories behind the pictures the world has seen, as well as providing a fascinating insight into the life of a foreign correspondent.

About this title

About the Author

Nicholas Moore was born in 1941 and spent his childhood in Africa. He joined Reuters as a trainee from Cambridge University in 1964 and reported from Pakistan, East Africa - where he covered the 1971 coup in which Idi Amin took power in Uganda - and the Lebanon, before becoming oil correspondent in 1980. He led a Reuters reporting team that in 1982 won the Prix Bernard J. Cabanes for covering the OPEC cartel. During the 1980's, based in Cairo, he was roving correspondent in the Middle East before he returned to oil at the end of the decade. He retired as training editor in 2000.

Sidney Weiland started working as a journalist for provincial newspapers in 1945, aged 17. He joined Reuters in 1949, covered various events in Eastern Europe and was appointed as a correspondent in Moscow in 1953. He did two tours in Moscow, interspersed with assignments in Yugoslavia, India, Washington and New York, and spent eight years in Vienna as Eastern Europe Correspondent. He was Reuters diplomatic editor from 1980 to 1986. After retirement owing to ill health, he established East European media training courses for the Reuters Foundation and later taught diplomatic journalism at City University, London.

From the Back Cover

Think if the major news stories of the postwar era,

Think of the places: the D-Day beaches, Everest, Vietnam, Hollywood, Berlin, and Tiananmen Square. Reuters journalists were there.

Think of the personalities of the last sixty years: Nelson Mandela, Jackie Kennedy, Che Guevara, Idi Amin, Charles de Gaulle, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Margaret Thatcher. Reuters journalists met them.

Frontlines relates the personal stories of those correspondents who have found themselves in the most remarkable situations. What was it really like to tread on Chairman MaoÕs toes, meet Elvis, or report ringside from Muhammed Ali fight? How does it feel when, in the turmoil of post-colonial Africa, you hear someone being executed outside your prison cell, or, when reporting on the war in Yugoslavia, your jeep is taken out by a landmine?

Written by award-winning Reuters journalists � many of whom have gone on to achieve celebrity status � and supported by breathtaking photography, Frontline offers eyewitness accounts of the stories behind the pictures the world has seen, as well as providing a fascinating insight into the life of a foreign correspondent.

"This is eye witness history but something more Ã� a personal group portrait by brave and committed journalists."—Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

"Much more than snapshots Ã� these are the first drafts of history. This is journalism at its finest, the hallmark of the Reuters legend."—Peter Sissons, broadcaster

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword

THE FURTHER AWAY the disaster - goes the old newsroom adage - the bigger it has to be. A more elegant expression of this idea comes from a style note that Reuters issued to its correspondents in 1883, when it described the news that it considered suitable to include in the service of those Victorian days:

'Fires, explosions, floods, inundations, railway accidents, destructive storms, shipwrecks attended with loss of life, accidents to British and American war vessels and to mail steamers, street riots of a grave character, disturbances arising from strikes, duels between, and suicides of, persons of note, social or political, and murders of a sensational character.'

News values may change but it will always be difficult to convey the reality of a country on one side of the world, without over-simplifying it, in a way that suits the taste of readers on the other. Foreign correspondents feel this keenly and they love to write in-depth pieces to put things in perspective. Indeed, they often write their best copy when they have leisure to study their subject properly, but by then the spotlight has often moved on. They may not be published.

Reuters journalists suffer the same frustrations, although their position is a little different. They are not writing for a single publication. There is always somebody who is interested.

Wherever the action is, Reuters is always there, lacking any particular prejudice as it follows events, and it is also true that such a consistent news agency presence can throw light on things that might otherwise escape the attention they deserve. It may indirectly assist freedom of expression where this is restricted.

While Vaclav Havel was in opposition in the former Czechoslovakia, news about him from organizations like Reuters established his existence in the mind of a world readership and may have protected him from arrest. We know of other politicians who have been in jail or even on death row who feel that regular reporting helped prevent them being forgotten, or obliterated.

In times of crisis we have a more direct impact because we report in real time, not to any particular deadline. We are among a few organizations that cause presidents to be woken up in the middle of the night.

We may do more than ring alarm bells; leaders under pressure and their antagonists may be influenced by a dispassionate view. For example, we believe that Nasser drew heavily on Reuters during the 1956 Suez crisis. A correspondent who covered that story, Aleco Joannides, describes in these pages how the chief news editor sent him a briefing letter that emphasized how the objectivity of his despatches should be beyond criticism.A steady news source may also restrain hasty actions that might be taken in the heat of the moment.

Not that we get at the whole truth everywhere. In the half century after World War II,many important events went virtually unreported. Little contemporary journalism exists on the Pol Pot massacres. It was difficult for Reuters even to enter Indonesia in the early sixties, so that the killings which followed its abortive communist coup in 1965were never properly reported.

The ability of governments to conceal the truth began to decay in the seventies. Organizations like Reuters were agents of this change but bigger forces were at work, such as the spread of literacy, prosperity and the increasing sophistication of global communications. At first, obsession with the Cold War had a blinding effect; Yuri Gagarin went on what was no doubt intended to be a spying mission. Only later did people began to realize the wider ramifications of satellite technology.

At the same time, the isolationism that sustained new post-war nations - and the despotic regimes of eastern Europe - was gradually superseded by a more outward-looking stance in the quest for trade, wealth and innovation.

It is arguable that Reuters induced change by participating in the financial revolution of the seventies, when the Bretton Woods system of fixed currency values gave way to floating exchange rates. This all started with a screen service called the Reuter Monitor, which harnessed information with computer technology to give instant valuations to users across the world. The Internet is now carrying the revolution in financial information to the individual investor.

The information age has suddenly shrunk the world beneath our pens, our keyboards. As an organization we do not claim that we have a special moral mission to make human beings understand each other better. Nevertheless, that has often been the effect of what we do.

The contributions by a just a few of our correspondents to this book - an informal initiative of their own - show how they chronicled some of the events that we remember from the end of World War II until the dawn of a new millennium and how they felt when they were doing that. In this, our 150th year, I hope you will enjoy reading these testimonies by men and women who have worked for one of the most exciting companies in the world. PETER JOB, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, REUTERS

Edition details

• Publisher: Ft Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1903684013
• ISBN 13: 9781903684016
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300
• Editor: Moore Nicholas, Weiland Sidney