Robert Fisk talk

I'm just back from a talk by the journalist Robert Fisk in UCC this evening. It was organised by the UCC Law Society and was very well attended with no spare seats in a lecture hall that holds about 400 people.

He spoke on various subjects at a podium for about 35 minutes, then sat down for a discussion with one of the professors of the university. Finally people from the audience were able to ask him questions. Who is he and What did he say?

I don't know an awful lot about him appart from the fact that he is an English journalist who covers the Middle East and has done so for the last 33 years (so he said at the talk).

US MID EAST POLICY

Fisk started off by talking about Obama and said that he doesn't really hold out much hope that Obama can change things for the better in the Middle East. Fisk said that instead of sending 40,000 extra troops to the area that it would be much better to send 40,000 teachers, engineers or doctors and defitely not 40,000 more soldiers.

INTERNET (modern communications)

Fisk thinks that the current internet age we live in what with all its instant, short and omnipresent communication tools like text messages, emails, and twitter etc, etc is destroying our ability to read deeply and that its doing something to the way we write and ultimately the way reporters report. So all of this is leading to problems with our communications, Fisk said.

JOURNALISM

Fisk said that "we should be neutral and unbaised on the side of those who suffer" when reporting.
When asked about the public's change from buying newspapers to surfing the internet for their news, Fisk said that American newspapers aren't failing because of the growth of the internet but because they weren't any good to begin with. American newspapers are afraid of upsetting the powers that be, so consequently they always have bland reporting. He said that as regards the UK newspapers including the Guardian, the Financial Times and (of course) his own paper The Independent have got some good journalists.

CHINA

Fisk was asked about China and what the future holds for us and them. He said that he visited Hong Kong recently and was stunned by what he saw. He said that he saw a great show of power / strength when he was there.
He said that China is an extraordinary phenomenon and that they've got the Middle East all figured out, insofar as they know what's going on there. I suppose they are good businessmen and for them to make investments there, they need to know who to deal with and who to avoid etc., but it shows their abilites and what to expect from them in the future.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

When the time came for questions from the floor, you had to sign your name on a sheet of paper going around. I signed my name on it because I had a question to put to Fisk.
I wanted to talk about Syria and the fact that they want to encourage tourism. I wanted to ask him if he thought that the influx of foreigners would help to open up the country, or maybe even democatrise it.

Unfortunately, my name was at the bottom of the list and it must have been decided to finish at a certain time so I was not called to ask a question. I was disappointed if a little relieved, because my heart was beating at about 10,000 beats a second at the thought of speaking through the microphone in front of all those people!

I was going to say that I was a tourist myself in Syria during the summer. I was also going to lighten the mood in the room, which was kind of serious (undestandable really given that Fisk was talking about war and the unfair situations that exist in the Middle East) by mentioning that when I was in Aleppo (Syria) during the summer that I saw a black and white clip of Eamon DeValera (Irish President) on an Arabic TV station - a surreal bizare experience at the time. I've no idea what the programme was about by the way, but to see an Irish president on Arabic TV - bizare.