Latest news with #foreigncorrespondent
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Vulture by Phoebe Greenwood: The darkly comic despair of the foreign correspondent
This novel doesn't need the old-fashioned disclaimer that any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, because plainly it isn't. Like her heroine, Sara Byrne, author Phoebe Greenwood was a freelance newspaper correspondent on the Middle East. Sara manages to find a job in Gaza and gets to stay at the one decent place, the Beach Hotel. It represents the Al Deira, destroyed by Israeli forces last year, to which the book is dedicated. 'Much like rich Turks, American network crews like nice hotels,' she writes. 'They like airy, sea-fronting suites and restaurants with uniformed waiters where they can eat French fries and safely watch the war raging in the street and skies outside on big TV screens.' That is what the novel, Greenwood's debut, mercilessly depicts — the world of the foreign correspondent. We meet the all-important fixers, the locals who make good money out of providing the hacks with contacts and interviews. Sara launches forays accompanied by fixer Nasser, who regards her with disdain and pity. But he does set up decent interviews, like one with the director of the emergency unit at the hospital who observes: 'I would like to ease their pain, but we're running out of anaesthetic and even basic painkillers.' No fiction there. After a bombing outside the hospital, Sara sees a body: 'It came out backwards, very close to my face, one flip-flop dangling from a dusty foot, skinny and bloody but intact. It was the face that was missing.' But she's under pressure to outperform the competition. And Sara's judgment isn't what it was once. She is also an unattractive character, physically and morally, even among a cohort of unattractive journalists. When she courts disaster and it engulfs others, she has nothing to offer. 'You come, you watch us die, you watch us grieve … you take our stories, you go home,' a bereaved mother tells her. This sobering, blackly humorous and acutely observed book is based on events more than a decade ago. The depressing thing is that nothing much has changed. Melanie McDonagh is a columnist for The London Standard Vulture by Phoebe Greenwood is out now (Europa Editions, £16.99)
News.com.au
12-07-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Aluminium foil, soap save Aussie's life in foreign prison
When a colleague died in his arms on a packed Somalian street, anyone would have forgiven award-winning journalist Peter Greste for deciding that the job of foreign correspondent – the role he'd dedicated his career to – was no longer for him. 'It actually made me more bloody-minded about it,' he told Gary Jubelin's I Catch Killers podcast this week. 'I questioned our own decision-making. I questioned the processes that we went through. But I never really questioned the value or the importance of what we were doing.' Greste and his team – including producer Kate Payton – had been covering the story of 2005 Somalia, a country that, like Afghanistan before it – was being torn apart from rival clan militias. 'We knew it was dangerous. We went in with eight armed bodyguards and a technical with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the back. We had battlefield first aid kits. We had battlefield body armour.' 'But at the same time, we knew that Westerners and aid workers had not been targeted for almost 10 years,' Greste continues. Greste explains that after having a few meetings inside a compound where some other journalists had been staying in Mogadishu, his team had decided to leave. 'And as we walked out, I stood on the curb of the car and Kate walked around to the street,' he recalls. 'There was a single crack. Everyone dropped to the deck.' What happened next – a blur of shouting, some gunning of engines – still didn't reveal where the shot had come from, but as there was no additional gunfire, Greste stood back up. 'I saw Kate slumped across the back of the vehicle, and I went round to her, and as I did, she put her head against my chest and I rubbed her back – just to say, 'look, it's okay, I know you've got a fright.' I didn't realise she'd been hit until my hand came up with blood.' Kate Payton was rushed to hospital and into surgery, but she never made it out. And in spite of the horrific experience and the tragic loss of his colleague Kate, Greste became even more determined to keep covering the news the world needed to hear. 'And that's the fundamental point here, Gary,' he explains, 'It's the way in which both governments and extremists have come to regard journalism as the enemy. 'They've come to regard in this battle of ideas, the people that interrogate ideas, that transmit ideas, to try to understand ideas, those are the people that they need to get rid of.' In comments that feel particularly timely given global events, Greste reiterates that the war on media is happening all over the world. 'And as I said, it's not just those extremists – governments the world over have come to use [this as a tactic].' It was a lesson Greste would relearn in the most horrific of circumstances less than a decade later. In late 2013, having been working for Al Jazeera English for two years, Greste was sent to Cairo for Christmas. His assignment – covering the unfolding political crisis in Egypt following the military's ousting of President Mohamed Morsi and the subsequent crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Just weeks after arriving, on December 28, 2013, Greste heard a knock at the door. 'I was about to go out for dinner with a friend of mine, a BBC correspondent who was also in town over that period, who I hadn't seen for a while and I was looking forward to catching up,' he explains. 'I was getting dressed and there was a knock on the door. I didn't think too much of it. If anyone ever wanted to speak to me, they'd use the phone, but, you know, there was a … Rather more urgent knock. Soon after that, a lot more forceful. I remember cracking the door open and as I did, it was flung open as if there was a powerful spring behind it. 'The room was filled with 10 guys, who moved with a professionalism that suggested that these guys weren't just a bunch of thugs that were raiding the room.' Greste and two Al Jazeera colleagues, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, were arrested. They were charged with terrorism-related offences, including 'broadcasting false news to undermine national security' and 'aiding a terrorist group'. The Egyptian authorities linked Al Jazeera's reporting to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, effectively criminalising their journalism. And while he awaited trial, Greste kept thinking one thing: this has to be a mistake. 'It was pretty scary,' he says. 'Fahmy and I were together in the first cell, and we had the night there in that box,' continues Greste. 'It was very, very tight. We were literally like sardines. If you're lying down, you all have to roll over together. You had to lie on the same side. You had to co-ordinate movements. 'The following night was even worse. Fahmy was taken to a different prison. I was taken into this police cell. It was about eight feet square. No reading, no furniture. You know, just a leaky tap and leaky sink in one corner with a tap and a rather stinky squat toilet in the other and a door and that was it. And in that concrete box there were 16 guys. 'Some of the guys had been in that cell for the better part of six months and they were quite literally losing their minds. The kind of psychological pressure of confinement, of that type of confinement is immense. And I realised then that this was getting pretty serious.' Greste was soon moved to solitary confinement, where he was housed alongside 'several leaders of the Arab Spring uprising, the pro-democracy activists, writers, poets, activists, lawyers, trade unionists, all sorts of civil society actors,' as he describes them. 'There's no reading material. You've got to look after your own mind,' he explains. 'In the absence of anything else to do with your mind, you start to play the movie of your life on the walls of the cell. 'I remember previous relationships, previous exes that I'd let down, Kate's murder, all of that stuff was going through my mind,' he continues. And then, the impossible reality Greste feared was realised in June 2014, when he and his colleagues were convicted of charges including 'falsifying news' and 'having a negative impact on overseas perceptions of Egypt' and sentenced to seven years in prison. In the face of despair, Greste explains that there were moments of beauty as well – moments that may well have saved him. 'Sometimes the food would come wrapped in aluminium foil,' he explains. 'And I don't know if you know it, but aluminium foil has a shiny side and a matte side, and I discovered that foil actually sticks quite well to the prison walls if you smear it with soap. And so we made these big murals on the wall, which reflected the light better than we anticipated.' 'It was beautiful,' Greste continues, 'It was actually quite beautiful.' Greste would spend another seven months in jail before an intense, prolonged international campaign forced a retrial, during which Egypt's Court of Cassation overturned the initial convictions. This legal development, coupled with a new Egyptian law allowing for the deportation of foreign nationals, paved the way. Finally, on February 1, 2015, after 400 days, Greste was released via presidential decree and deported to Australia, a moment widely celebrated but tempered by the continued imprisonment of his colleagues, who were finally released in September of the same year.
Forbes
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Fox News' Trey Yingst On Reporting: ‘I Try Hard To Highlight Humanity'
Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst. The first time I interviewed Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst, it was during the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He'd just returned from a reporting trip that took him, among other places, to a metro station in Kyiv — where he'd noticed a father chasing his young son through the tunnels as air raid sirens screamed aboveground. The boy, too young to grasp the danger, was playing and laughing; a fleeting moment of innocence, juxtaposed against the backdrop of war. For all the missile strikes, civilian casualties, and frontline chaos that he's reported on since joining Fox News in 2018, such flickers of humanity are what the 31-year-old Yingst always has at the back of his mind whenever he straps on his flak jacket and sets out to cover a world on fire. 'I'm often disappointed by the lack of empathy and curiosity that some humans have for one another,' the Jerusalem-based correspondent told me, days after the recent US strike on three nuclear sites inside Iran that set the world on edge. 'With that in mind, I try hard to highlight humanity amid war, to encourage empathy from viewers and to educate our audience in a way that connects, rather than divides.' Reporting the human cost of war for Fox News For correspondents like him, bearing witness in the world's broken places, that's easier said than done. Especially since Yingst's reporting has meant venturing to some of the most volatile corners of the Middle East — like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Gaza. Among the tools he packs for those assignments are his laptop and phone, the background of which reads 'Stay focused on the mission,' as well as a Fujifilm X-T3. He'll take that camera into the field to snap photos for his personal Instagram feed, as well as for 'Experience Humans,' the social media-based photojournalism project he created to capture the dignity and resilience of ordinary people he encounters. Photos he's uploaded to that account include a protest scene he snapped just days ago in Tel Aviv, featuring demonstrators outside the US embassy calling for a ceasefire and the return of hostages. His page also features devastating photos of onlookers near a blast site in Be'er Sheva; aid workers in Tel Aviv carrying wounded children after a ballistic missile strike; and an uncaptioned photo of a smiling young woman in Syria with her country's flag drawn on one of her cheeks. 'It's a passion project,' Yingst says of the photojournalism that augments his broadcasts for Fox News. 'I want someone to be able to look at a photo or video I took and say: 'Hey, those people seem just like me.' Most of the time, that's the case. Civilians make up the majority of every conflict we cover around the world.' 'Shine a light in dark places' That's an example of how, even though his beat frequently intersects with geopolitics and world-shaping events, Yingst tries to stay rooted in individual stories. 'I think that it's easy for the public to demonize large groups of people -- when in reality, every society exists on a spectrum with a variety of viewpoints,' he says. 'There are 2 million people in Gaza. There are 10 million people in Israel. There are 90 million people in Iran. These are humans. 'I try to capture this reality not only in our TV reports, but also across social media. I've leaned heavily into TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook to connect with a younger audience (that) is increasingly interested in the reporting we do at Fox News. These frontline, real-time updates give people a taste of the work we're doing and encourage them to see more by tuning in.' Yingst doesn't downplay the emotional toll of the work. He's seen mass graves in Ukraine, morgues in Syria, and the devastation in southern Israel following the October 7th attacks. But despite the danger and pressure, he remains as driven as ever. 'This is my life. This job is everything to me. I'm truly obsessed with the work. I like having the ability to shine light in dark places and to have a global audience feel empathy for the subjects I interview.' Life away from the camera What I don't think I appreciated about Yingst, the first time I interviewed him, was just how physically demanding the work of a foreign correspondent is — requiring him to essentially train like an athlete in order to endure the exhaustion and stress of reporting from conflict zones. He squeezes in time for a workout whenever the chaos allows, even during coverage of something like a missile strike. 'There was one night after we'd been reporting for two days straight. The adrenaline from covering missile impact sites and reporting under fire was still pumping. I got to the gym around midnight and got a great workout in.' The discipline of a fitness regimen, he adds, is non-negotiable. 'I go to the gym daily. Eat clean. Do ice plunges and cold showers. Go on runs and walks. Even during the war (in Gaza), I made a point to work out when I could. His hotel room setup reflects that same intensity. 'I've got 10 black T-shirts folded in my hotel room overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. I wear the same thing every day. A black T-shirt and jeans. Clean, focused, on-brand.' Nearby are his camera, a legal pad with TikTok ideas, and three bags of what he describes as one of his vices — Haribo gummy bears. Even with missile strikes and breaking news never far from his view, meanwhile, Yingst keeps one eye on the battlefield and the other on – the algorithm. While answering my questions, for example, there's a yellow legal notepad besides his laptop that's filled with ideas for TikTok content to shoot. 'I'm aiming for 1 million followers by the end of the summer, so I'm trying to ramp up my content strategies,' he said about his TikTok page. It's a revealing snapshot of what the job has become: In 2024, a Fox News foreign correspondent doesn't just file dispatches from war zones. He also has to think like a content creator, building an audience one post at a time.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Yahoo
Sandy Gall: Journalist who took on war zones around the world
The craggy looks of Sandy Gall, who has died aged 97, were familiar to television viewers as both a foreign correspondent in the world's war zones and a newscaster – one of the 'faces' of ITV's News at Ten – who brought calm authority to the stories he presented. His twice-broken nose was the result of a minicab crash, but it gave the 6ft 1in, lean journalist an appearance of having taken part in some of the battles he reported. Gall joined ITN, the commercial channel's news provider, in 1963 after 10 years at the news agency Reuters, where he had covered events during a turbulent period in history, from the Mau Mau rebellion and the Suez crisis to post-revolution Hungary and the Congo wars. For television, he reported from Vietnam in 1965, when the United States sent in the Marines. He returned to the country several times – covering the Tet Offensive in 1968 – and courageously decided to stay on in Saigon in 1975 to witness the North Vietnamese Army's liberation and the aftermath. Three years earlier, Gall had been imprisoned in Uganda after being sent to cover the dictator Idi Amin's expulsion from the country of all Asians holding British passports. He was thrown into hut C19, the execution cell at the military police barracks in Makindye. There were bullet holes in the walls, with blood splattered on the ceiling, and Gall thought he heard the sound of a man being beaten to death with a shovel. 'I felt sick with fear and suddenly cold,' he recalled. 'I began to pray.' Fortunately, after a short time, he was moved to the 'VIP cell' and, three days later, deported. Gall had a longer association with Afghanistan, which began with his reporting from the rebel mujahideen side three years after the Soviet invasion for his ITV documentary Afghanistan: Behind Russian Lines (1982). He subsequently made Allah Against the Gunships (1984), when his team received protection from Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq's Special Forces, and Agony of a Nation (1986). In Don't Worry About the Money Now, Gall's first book of memoirs, published in 1983, he wrote: 'A journalist, as an observer, has to be an outsider looking in and, once he loses that sort of independence, once he becomes, even slightly, part of the Establishment, he is in danger of losing his credibility.' That principle appeared to be compromised when, a year later, he was invited to lunch with the head of MI6 and shared his first-hand knowledge of Afghanistan. Gall aired his view that the mujahideen had no weapon with which to counter the Soviets' Mi-24 helicopter gunships. Shortly afterward, the Americans asked the British to supply the rebels with a ground-to-air missile, which marked a turning point in the war. In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its final forces from Afghanistan, an event covered by Gall for ITN. Another legacy of his reporting from the country was Sandy Gall's Afghanistan Appeal, the charity he set up in 1983 to provide artificial limbs, other aids and physiotherapy to those suffering disabilities as a result of the war. He continued to visit Afghanistan throughout its subsequent turbulent history and made the documentaries Veil of Fear (1996, for World in Action), Sandy's War: Face of the Taliban (2001, for Tonight) and Afghanistan: War without End (2004). He also authored several books: Behind Russian Lines: An Afghan Journal (1983), Afghanistan: Agony of a Nation (1988), War Against the Taliban: Why It All Went Wrong in Afghanistan (2013) and Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud (2021). Henderson Alexander Gall was born in Penang, Malaysia, in 1927 to Jean (née Begg) and Henderson Gall, a Scottish rubber planter. He was educated at Glenalmond College in Perthshire and served in the RAF from 1945 to 1948). He graduated from Aberdeen University in 1952 with an MA in French and German, and began his career at the Aberdeen Press and Journal. The following year, he joined Reuters and, after several months in its London office, served as a correspondent in Cold War Berlin, Nairobi, Suez, Bonn, Budapest and Johannesburg. While based in South Africa, he covered the Congo. In 1960, he was the first to report the rape of Belgian women, including nuns, by Congolese who saw no immediate change in the weeks after receiving independence from Belgium. Gall admitted to being nervous in front of the camera on joining ITN in 1963, but he was soon bringing his experience – and impressive contacts book – to reporting from trouble spots, including the Congo again, Borneo, the Six-Day War and Biafra. He became a newscaster in 1968 and first presented News at Ten two years later, although he continued to report from around the world. He also made documentaries for ITV, including Lord of the Lions (1989), about conservationist George Adamson. Gall retired from ITN as a newscaster in January 1990 but continued as a reporter to cover the first Gulf War (1990-91) and the fall of the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime in Afghanistan (1992), then made occasional television documentaries. In 2003, he became world affairs editor of the London news station LBC, joining its breakfast show to comment on global issues. His second volume of memoirs, News from the Front: A Television Reporter's Life, was published in 1994. As a novelist, he wrote the thrillers Gold Scoop (1977), Chasing the Dragon (1981) and Salang (1990). Gall was appointed CBE in 1988 and, for services to the people of Afghanistan, Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 2011. He won the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal in 1987 for his Afghanistan reports and was rector of the University of Aberdeen from 1978 to 1981. In 1958, Gall married Eleanor Smyth; she died in 2018. He is survived by his son, Alexander, and three daughters, Fiona, Carlotta and Michaela. Sandy Gall, journalist, born 1 October 1927, died 29 June 2025
The Independent
06-07-2025
- The Independent
Sandy Gall: Journalist who took on war zones around the world
The craggy looks of Sandy Gall, who has died aged 97, were familiar to television viewers as both a foreign correspondent in the world's war zones and a newscaster – one of the 'faces' of ITV's News at Ten – who brought calm authority to the stories he presented. His twice-broken nose was the result of a minicab crash, but it gave the 6ft 1in, lean journalist an appearance of having taken part in some of the battles he reported. Gall joined ITN, the commercial channel's news provider, in 1963 after 10 years at the news agency Reuters, where he had covered events during a turbulent period in history, from the Mau Mau rebellion and the Suez crisis to post-revolution Hungary and the Congo wars. For television, he reported from Vietnam in 1965, when the United States sent in the Marines. He returned to the country several times – covering the Tet Offensive in 1968 – and courageously decided to stay on in Saigon in 1975 to witness the North Vietnamese Army's liberation and the aftermath. Three years earlier, Gall had been imprisoned in Uganda after being sent to cover the dictator Idi Amin's expulsion from the country of all Asians holding British passports. He was thrown into hut C19, the execution cell at the military police barracks in Makindye. There were bullet holes in the walls, with blood splattered on the ceiling, and Gall thought he heard the sound of a man being beaten to death with a shovel. 'I felt sick with fear and suddenly cold,' he recalled. 'I began to pray.' Fortunately, after a short time, he was moved to the 'VIP cell' and, three days later, deported. Gall had a longer association with Afghanistan, which began with his reporting from the rebel mujahideen side three years after the Soviet invasion for his ITV documentary Afghanistan: Behind Russian Lines (1982). He subsequently made Allah Against the Gunships (1984), when his team received protection from Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul-Haq's Special Forces, and Agony of a Nation (1986). In Don't Worry About the Money Now, Gall's first book of memoirs, published in 1983, he wrote: 'A journalist, as an observer, has to be an outsider looking in and, once he loses that sort of independence, once he becomes, even slightly, part of the Establishment, he is in danger of losing his credibility.' That principle appeared to be compromised when, a year later, he was invited to lunch with the head of MI6 and shared his first-hand knowledge of Afghanistan. Gall aired his view that the mujahideen had no weapon with which to counter the Soviets' Mi-24 helicopter gunships. Shortly afterward, the Americans asked the British to supply the rebels with a ground-to-air missile, which marked a turning point in the war. In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its final forces from Afghanistan, an event covered by Gall for ITN. Another legacy of his reporting from the country was Sandy Gall's Afghanistan Appeal, the charity he set up in 1983 to provide artificial limbs, other aids and physiotherapy to those suffering disabilities as a result of the war. He continued to visit Afghanistan throughout its subsequent turbulent history and made the documentaries Veil of Fear (1996, for World in Action), Sandy's War: Face of the Taliban (2001, for Tonight) and Afghanistan: War without End (2004). He also authored several books: Behind Russian Lines: An Afghan Journal (1983), Afghanistan: Agony of a Nation (1988), War Against the Taliban: Why It All Went Wrong in Afghanistan (2013) and Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud (2021). Henderson Alexander Gall was born in Penang, Malaysia, in 1927 to Jean (née Begg) and Henderson Gall, a Scottish rubber planter. He was educated at Glenalmond College in Perthshire and served in the RAF from 1945 to 1948). He graduated from Aberdeen University in 1952 with an MA in French and German, and began his career at the Aberdeen Press and Journal. The following year, he joined Reuters and, after several months in its London office, served as a correspondent in Cold War Berlin, Nairobi, Suez, Bonn, Budapest and Johannesburg. While based in South Africa, he covered the Congo. In 1960, he was the first to report the rape of Belgian women, including nuns, by Congolese who saw no immediate change in the weeks after receiving independence from Belgium. Gall admitted to being nervous in front of the camera on joining ITN in 1963, but he was soon bringing his experience – and impressive contacts book – to reporting from trouble spots, including the Congo again, Borneo, the Six-Day War and Biafra. He became a newscaster in 1968 and first presented News at Ten two years later, although he continued to report from around the world. He also made documentaries for ITV, including Lord of the Lions (1989), about conservationist George Adamson. Gall retired from ITN as a newscaster in January 1990 but continued as a reporter to cover the first Gulf War (1990-91) and the fall of the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime in Afghanistan (1992), then made occasional television documentaries. In 2003, he became world affairs editor of the London news station LBC, joining its breakfast show to comment on global issues. His second volume of memoirs, News from the Front: A Television Reporter's Life, was published in 1994. As a novelist, he wrote the thrillers Gold Scoop (1977), Chasing the Dragon (1981) and Salang (1990). Gall was appointed CBE in 1988 and, for services to the people of Afghanistan, Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 2011. He won the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal in 1987 for his Afghanistan reports and was rector of the University of Aberdeen from 1978 to 1981. In 1958, Gall married Eleanor Smyth; she died in 2018. He is survived by his son, Alexander, and three daughters, Fiona, Carlotta and Michaela. Sandy Gall, journalist, born 1 October 1927, died 29 June 2025
