Russia and Ukraine: War And Media
This latest post is the text of an article I contributed to a special issue of Baltic Rim Economies on Ukraine and Crimea. You can access the whole issue here. It was written in the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and first published on 28 April...
REPORTING RUSSIA: LIVE BOOK EVENT AT THE FRONTLINE CLUB, LONDON, 10 MAY 2022
Russia’s war in Ukraine has put journalism on the frontline both in covering the fighting itself, and in the way that new laws have made independent journalism in Russia all but impossible. These are just some of the issues I will be discussing in conversation with Nanette van der...
Assignment Moscow: update March 2022
‘THE STORY OF Western correspondents in Russia is the story of Russia’s attitude to the West.’ So opens the final chapter of my book, Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin . This worst of times for Russia’s relations with the West has also become the worst...
Disinformation: born in the last century, thriving in this one
‘Dezinformatsiya’—meaning ‘disinformation’ in Russian—is a 20th century word that symbolizes perfectly the communications field between the Moscow elite and the West in the 21st century. During the current confrontation over Ukraine—and the different portrayals of that crisis in press and public opinion in the West and Russia—that field has...
Live Book Event: ‘Assignment Moscow’ at the Frontline Club, London. March 1st
My first live, in-person, event to discuss ‘Assignment Moscow’ will be at the Frontline Club in London on March 1st, 2022. If you are in London that evening, please come along. There are more details here , including how to book tickets. The book tells the story of the...
Chronicles Of A Collapse: Journalism And The End Of Soviet History
This post is an article originally published on The Conversation, as, ‘Writing history: 30 years on, a former Moscow correspondent reflects on the end of the USSR’. It includes reflections on the relationship between journalism and history, and explains why–in the Journalism department where I teach–we are launching a new...
How A Shocking Book Tells Stories So Well
THE AUDIENCE WAS SILENT THROUGHOUT, only stirring to hush some people from the venue who had started a whispered conversation at the back of the hall. When the time came for them to question the author, they slowly began to raise their hands. They seemed still to be trying...
New for November 2021: latest journalism, and upcoming in-person book events
AS MY PHYSICAL WORLD CONTRACTED in London’s lockdowns over the last eighteen months and more, so I sometimes found my intellectual and imaginative world seemed to contract, too. I never imagined I would miss commuting on the London underground, but I did miss the stimulation that came with movement...
Reporting The End Of Soviet Superpower: Moscow, Summer 1991
My article ‘This Story Has A Long Way To Run‘ in the current British Journalism Review reflects on my experience covering the end of the Soviet Union thirty years ago–and what has come since. I’ll be discussing this–and other ideas in my latest book Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia...
May 2021: elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
I am delighted to announce that I have been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, in recognition of my ‘contribution to the discipline of History’. I am extremely grateful that my work has been honoured in this way. As a journalist reporting on international affairs, I was...