A cheap way to deliver quick results as newspapers slug it out in hard times

May 24, 2010 · 1 comment

in Articles, journalism

Published in The Independent on Sunday, 24 May 2010.

The Duchess of York offers to “sell” her former husband’s services to a businessman for a promise of £500,000 and $40,000 in cash now.

The businessman turns out to be “the fake sheikh”, the News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood, and the Duchess finds herself splashed all over the front page of the newspaper.

Lord Triesman, the Football Association chairman, tells a young lady of his acquaintance about an alleged plot by the Spanish and Russians to bribe World Cup referees in South Africa. The young lady has a concealed tape recorder and Lord Triesman finds himself splashed over the front pages of the newspapers.

A good week for undercover reporting? Or a shameful example of invasion of privacy, entrapment and shoddy, lazy journalism?

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Reporting from the war zone

May 20, 2010 · 0 comments

in Articles, journalism, propaganda

Published in The Khaleej Times.

With the war in Afghanistan taking place in a news vacuum — when did you last read in the mainstream media a report on what is happening there — journalism academics have turned their attention to previous wars to see what lessons, if any, have been learnt.

In the current edition of the journal Media, War and Conflict, Michael Griffin, visiting professor of Media Studies at Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota, blows away some of the media myths that have grown around the war in Vietnam.

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The trite age of Twitterati

April 30, 2010 · 0 comments

in journalism

Published in The Khaleej Times.

One of the most exciting features about the general election campaign currently being fought in Britain has been the relegation to the sidelines of the media, especially the political commentary writers. This has been due partly to the introduction of TV debates between the leaders on the three parties, Labour, Conservatives and Liberals, and partly to the intervention of the Internet, particular the Twitterati.

How the political leaders must be ruing the day that they agreed to the TV debates. And how the political commentators must be kicking themselves for failing to realise that the debates would make them redundant.

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When they’re dying for a cause

April 19, 2010

The big unanswered question in the never-ending war on terror, the question the West is afraid to tackle, is: how can we win against an enemy who is prepared to die for the cause he or she espouses? How can we beat the suicide bomber?
The West has tried to play down their role in the [...]

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Of masters, slaves and scandals

April 5, 2010

Every now and then you can come across a book that is so startling that it changes your view of the world. I found such a book this week. It is one of the great love stories of all time and it concerns Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and a humble Muslim man from Agra, [...]

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‘War on Terror’, Excuse Me…

March 20, 2010

It is nearly nine years since President Bush declared a global war on terror so it is fair to ask: how is it going? Well, the first point to make is that it is not called a war on terror anymore. It is the “global struggle against violent extremists”.
But whatever it is termed, the answer [...]

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Peace Correspondents

January 17, 2010

Some years ago I attended a conference outside London run by a Buddhist organization who wanted to know why the Western media had dozens of war correspondents on their staffs but not a single peace correspondent. It was a simple, fair and important question and although we argued about it for hours no satisfactory answer [...]

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Welcome to Phillip Knightley.com

December 16, 2008

These are the homepages of distinguished journalist and author Phillip Knightley. An Australian by birth, Phillip became part of the celebrated Sunday Times Insight team from the 1950s to the 1970s, breaking such famous stories as the Kim Philby spy scandal, the Profumo sex scandal and exposing the effects of thalidomide on new-born babies.
Now an [...]

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Adventures in Journalism: Tall Tales and True Scoops

November 26, 2008

Phillip was the guest lecturer last night at City University’s Graduate School of Journalism in a talk titled Adventures in Journalism: Tall Tales and True Scoops.

The lecture was written up by Journalism.co.uk, a short excerpt of which is below (click here for the full story).

Journalists working in a digital age should not underestimate the importance of ‘off-the-street’ whistleblowing, investigative journalist and author Phillip Knightley has said.

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