Robert Fisk is a respected British journalist and Middle Eastern correspondent for The Independent newspaper in London.
Fisk has covered the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Persian Gulf War, and the conflict in Algeria. He was one of two Western journalists to stay in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. He wrote a book on the conflict, Pity The Nation. Fisk has also reported the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Fisk is one of the most highly decorated British journalists. He won the Amnesty International UK Press Awards in 1998 for his reports from Algeria and in 2000 for his articles on NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. He has also received the British International Journalist of the Year award seven times.
After the U.S. launched its attack on Afghanistan shortly following the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, Fisk was transferred to Pakistan to provide coverage of that conflict. His wrote a graphic account of his own beating at the hands of Afghan refugees.
Fisk has written about being the target of hate mail and death-threats from extremist Americans, which culminated in the actor John Malkovich's public statement at the Cambridge Union that he would like to shoot Fisk.
During the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and the ensuing U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, Fisk was stationed in Baghdad and filed many eyewitness reports, including the looting of the National Museum of Iraq.
The term Fisking (a "A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or a news story") arose in the blogsphere because of frequent refutations by right-wing commentators of Fisk's articles.
External links
- [http://www.independent.co.uk/ The Independent]
- Robert-Fisk.com, unofficial archive of Fisk articles
- Counterpunch, more Fisk articles
- Z Magazine, more Fisk articles
- Why does John Malkovich want to kill me? On hate mail and death threats