Robert Fisk

I had the chance to see Robert Fisk at the Kilkenny arts festival, I must say Robert is a wealth of information and say one of the very few people who have a rare in-depth knowledge of Middle east politics.

Speaking for well over 1 and a  half hours, I never got bored. His talk was on how the media can distort the facts of the story to meet the Corporate culture of the company, how journalists were becoming less impartial to the facts and just  re hashing news from others.

Having this situation within the media corrupts the whole reason  as to the nature of  news reporting. If journalists forget why they are journalist and what their job roles intail then we can just forget about getting the real news.

He also talked about the his time covering the middle east and the people he met while on the job. As a  history buff I already knew most of the points he was making about the middle east and how we are just repeating the event over and over again.

You would just have to look at the history of Afghanistan to see , that, what NATO is doing is a futile attempt to bring our western democracy to the region, maybe what they need is to figure it out for themselves as all our “western” interference is only making the situation worse.

He also talked about Iraq and the mess we ” The west” have made that country, He said that it will more than likely go back to some sort of dictatorship after all the western soldiers are pulled out.

The main point that he was trying to make is that we don’t really understand the middle east and the tribal instinct of the cultures based there.

I will have to buy his book “The great war for civilisation” It’s a pity I did not buy it on the night and get his autograph.