Who’d have thought that my new home city Bend, Oregon ( now over 100,000) would make national news spotlighting protestors and ordinary citizens trying to stop ICE from snatching 2 Hispanic men and hiding out in a bus in the middle of a tourist area?…
I have heard from several old friends who’ve inquired whether I’m alright because I had not posted on Facebook in a long time. I realised that I’d made only a brief Facebook comment about adding my voice to those protesting against Mark Zuckerberg’s s…
It was Santiago Lyon's Facebook posting on Sunday that reminded us that 20 years ago two of the best and most respected international journalists, Miguel Gil of AP and Kurt Schork of Reuters, were both killed on the same day in the same place, caught i…
I think that the Times new media critic Ben Smith - formerly chief editor of Buzzfeed, - is injecting a much needed edge to coverage of journalism and media. He rightly focuses on the pro-Biden, /anti- Sanders coverage that has dominated the …
Even I didn’t think that a triumphal Boris Johnson would risk blowing his considerable capital ( he won an 80-seat majority against the hapless Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn) by targeting the BBC. Yet Johnson appears to be doing exactly that. The Murdoch…
Living out here in deepest Oregon, I’m rediscovering just how important a source of international news is is the Al Jazeera English news channel. AJE has done first rate reporting and analysis on President Trump’s ordered killing of Iran’s Soleimani. W…
Very sad news about the death of Ward Just. He died yesterday. His reporting in Vietnam for the Washington Post was hugely admired. But then he gave up journalism to write novels that were always told against the backdrop of history and politics. He cr…
One of the great correspondents of my generation, Joe Schlesinger, died on February 11th at his home in Toronto. He celebrated his 90th birthday last May. This was a milestone that few of us thought that he'd reach given how many physical and health o…
The day after the House of Commons overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister May's Brexit bill, I was in Brussels at an event that had been scheduled long before we knew there'd be this historic vote the night before. Yet there we were celebrating the 20…
I've just finished watching the 4 -part documentary series on the New York Times. It should be mandatory viewing for any aspiring journalist and recommended viewing for citizens wanting to become more media literate. Whatever you think that you knew ab…