Worse than “cock-ups and casualties” at Thomson Reuters

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I wrote this comment in response to a commentary piece by ex-colleague and current friend Paul Holmes about recent editorial changes being for the better at Thomson Reuters, despite the recent “cock-ups and casualties”. I disagreed. Patrick Chalmers • I have a great deal of respect for Paul Holmes as an ex-colleague and as a […]

Setting The People Free – a meeting with the author

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I was delighted to spend a couple of hours today talking democracy with John Dunn, emeritus Professor of Political Theory at King’s College, Cambridge. Professor Dunn wrote the excellent “Setting the People Free“, a book that helped me nail down my thinking on the evolution of “democracy” since the Ancient Greeks coined a term for […]

Postcard from SW France

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It’s days to go before the first round in the 2012 French presidential elections. In Montbrun Bocage, a rural backwater south of Toulouse in the Pyrenean foothills, the atmosphere is hardly crackling with excitement. People here certainly know their politics but generally fail to find much passion for politicians. Given the bluntness of occasional votes […]

What’s the point of documentary film festivals?

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I’ve spent some of the past few days working with Glenn McMahon on covering the  Human Rights Watch Festival 2012 in London for visionOntv. We ended our interview series by asking HRW’s Andrea Holley on her organisation’s thinking about the hows and whys of these video fests. Are they preaching to the choir, reaching out […]

Industrial agriculture meets peasant farmers – who wins?

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I’m due to interview Bettina Borgfeld for visionOntv later today to talk about Raising Resistance, a film she co-directed with David Bernet about the fight of the small farmers of South America against industrial agriculture. The subject is one close to my heart, I covered a version of it over many years while working for Reuters […]

Indy media legacy documents Genoa G8 police violence

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNMAhN6PwAE&w=560&h=315]   Carlo Augusto Bachschmidt, director of the documentary Black Block, explains how work by independent media helped piece together the story of unprovoked Italian police violence at the G8 2001 summit meeting in Genoa. (Italian with English interpretation). His film features powerful testimonies by some of the dozens of activists who were savagely […]

Advice for independent journalists covering violent demos

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq95DvG8ZWE] Journalist Mark Covell was beaten unconscious by Italian police during the 2001 Genoa G8 summit. He speaks here about the power of independent media and how independent journalists should buddy up, train and prepare to cover potentially violent demos so as to keep safe. He was speaking before a screening of Black Block, […]

Mimi Chakarova talks about making “The Price of Sex”

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q7w4v1rheA&w=560&h=315] Documentary film-maker and photojournalist Mimi Chakarova talks about her film, the Price of Sex, which screened in London this week as part of the Human Rights Watch Festival 2012. Chakarova describes how it took her four years to persuade some of the East European women who’d been sold into sex slavery to tell […]