Category: Reporter’s Notebook
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The Trouble with Titles: On Perspective and Opinion
My op-ed was not intended —in a meager 800 words— to clearly render the entire landscape of UN peacekeeping. The goal was to illustrate how responsibility —and the empty rhetoric that follows its invocation— demands accounting.
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Prisoners of Peace
Today, peacekeepers are more apt to serve in regions where there is “no peace to keep”; where the potential belligerents are non-state actors (rebels, extremist groups, etc…) to whom the rules of international law —and the logic of deterrence— matter little; and where Western (or “developed”) countries are loathe to donate their own troops.
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Whose History?
Meaningful scholarship breeds careful, sensitive scholars —and the world is far too complex to give American students an easy pass.
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A new museum stirs tensions in Hong Kong
Last Saturday, the June 4 Memorial Museum opened in Hong Kong. In the fifth floor of an unassuming office building, the 800-square foot museum documents the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square, and commemorates the hundreds of lives lost (and the thousands injured) after the Chinese government’s crackdown.
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Exceptionally American: The uncomfortable relationship with human rights
On Thursday, the Obama administration asserted the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights did not extend to military and intelligence officials working abroad. By repeating a script well-rehearsed by former presidents Bush and Clinton, Obama endorsed the very sentiment that has led to military abuses in the past.
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Spooking the herd
In 1962, Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński was traveling between Tanganyika and Uganda when he stumbled upon a massive herd of African buffalo. In less than five paragraphs, Kapuściński describes not only the potential danger of a wild herd but also the unexpected power of the lone buffalo. The message has particular resonance for journalists.
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Pirates, Poachers and Palm Oil
With just under two weeks to go, I need your support to bring “Pirates, Poachers and Palm Oil” to life!
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Stories only reporters will like…
I’m thinking about writing a short story about a journalist who, while waiting for a break with a number of skittish sources, spends days sitting in a largely empty Subway (the “restaurant”) in small-town Oklahoma, looking forlorn —his eyes peering unfocused through the front window.
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The plight of a pirate negotiator
The story of Ali Mohamed Ali, the pirate negotiator, illustrates the complex interaction between politics and the justice system —and how the desire to help can cost an individual everything.
Adam McCauley 