Berlin: the Soviet Union and Germany; Russia and Ukraine; War and Peace
A detail of a mosaic at the Soviet War memorial, Treptower Park, Berlin, February 2023. © James Rodgers. This post is a longer version of an article I wrote for The New European, published April 19 2023. You can read the article here. ‘GLORY’, THE GILDED TILES that spell...
Assignment Moscow: new edition out on May 18
THE NEW EDITION OF ‘ASSIGNMENT MOSCOW: REPORTING ON RUSSIA FROM LENIN TO PUTIN’ will be published in the U.K. and U.S. on May 18. It includes new material covering the Covid-19 pandemic; the jailing of the Russian opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, and, of course, Russia’s escalation of its war...
Russia and Ukraine: 12 months in the media war
THE MEDIA WAR THAT HAS ACCOMPANIED RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE has shown how important a part of 21st century conflict journalism is, and also demonstrated the power authoritarian regimes possess to restrict reporting–even in the age of smartphones and social media. In a move that echoed the draconian censorship...
Journalism in the Russia-Ukraine War, and soaring sales of ‘1984’: recent podcast and radio interviews
THIS MONTH I have recorded two new podcast interviews, the first for Silicon Curtain with Jonathan Fink If you have not come across this series, do take a look at the other interviews, too. Jonathan gets excellent guests and the audience continues to grow. This time, Jonathan and I...
ASSIGNMENT MOSCOW: NEW COVER DESIGN FOR NEW EDITION
THE NEW EDITION of my most recent book, Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin will be published in May next year. It is updated with new material on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That new material includes interviews with some of the journalists who felt forced...
New Edition of ‘Assignment Moscow’ out in 2023
RUSSIA’S ATTACK ON UKRAINE in February this year focused international attention on the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions in a way unseen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the same time, Russia introduced new legislation making normal journalism all but impossible. To call a ‘war’ by its real name–instead...
Journalism, History, and a farewell to a new generation
MY FIRST INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENT was in a past century, to a place that no longer exists. This week, I have been thinking a lot about that–for the story I covered then dominates Europe as it has not done since, and, on Friday 10th June, was the reason a president...
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...