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See also: Robert Fiske
Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk at a book festival in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2008.
Born (1946-07-12) 12 July 1946 (age 78)
Maidstone, Kent, England
EducationLancaster University (B.A., 1968)
Trinity College, Dublin (Ph.D., 1985)
OccupationMiddle East correspondent for The Independent
Notable creditsJacob'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
Websitehttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/

Robert Fisk (born 12 July 1946, Maidstone, Kent) is an award-winning English writer and journalist. Middle East correspondent of the The Independent, he has been based mainly in Beirut for more than 30 years. Fisk holds more British and International Journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent.

Career

The New York Times once described Robert Fisk as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain." He reported the Northern Ireland troubles in the 1970s, the Portuguese Revolution in 1974, the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A vernacular Arabic speaker, he is one of few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, three times between 1994 and 1997. Awards include being voted International Journalist of the Year seven times.

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."

He has written at length on how much of contemporary conflict has its origin, in his view, 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."

Early career

Fisk received a BA in English Literature at Lancaster University in 1968 and a PhD in Political Science, from Trinity College, Dublin in 1985. 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". He first worked on the Sunday Express diary column before a disagreement with the editor, John Junor, prompted a move to The Times. From 1972–75 Fisk served as Belfast correspondent for The Times, before becoming its correspondent in Portugal covering the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution. He then was appointed Middle East correspondent (1976–1988). When a story of his was spiked after Rupert Murdoch's takeover, he moved to The Independent, with his first report published there on 28 April 1989.

Fisk has been living in Beirut since 1976, and was present in Beirut throughout the Lebanese civil war. He was one of the first journalists to visit the scene of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, as well as the Syrian Hama Massacre. His book on the Lebanese conflict, Pity the Nation, was first published in 1990. Fisk also reported on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Kosovo war, the Algerian civil war, and the Iran-Iraq War. Fisk suffered partial but permanent hearing loss as a result of his being within close proximity to Iraqi heavy artillery in the Shatt-al-Arab when covering the early stages of the Iran-Iraq conflict.

Osama bin Laden, 9/11 and 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 convert 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."

On the last occasion, in 1997, Osama informed Fisk of his intention to attack America: "Mr Robert, I pray that God permits us to turn America into a shadow of itself." Fisk condemned the September 11, 2001 attacks, describing them as a "hideous crime against humanity," but denounced the Bush administration's response, fearing "a score of nations" were being identified and positioned as "haters of democracy" or "kernels of evil", and urged a more honest debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East.

After the U.S. launched its attack on Afghanistan, 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 fleeing heavy bombing by the United States Air Force. He was saved from this attack by another Afghan refugee. In his graphic account of his own beating, Fisk pardoned the attackers of responsibility and pointed out that 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.'"

In August 2007 Fisk expressed personal doubts about the orthodox historical record of the September 11 attacks. In an article for The Independent, he claimed that the US government was incapable of successfully carrying out such attacks due to its organisational incompetence, but wrote: "I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11." He proceeded to raise his concerns about a lack of aircraft debris, the melting point of steel, the collapse of World Trade Center 7, misidentified suicide-hijackers and other familiar questions that have circulated within the 9/11 Truth Movement. He added that he does not condone the "crazed 'research' of David Icke I am talking about scientific issues".

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. His opposition to the war brought attacks from the unionist Irish columnist and Senator Eoghan Harris. and Guardian columnist Simon Hoggart.

Awards

In 1991, Fisk won a Jacob's Award for his RTÉ Radio coverage of the first Gulf War. 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. 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. In 2002 he was the fourth recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. More recently, Fisk was awarded the 2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize along with $350,000.

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, honorary, Doctorate in July 2008.

"Fisking"

The blogosphere term fisking refers not to Fisk directly, but to what is done to those who, like him, are being challenged — the fisker begins by copying text from the fiskee, and then produces an interlinear critique pointing out flaws and raising doubts. "The fisker can without too much trouble make the fiskee look ridiculous." The term originated from partisan attacks on Fisk's credibility, but has been extended to others, even the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Books and other works

Books

Fisk has published a number of books. His 2005 work, "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", with its criticism of Western and Israeli approaches to the Middle East, was well-received by critics and students of international affairs, and is perhaps his best-known work.

  • 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

This 1993 three-part series on Muslims and the West explores the rise of anti-Western sentiment in the “Muslim world” from the Middle East to the Balkans by highlighting the oppressiveness of Western-supported governments (Israel and Egypt, in particular) and the West's broadly anti-Muslim policies. The Discovery channel pulled the films in response to a letter campaign by pro-Israel groups.

Forgery misattributed to Robert Fisk

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

References

  1. "Robert Fisk". The Independent. Retrieved 2006-07-19.
  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjoGLA4mVxU&feature=channel
  3. Bronner, Ethan (2005-11-19). "A Foreign Correspondent Who Does More Than Report". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-07-19. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. Robert Fisk: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle Eastpp.1-39 ISBN 184115007X
  5. "Honoured War Reporter Sides With Victims of Conflict". New Zealand Press Association. 2005-11-04. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. Miles, Oliver (2005-11-19). "The big picture". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2006-07-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation, 2005
  8. "Robert Fisk lecture", LU News, Lancaster University, November 2006, retrieved 2008-10-14
  9. ^ "Former postgraduate students". Trinity College, Dublin. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
  10. Robert Fisk (26 July 2008). "My days in Fleet Street's Lubyanka". The Independent. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
  11. Fisk, Robert (2006). The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. London: Harper Perennial. p. 973. ISBN 978-1-84115-008-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  12. Fisk, Robert (2007). The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. Vintage. pp. 29–30. ISBN 9781400075171.
  13. Fisk, Robert. Robert Fisk on Bin Laden at 50, The Independent. 4 March, 2007.
  14. Fisk, Robert. One year on: A view from the Middle East, The Independent, 11 September, 2002.
  15. 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 2006-07-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. Fisk, Robert (2007-08-25). "Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-08-25.
  17. Fisk, Robert (2005-01-17). "Hotel journalism gives American troops a free hand as the press shelters indoors". . Retrieved 2006-07-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
  18. Air-kissing the terrorists - call it Luvvies Actually - Analysis, Opinion - Independent.ie
  19. Hoggart, Simon. A war cry from the pulpit, The Guardian, November 17, 2001.
  20. The Irish Times, "In the wars", November 19, 1991
  21. ""Times reporter wins award"". The Times. 1987-12-15. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  22. ""Fisk wins award for political journalism"". The Independent. 2001-07-20. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |title= (help)
  23. ""2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize awarded to Robert Fisk"". Lannan Foundation.
  24. ""Five recipients to receive honorary degrees at Trinity College Dublin"".
  25. Word detective, 2003
  26. Fisking as a Rhetorical Construct
  27. Blargon, The New York Times, February 19, 2006.
  28. "Archbishop on end of a good fisking", Observer, June 19, 2005
  29. http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Beirut_to_Bosnia
  30. Fisk, Robert (2008-02-01). "Robert Fisk: The curious case of the forged biography". The Independent. Retrieved 2008-02-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

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