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The best line on journalism…
My old favourite professional aphorism is this: a journalist’s duty is to betray. It neatly and bitterly encapsulates the moral, emotional and intellectual problems of reporting. But it’s not a tag to be repeated with pride, more of a dirty industrial secret. Last night Mohamed Chebaro, of Al Arabiya and a veteran of international news…
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The best of British journalism
There is a strangeness about the British press – the newspapers go from ponderous analysis to pure entertainment and they bring the techniques of journalism to bear on all of that content. But, at the British Press Awards, there was some outstanding journalism on display. To invidiously name just three of the winners: Sheila McNulty…
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10,000 visits
And now some news about this blog – since November 6th 2006 when I switched on sitemeter, this site has clocked up 10,000 visitors. Thanks to everyone who’s stopped by. I’m not a volume person, I’m a quality person, and I sense that reading this you’re a kind, intelligent, thoughtful individual with good personal hygiene…
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Afghanistan: not fit for America’s front page
Stella Artois beer is Belgian. In Belgium it is so cheap and plentiful, they could refill the canals of Bruges with its gaseous flows. In the UK, it’s marketed as an expensive and sophisticated Gallic brew – the kind of thing one might order to impress Emmanuelle Béart (showing my age there). It’s an old…