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Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent,
dies aged 74
Tributes paid to fearless reporter described
as ‘the greatest journalist of his
generation’
By Independent Staff
November 02, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
Robert Fisk, a veteran
Middle East correspondent for The
Independent and the most celebrated
journalist of his era, has died after an
illness. He was 74.
Fisk was renowned for his courage in
questioning official narratives from
governments and publishing what he uncovered
in frequently brilliant prose.
He joined The Independent in 1989 from The
Times and rapidly became its most
recognisable writer and searched-for byline.
He continued to write for The Independent
until his death in Dublin.
Christian Broughton, editor of The
Independent until last week and now managing
director, said: “Fearless, uncompromising,
determined and utterly committed to
uncovering the truth and reality at all
costs, Robert Fisk was the greatest
journalist of his generation. The fire he
lit at The Independent will burn on.”
Much of what Fisk wrote was controversial,
something he appeared to savour. In 2003, as
the US and UK prepared for the invasion of
Iraq, Fisk went to the United Nations in New
York, where he watched then Secretary of
State Colin Powell make an unimpressive case
for war.
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“There was an almost
macabre opening to the play when General
Powell arrived at the Security Council,
cheek-kissing the delegates and winding his
great arms around them,” he wrote. “Jack
Straw fairly bounded up for his big American
hug.”
Fisk, who was born in Kent, and studied at
Lancaster University, began his career on
Fleet Street at the Sunday Express. He went
on to work for The Times, where he was based
in Northern Ireland, Portugal and the Middle
East.
For decades he was based in the Lebanese
city of Beirut, and occupied an apartment
located on its famed corniche. He lived and
worked there as the nation was torn apart in
a civil war, and a number of journalists
fell victim to kidnappers.
Fisk, who was the recipient of numerous
awards, including from Amnesty International
and the British Press Awards, wrote several
books, most notably Pity the Nation: Lebanon
at War and The Great War for Civilisation:
The Conquest of the Middle East. He
completed at PhD at Trinity college and had
a home in Dalkey in Co Dublin.
He interviewed Osama bin Laden twice. After
the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent US
and UK invasion of Iraq, he travelled to the
Pakistan-Afghan border, where he was
attacked by a group of Afghan refugees,
furious about the killing of their
countrymen by western forces.
He famously turned the incident into a front
page report, complete with an image of his
battered face.
He wrote: “I realised – there were all the
Afghan men and boys who had attacked me who
should never have done so but whose
brutality was entirely the product of
others, of us — of we who had armed their
struggle against the Russians and ignored
their pain and laughed at their civil war
and then armed and paid them again for the
‘War for Civilisation’ just a few miles away
and then bombed their homes and ripped up
their families and called them ‘collateral
damage’."
Fisk, who took Irish citizenship, was
praised by the Irish president, Michael D
Higgins.
“I have learned with great sadness of the
death of Robert Fisk,” he wrote in a
statement.
"With his passing, the world of journalism
and informed commentary on the Middle East
has lost one of its finest commentators.
“Generations, not only of Irish people but
all over the world, relied on him for a
critical and informed view of what was
taking place in the conflict zones of the
world and, even more important, the
influences that were perhaps the source of
the conflict.”
- "Source"
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