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For other persons named Robert Fiske, see Robert Fiske (disambiguation).
Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk at a book festival in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2008.
Born 12 July 1946 (1946-07-12) (age 62)
Maidstone, Kent, England
Education Lancaster University (B.A., 1983)
Trinity College, Dublin (Ph.D., 1985)
Occupation Middle East correspondent for The Independent
Ethnicity British
Notable credit(s) Jacob's Award, Amnesty International UK Press Awards, British Press Awards, International Journalist of the Year, "Reporter of the Year", David Watt prize, Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize
Official website

Robert Fisk (born July 12, 1946 in Maidstone, Kent) is an award-winning British journalist and author. He is the Middle East correspondent of the UK newspaper The Independent, and has spent more than 30 years living in and reporting from the region. 1

Contents

Career

Fisk has been described in the New York Times as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain." 2 He covered the Northern Ireland Troubles in the 1970s, the Portuguese Revolution in 1974, the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War, the 1979 Iranian revolution, the 1980-88 Iran–Iraq War, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He has received numerous awards, including the British Press Awards' International Journalist of the Year award seven times. Fisk speaks vernacular Arabic, and is one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden – three times between 1994 and 1997.3 4

Fisk has said that journalism must "challenge authority — all authority — especially so when governments and politicians take us to war." He has quoted with approval the Israeli journalist Amira Hass: "There is a misconception that journalists can be objective ... What journalism is really about is to monitor power and the centres of power." 5

He has written at length on how much of contemporary conflict has, in his view, its origin in lines drawn on maps: "After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career — in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad — watching the people within those borders burn." 6 Critics have accused Fisk of anti-Israeli bias and sloppy reporting: the Israeli historian Efraim Karsh has accused Fisk of "carelessness" with facts ("It is difficult to turn a page... without encountering some basic error").

Early career

Fisk received a BA in English Literature at Lancaster University in 19687 and a PhD in Political Science, from Trinity College, Dublin in 1985.8 The title of his doctoral thesis was "A condition of limited warfare: Eire’s neutrality and the relationship between Dublin, Belfast and London, 1939–1945" 8. He first worked on the Sunday Express diary column before a disagreement with the editor, John Junor, prompted a move to The Times.9 From 1972-75 Fisk served as Belfast correspondent for The Times, before becoming its correspondent in Portugal covering the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. He then was appointed Middle East correspondent (1976-1988). He later moved to The Independent, with his first report published there on 28 April 1989.

As Middle East correspondent, Fisk covered the 1979 Iranian revolution, the 1980-1988 Iran–Iraq War, and the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Fisk has been living in Beirut since 1976,10 as one of two Western journalists to stay in Beirut throughout the Lebanese civil war.citation needed He was one of the first journalists to visit the scene of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. His book on the conflict, Pity The Nation, was first published in 1990. Fisk has also reported on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the conflicts in Kosovo and Algeria.

Osama bin Laden, 9/11, and the war in Afghanistan

Fisk is one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden - three times (all published by The Independent: December 6, 1993, July 10, 1996, and March 22, 1997). During one of Fisk's interviews with Bin Laden, Fisk noted an attempt by Bin Laden to possibly recruit him. Bin Laden said, "Mr Robert, one of our brothers had a dream. He dreamed ... that you were a spiritual person ... this means you are a true Muslim." Fisk replied, "Sheikh Osama, I am not a Muslim ... I am a journalist".11 Bin Laden and Adam Gadahn, an Al-Qaeda spokesman and translator of American birth, have apparently mentioned Robert Fisk in speeches. Osama bin Laden said Fisk's reporting was "neutral".12 According to a MEMRI report, on September 2, 2006, in a videotaped statement, Adam Gadahn said that Fisk and George Galloway have a "respect and admiration for Islam," have "sympathy for Muslims their causes", and added "I say to them, isn't it time you stopped sitting on the fence and came over to the side of truth?".13

Fisk condemned the September 11, 2001 attacks, describing the actions of the "9/11 killers" as a "hideous crime against humanity." In the aftermath of 9/11, he called for an honest discussion to understand the motives behind the attacks: a discussion which he claims was not occurring in the Western press.14 He believes that Al Qaeda ordered the attacks in response to U.S. policies in the Middle East, particularly its support for Israel.15 He has questioned the approach offered by President Bush, who did not take into account foreign policy and instead claimed that the perpetrators of 9/11 did it because "they hate our freedom."16

After the U.S. launched its attack on Afghanistan shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Fisk was for a time transferred to Pakistan to provide coverage of that conflict. While reporting from there, he was attacked and beaten by a group of Afghan refugees but was also saved from this attack by another Afghan refugee. In his graphic account of his own beating, published in The Independent of December 10, 2001, Fisk excused the attackers of responsibility ("I couldn't blame them for what they were doing,") and said that, in his view, their "brutality was entirely the product of others, of us — of we who had armed their struggle against the Russians and ignored their pain and laughed at their civil war and then armed and paid them again for the 'War for Civilisation' just a few miles away and then bombed their homes and ripped up their families and called them 'collateral damage.'"17

In August 2007 Fisk publicly expressed, for the first time, doubts about the historical record of the September 11 attacks. In an article for The Independent, he raised such concerns as missing aircraft parts, the melting point of steel, the collapse of World Trade Center 7, and other familiar criticisms that have circulated within the 9/11 Truth Movement, although he said that many other criticisms were "crazed".18

Iraq War

During the 2003 Iraq War, Fisk was stationed in Baghdad and filed many eyewitness reports. He has criticized other journalists based in Iraq for what he calls their "hotel journalism", literally reporting from one's hotel room without interviews or first hand experience of events.19

Fisk's opposition to the war brought attacks from many pro-war supporters. Irish columnist and Senator Eoghan Harris called Fisk's analysis of Middle East politics "a first cousin to believing that aliens take away people in flying saucers",20 while Guardian columnist and war supporter Simon Hoggart attacked his prediction that "the (action of the) West (in response to 9/11) was about to bring total disaster upon its own head." While acknowledging Fisk's "brilliant and vivid reporting", Hoggart stated his belief that Fisk's pessimism revealed a judgement that was "not just mistaken, but reliably mistaken".21 In May 2002, actor John Malkovich, asked at the Cambridge Union Society who he would like to fight to the death, offered Fisk's name. Fisk commented afterwards that he and other journalists who criticized U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East would have to deal with the hate mail and death threats that comments like Malkovich's would inevitably bring forth.22

Awards

In 1991, Fisk won a Jacob's Award for his RTÉ Radio coverage of the first Gulf War.23 He received Amnesty International UK Press Awards in 1998 for his reports from Algeria and again in 2000 for his articles on the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. He received the British Press Awards' International Journalist of the Year seven times, and twice won its "Reporter of the Year" award.24 In 2001, he was awarded the David Watt prize for "outstanding contributions towards the clarification of political issues and the promotion of their greater understanding" for his investigation into the Armenian Genocide by the Turks in 1915.25 More recently, Fisk was awarded the 2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize along with $350,000.26

He was made an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of St Andrews on June 24, 2004. The Political and Social Sciences department of Ghent University (Belgium) awarded Fisk an honorary doctorate on March 24, 2006. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the American University of Beirut in June 2006. Trinity College Dublin awarded him a second, honarary, Doctorate in July 2008.27

The Great War for Civilisation

Publishers Weekly said this about Fisk's 2005 book The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East

“ Combining a novelist's talent for atmosphere with a scholar's grasp of historical sweep, foreign correspondent Fisk has written one of the most dense and compelling accounts of recent Middle Eastern history yet. Fisk possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide of 1915, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb. But it is his stunning capacity for visceral description—he has seen, or tracked down firsthand accounts of, all the major events of the past 25 years—that makes this volume unique. Some of the chapters contain detailed accounts of torture and murder, which more squeamish readers may be inclined to skip, but such scenes are not gratuitous. They are designed to drive home Fisk's belief that "war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death."28 ”

Gary Kamiya, a writer for Salon.com wrote that,

“ Fisk's eyewitness reports from the killing fields are more than just bang-bang accounts: They are implacable and indispensable documents, grim reminders of what actually happens when nations go to war. And his devastating analysis of the reasons for those wars exposes the sins not just of the West, but of the Arab world as well. Fisk is a polemicist, but his anger derives from a Swiftian humanism. He is appalled by official lies and hypocrisy and driven to show, in nightmarish detail, the human suffering and death that results from them. And if he emphasizes and perhaps at times overemphasizes the culpability of the powerful—in particular of America and Israel—that perspective is not just excusable, but much needed in an intimidated intellectual climate in which received positions have gone largely unchallenged.29 ”

Ethan Bronner of The New York Times, on the other hand, asserted Fisk is "most passionate and least informed about Israel," accusing him of pursuing an agenda "nearly to the exclusion of the pursuit of straight journalism".30


Bogus Saddam biography

In February 2008, Fisk reported that he had discovered a biography of Saddam Hussein with his name on the cover as author, but clearly a forgery.31

Works

  • The Point of No Return: The Strike which Broke the British in Ulster (1975). London: Times Books/Deutsch. ISBN 0-233-96682-X
  • In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-1945 (2001). London: Gill & Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-2411-8 — (1st ed. was 1983).
  • Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (3rd ed. 2001). London: Oxford University Press; xxi, 727 pages. ISBN 0-19-280130-9 — (1st ed. was 1990).
  • The Great War for Civilisation - The Conquest of the Middle East (October 2005) London. Fourth Estate; xxvi, 1366 pages. ISBN 1-84115-007-X
  • The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings (2008) London, Fourth Estate ISBN 978 0 00 727073 6

Video documentary

Forgeries misattributed to Robert Fisk

  • Saddam Hussein - From Birth to Martyrdom (2007). Egypt: Ibda; 272 pages. (forged authorship32)

References

  1. ^ "Robert Fisk". The Independent. Retrieved on 2006-07-19.
  2. ^ Bronner, Ethan (2005-11-19). "A Foreign Correspondent Who Does More Than Report", The New York Times. Retrieved on 19 July 2006. 
  3. ^ Robert Fisk: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle Eastpp.1-39 ISBN 184115007X
  4. ^ "Honoured War Reporter Sides With Victims of Conflict", New Zealand Press Association (2005-11-04). Retrieved on 19 July 2006. 
  5. ^ Miles, Oliver (2005-11-19). "The big picture". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved on 2006-07-19.
  6. ^ Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation, 2005
  7. ^ Robert Fisk lecture, Lancaster University, Nov 2006, http://domino.lancs.ac.uk/Info/lunews.nsf/I/9273D1AFBDC1A6B38025721B0049FA77, retrieved on 14 October 2008 
  8. ^ a b "Former postgraduate students". Trinity College, Dublin. Retrieved on 2008-07-26.
  9. ^ Robert Fisk (26 July 2008). "My days in Fleet Street's Lubyanka", The Independent. Retrieved on 26 July 2008. 
  10. ^ Fisk, Robert (2006). The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. London: Harper Perennial. pp. 973. ISBN 978-1-84115-008-6. 
  11. ^ Fisk, Robert (2007). The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Vintage. pp. 29-30. ISBN 9781400075171. 
  12. ^ Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech, Al Jazeera, 1 November 2004
  13. ^ Special Dispatch Series - No. 1281, MEMRI, September 6, 2006 (contains ellipses)
  14. ^ The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, The New York Times (reprinted in The International Herald Tribune), November 25, 2005.
  15. ^ One Year On: A View From The Middle East, Robert Fisk, The Independent, September 11 2002, reprinted at ZNet
  16. ^ Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, George W. Bush, White House Office of the Press Secretary, September 20 2001
  17. ^ Fisk, Robert (2001-12-10). "My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war". robert-fisk.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-19.
  18. ^ Fisk, Robert (2007-08-25). "Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11", The Independent. Retrieved on 25 August 2007. 
  19. ^ Fisk, Robert (2005-01-17). "Hotel journalism gives American troops a free hand as the press shelters indoors". [1]. Retrieved on 2006-07-19.
  20. ^ Air-kissing the terrorists - call it Luvvies Actually - Analysis, Opinion - Independent.ie
  21. ^ Hoggart, Simon. A war cry from the pulpit, The Guardian, November 17, 2001.
  22. ^ "Robert Fisk: Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?" (14 May 2002).
  23. ^ The Irish Times, "In the wars", November 19, 1991
  24. ^ ""Times reporter wins award"", The Times (1987-12-15). 
  25. ^ ""Fisk wins award for political journalism"", The Independent (2001-07-20). 
  26. ^ ""2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Robert Fisk"". Lannan Foundation.
  27. ^ ""Five recipients to receive honorary degrees at Trinity College Dublin"".
  28. ^ Book Review: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Publishers Weekly, October 10 2005
  29. ^ Blood and betrayal, Gary Kamiya, Salon.com, December 16 2005
  30. ^ Bronner, Ethan. The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, The New York Times (reprinted in The International Herald Tribune), November 25, 2005.
  31. ^ "Robert Fisk: The curious case of the forged biography". Retrieved on 2008-02-02.
  32. ^ Fisk, Robert (2008-02-01). "Robert Fisk: The curious case of the forged biography". The Independent. Retrieved on 2008-02-01.

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