ABOUT

This is a site about the books and other writing by James Rodgers, author of Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia From Lenin to Putin (new edition 2023; first published July 2020); Headlines from the Holy Land (2015 and 2017); No Road Home: Fighting for Land and Faith in Gaza (2013); Reporting Conflict (2012). My work looks at how stories of international affairs, especially armed conflict, are told to the world.

BIOGRAPHY

I am an author and journalist. During two decades of covering international news, I reported on the end of the Soviet Union; the wars in Chechnya; the coming to power of Vladimir Putin; 9/11; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the 2003 war in Iraq; Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008. I completed correspondent postings for the BBC in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza. I now teach in the Journalism Department at City St George’s, University of London.

Tag: war

Russia and Ukraine: 12 months in the media war

February 11, 2023
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...

New Edition of ‘Assignment Moscow’ out in 2023

September 22, 2022
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

June 18, 2022
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...

How A Shocking Book Tells Stories So Well

November 20, 2021
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...

London In Coronavirus Lockdown: A Tale Of Two Chinooks

May 29, 2020
AFTER NIGHTFALL, YOU SEE THE LIGHTS LINING UP. Coming to the end of my commute on a winter evening, I can look up and see plane after plane stretching away into the murk of the eastern sky. They follow one another to land at Heathrow to the west. Sometimes,...