Saturday,
November 17
2pm-6.30pm
Registration from 1.30pm

London School of Economics
Aldwych,
WC2A 2AE

Holborn
(Central or Piccadilly line)

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Conference details:

1.30pm Registration

2.00pm Welcome

2.15-3.15pm Plenary: The First Casualty: War, truth and the media today

3.45pm Workshops:

Afghanistan: Britain's other war

Journalists in the war zone

War bias in the media: the evidence

The media and the anti-war movement

Islamophobia: is there a media problem?

War plan Iran

4.45-5.15pm Tea break

5.15pm Plenary: Making a difference - towards a critical media

6.30pm Conference ends

Tickets available on the door, or reserve your place securely online now:

£10 full price

£7 students/concs

Or email us here
for details of how to buy tickets by post

"The press has apparently learnt nothing from the dodgy dossiers and phantom WMDs that preceded the Iraq war."
Peter Wilby
Media Guardian
April 2007

"I am very critical of the way in which the media failed to ask the proper questions in the run-up to war, and the way in which much of the British media, if not the US, seems now to have put reporting from Iraq in the "too difficult" category. This is the most important story in the world and it's amazing how little coverage it gets in the British press."
Andrew Gilligan
September 2007

"The BBC's reputation is imperilled because those who run it are still paralysed by post-Hutton traumatic stress."
Matthew Norman Independent
September 2007

A half-day conference

hosted by Media Workers Against the War

A proper debate about reporting the "war on terror" is long overdue. Many leading journalists now acknowledge that too often our industry has swallowed government spin over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Academic studies confirm an overwhelming pro-war bias in media coverage post 9/11.

The drums of a new war, this time with Iran, are beating. Will we allow the media to be used to sex up the Iranian "threat"? Sometimes it seems like the Iraqi WMD fiasco never happened.

Amid all the current agonising about media integrity - and at a time when BBC management is preparing to cut news resources even further - can there be any area more worthy of scrutiny than reporting the war? Is there any issue over which the press and broadcasters have so dramatically failed the public, and with such serious consequences?

This conference will set out the issues and debate how best to campaign to improve standards. It will seek to identify the main sources of pro-war bias as a first step to providing media workers with tools and resources for combating it.

Have the media learned the lessons of Iraq?
What are the pitfalls in reporting Iran?
What can the BBC do about government bullying?
What should good coverage of modern war look like?
Are Muslims being unfairly targeted in the media?

Come and debate with other journalists, media staff, academics and campaigners about the future of our industry.

download conference brochure here as PDF file

download A4 poster here as PDF file

Contributors include:

	Tony Benn Life-long NUJ member and anti-war campaigner
	Andrew Gilligan sacked by the BBC
	Peter Wilby columnist for the Media Guardian, former editor of the Independent on Sunday and the New Statesman
	Michelle Stanistreet president, National Union of Journalists; MoC, Daily Express and Star
	Nick Davies award-winning investigative reporter who writes regularly for the Guardian
	Sami Ramadani political exile from Saddam's regime and senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University
	Rachel Morarjee Correspondent for the Financial Times in Afghanistan, 2004-2007
	Julie-Ann Davies Editor, Free Press
	Amir Amirani Documentary maker
	Phillip Knightley author: The First Casualty: The War Correspondent From the Crimea to Iraq
	Moazzam Begg illegally detained for three years in Guantanamo Bay
	Piers Robinson lecturer in politics at Manchester University and author of "Media Wars: News Media Performance and Media Management During the 2003 Iraq War"
	Prof Abbas Edalat Campaign Against Sanctions and Intervention in Iran
	Jane Shallice Officer, Stop the War Coalition
	Andrew Murray National Chair, Stop the War Coalition
	Des Freedman Senior lecturer in media and Communications, Goldsmith's College, and co-editor of "War and the Media: Reporting Conflict 24/7"

Saturday, November 17 2pm-6.30pm Registration from 1.30pm

London School of Economics Aldwych, WC2A 2AE