Covering Syria and Iraq by Patrick Cockburn

Organized by The Nadim Makdisi Memorial Fund and hosted by the Issam Fares Institute invite you to the Annual Lecture covering Syria and Iraq:
Major Challenges Faced by Western Journalists

Patrick Cockburn
Middle East Correspondent, The Independent

The disasters stemming from wars in Iraq and Syria are frequently blamed on the ambitions and mistakes of foreign governments. But how far should Western journalists share the blame for promoting or accepting those policies – and giving a misleadingly optimistic picture of the likely outcome of foreign intervention or lack of it. More broadly, did they give a true picture on the ground during these conflicts in Iraq and Syria and could they have done their job better? The lecture will also look at the practical problems of reporting in a region where it has become far more dangerous to be a journalist over the past 40 years.

Patrick Cockburn is a Middle East correspondent for The Independent which has been visiting Iraq and Syria since the 1970s. He is most recently the author of The Age of Jihad, which is an account of wars in the region since Afghanistan in 2001 as well as The Rise of Islamic State in 2014 – in addition to books on Muqtada al-Sadr, the Occupation of Iraq and a biography, with his brother Andrew, of Saddam Hussein. Cockburn has won numerous awards for his work, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009, Foreign Commentator of the Year (Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards 2013), Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year (British Journalism Awards 2014), and Foreign Reporter of the Year (The Press Awards For 2014).

Location: Issam Fares Institute Auditorium