Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
In a delightful piece for Slate magazine, Jack Shafer delves into the history of that enduring description of journalism as 'the first draft of history'. Perhaps surprisingly, his search only takes him as far back as the 1940s, to an editorial in the Washington Post - and even later for the inclusion of the the word 'rough'. He also wonders why the phrase has such power. 'What makes "first rough draft of history" so tuneful, at least to the ears of journalists? Well, it flatters them.
Following glowing recommendations from John Saunders, Suzanne Franks and BBC Radio 4 (for which many thanks), I have just finished '
Once in a while I read a column and really, really wish I had written it. For weeks I have been looking for the historical analogy with which to illustrate the argument that removing debt from the economy is not the same as taking money out of circulation. Dominic Lawson in today's Independent has found exactly the right example: Frederic Bastiat's advice to the French National Assembly in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. In doing so Mr Lawson also offers a compelling antidote to the argument that reduced state spending is inimical to growth. He also offers a powerful incentive to read and reread the history of the French revolution. It inspired Karl Marx too, of course (the revolution that is, not Dominic Lawson's column). 
Every student in the Centre for Journalism has heard of Peter Ritchie Calder. I describe his reporting from the bomb damaged streets of London's East End in my History of Journalism lectures. Calder was a superb reporter who found the courage to speak truth to power when many others would not. I find his work for the Daily Herald, collected in The Lesson of London (Searchlight Books, 1941), thoroughly inspiring. You have to admire a man who took copious and accurate shorthand notes while high-explosive was falling all around. Calder also wrote beautifully, and kept writing - and influencing policy for the better - when the government made it plain that it would prefer him to stop. As the 70th anniversary of The Blitz approaches, The Independent offered me space to write about his work. You can read the column 
Artist Gunter Demnig makes brass cobbles he calls stumbling blocks that are set into the pavements of Berlin. Most have engraved in them the word, "ermordet" - murdered. Others say, "Flucht in den Tod" - "killed whilst trying to escape." Each marks the home of a victim of the holocaust. Joanna Robertson, the BBC's Berlin correspondent,