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Newsgathering online: the missing canoeist
From the Guardian: A single mother put police and journalists to shame in their attempts to unravel the mysterious reappearance of the canoeist John Darwin by using a simple Google search, it emerged today… It was found by the anonymous woman after she tapped in the words “John, Anne and Panama” into Google. She then…
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Belly dancing bylines
Who was the reporter whose byline was borrowed by Con Coughlin (according to Andrew Gilligan) for a story on belly-dancing assassins? Well, the mysterious member of staff was none other than award-winning foreign reporter Christina Lamb, then diplomatic correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph. Can Lamb shed any light on the mystery?
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Reporting Iraq before the war: journalists, spies, and belly-dancers
My City University colleague Roy Greenslade recently reported on a speech by Andrew Gilligan in Bristol: Gilligan explained how shadowy spokespeople for MI5 and MI6 brief selected journalists and that what they say has to be taken on trust because it cannot be checked with another source. “A number of journalists,” he said, “are rather…
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Top talent salaries – how much would you pay to be on the BBC?
Talking to a telly presenter chum last night, we mused over the fact that you never hear broadcast execs bragging about how little they paid for talent. Instead, the sum handed over is somehow supposed to represent an “independent” estimation of worth. Don’t take the word of some hapless telly type reassuring you about X’s…