Past Programs
Journalism - 2006
Assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya
09/10/2006
Leading radical Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was a hero to many. Considered her country's 'lost moral conscience', Politkovskaya was known for her courageous and outspoken coverage of the war in Chechnya and corruption within the armed forces, reports that put her on a collision course with the authorities.
Yesterday brought the tragic news that the 48-year-old was found shot dead in the hallway of the building where she lived in Moscow.
Now many, including the human rights group Amnesty International, are saying that Politkovskaya was murdered for her work as a reporter and that her death had all the hallmarks of a contract killing.
Aside from her work on Chechnya, Politkovkskaya was brought in as a key negotiator in the Moscow theatre siege. In 2002, her attempts to cover the school hostage crisis in Beslan were thwarted when she suffered from a suspected poisoning on her way to the region. It was one of many threats on her life.
Her 2004 book, Putin's Russia, was a devastating appraisal of the policies of Russia's current head of state and his campaign in Chechnya, documenting widespread abuse of civilians by government troops. And it was that book that brought her to Sydney in May of this year, where she was a guest at the Sydney Writers' Festival. The Book Show was there to record her session. Here she is with translator Ludmilla Stern.
The history of reportage (transcript available) Read Transcript
07/05/2006
It is one of ironies of conflict, that while a country might win a war of weapons abroad, it could just as easily lose the war of words at home. The flow of information in times of national stress can become heavily contested and contentious, with the machinery of propaganda attempting to undermine, intimidate or block the engines of independent journalism.
So at a time when these issues are close to the minds of both government and the media, what can we learn from the past? Do we understand the role of the journalist? Is the idea of independence in the media over-rated or under-valued? And could we lose our access to voices of truth, simply through carelessness?
To discuss these crucial issues, Ramona Koval has invited a couple of experts on these topics ... Oxford Professor of English John Carey, who is editor of The Faber Book of Reportage, and Martin Flanagan, who is a writer and journalist of many years.
And Radio National's Tony Barrell speaks to UK writer and BBC documentary-maker Nicholas Rankin about the life of journalist GL Steer. George Steer was the person who alerted the world to the bombing of Guernica by the Germans at the end of the Spanish Civil War, and Nicholas Rankin's book, Telegram from Guernica: The Extraordinary Life Of George Steer, War Correspondent, tells us much about the pressures and obstacles that journalists have always faced when trying to report the truth.
Michael Hofmann on Joseph Roth
04/05/2006
We visit the Berlin of the 1920s and 30s, seen through the eyes of author and journalist Joseph Roth and revived for us in sparkling form by his translator, the poet, writer and critic Michael Hofmann.
Joseph Roth was born in 1894 and, after serving in the First World War, he started writing for newspapers in Vienna and later in Berlin. When he was appointed Paris Correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, he was one of the best-paid journalists in Germany. His greatest novel is agreed to be The Radetzky March. Nine of Roth's books have been translated into English and there are more on the way.
Ramona Koval talks to Michael Hofmann about the enduring impact of Joseph Roth's writing and about his own role in the establishment of these works as classics.
That's this week on Books & Writing, with Ramona Koval at 7.25 Sunday evening and repeated at 1.05 on Wednesday afternoon ... on Radio National.
