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Robert Fisk probably won more prestigious awards than any other journalist, collecting dozens upon dozens of awards, not displaying them in his Irish home, keeping them discreetly hidden.
Although he was not a man to show off, he established himself as one of the most prominent British foreign correspondents of all decades since the 1970s. While there were many other excellent journalists, he distinguished himself by his bravery, insight and excellent writing skills. writing, mainly with The independent.
He was not afraid so much in speaking the truth to power as in repeatedly venturing into places of great danger. He had a house near Dublin, but another in Beirut, where reporters were often at risk of being kidnapped.
Born in Maidstone in Kent in 1946, Fisk wanted to be a film critic when he was a schoolboy, and last year he told an interviewer that he was “fascinated by film, because it seems to have unstoppable power to convince.” The film would go on to influence his career choice, with the character of Huntley Haverstock, the hero of Hitchcock’s war movie. Correspondent abroad inspiring a young Fisk.
His career began in the Sunday Express, but first distinguished himself in the 1970s in Belfast, having become a Northern Ireland correspondent for The times in 1972. It was a city in which many news organizations were inclined to repeat the often dubious official versions of many controversial incidents. But Fisk checked and double-checked everything, his refusal to simply accept what the authorities claimed often caused great annoyance to the British government and army.
Fisk’s reporting philosophy, which would be present for the rest of his career, is summed up in a quote he gave decades later: “You have to look for whatever source you can.” He was always ready with a notebook in hand. “I was amazed to see that he was reporting on a war,” he said of his time reporting in Belfast. “I always refer to Northern Ireland as a war and not as the Troubles.”
Fisk would also report from Portugal for the newspaper, before becoming a Middle East correspondent in 1976. Based in Beirut, he would eventually occupy an apartment located on its famous cornice that he would keep for decades, often spending part of his nights on the balcony. Although, in a sense, he never left Ireland. He wrote two books about it and also bought a splendid house overlooking the sea in Dalkey, south of Dublin, and returned there frequently. Later, after residing in Beirut for years, he added several Middle Eastern touches to the house.
Fisk was fascinated by the insecurity of the Middle East and recurring violent conflicts, reporting on the civil wars in Lebanon and Algeria, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The awards would never be far behind, with Fisk winning International Reporter of the Year at the 1979 Press Awards, something he would repeat in 1980 with his dispatches on the Iran-Iraq conflict.
Fisk was one of the first reporters to enter the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, where more than a thousand people died in 1982. It was a situation that helped shape him as a reporter. “The Israelis looked and did nothing,” he wrote. “With two colleagues, I entered the camps before the murderers finished committing their war crimes. I hid with an American reporter in the backyard of a cabin with a young woman who had just been executed. I climbed over piles of corpses. That night, I burned my clothes because it smelled of decomposition. “
Later he would say about the massacre: “I remember thinking: if these people have souls, they would want me to be there. I thought they would treat me like a friend for that reason. So I was not horrified. I was horrified that they had been killed, but what [manifested itself in] anger.”
He would win another award for International Reporter of the Year for that dispatch, which the judges described as “destroying” both “traumatic in their descriptive power. [and] almost unbearable in its total effect ”. The judges added that their other Middle East work “revealed the same determination to discover the truth and the same sensitivity to human suffering in the midst of war.” The following year, Fisk would win the Reporter of the Year award for his work covering the Lebanese civil war.
More success followed, and having earned his BA from Lancaster University in the late 1960s, Fisk earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin in the mid-1980s with his PhD thesis on the neutrality of Ireland during World War II.
Fisk would go The times in 1989 after a dispute over how one of his stories was handled and would later write about his disdain for Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the title. He joined The independent, where he would remain for the rest of his life, a period that included two marriages and countless trips around the world.
He became known for his willingness to venture into dangerous areas and for his writing. He did not hide his personal views; his reports on the Armenian genocide are a case in point. He often wrote and spoke of his compassion for the people he saw die at the same time that he became a direct critic of the United States and Israel. His writing could be controversial, like his later report on Syria, and sometimes brutal. Fisk’s style meant that he attracted detractors, but also many loyal readers.
TO The independentFisk would win the International Reporter of the Year at the Press Awards twice more in 1994 and 1995 for dispatches from Bosnia and Algeria, as well as several Amnesty International awards for the media and the Orwell Award in 1999.
A series of interviews with al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden would really make Fisk’s name on a global level. Fisk would interview the man he would describe in their first meeting in 1993 as “the mountain warrior of Mujahideen legend” three times. In 1996 and 1997 more meetings followed with the man who would later become one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists. Fisk undoubtedly impressed the man who would become synonymous with the 9/11 attacks, with Bin Laden’s personal documents released by the United States in 2016 making this clear.
In an undated letter that bin Laden wrote about the upcoming 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, he sought media attention. He recommended that his lieutenants reach out to CBS, other anonymous US networks and the head of Al Jazeera’s Islamabad bureau to launch some kind of anniversary special, recommending Fisk as a moderator.
The so-called War on Terrorism that followed the September 11 attacks would mark Fisk’s writing for the rest of his days. His dispatches from Baghdad were the UK government’s nightmare when the US-UK bombing campaign began in Iraq in 2003. His contempt for governments or leaders who would seek war or inflict suffering was always clear. It was a thread that would also be present in his coverage of the 2011 Arab revolutions and the war in Syria.
In addition to his hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of newspaper articles, he also immersed himself in the history, politics, and culture of the Middle East, and produced a number of very important books. His books included The point of no return: the strike that broke the British in Ulster (1975), Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (2001), The Great War for Civilization: the conquest of the Middle East (2005) and The Age of the Warrior: Selected Essays (2008).
When I asked him at his Irish home, while we were surrounded by stacks of manuscripts that he was about to hand over to his editor, when he was going to relax and take it easy, he smiled and said, “I only have two more important books to do. “. I don’t think these were ever finished.
Another important part of his life unfolded when he was pressured to deliver conversations about the Middle East in many countries. When he started doing so, the clamor for tickets was huge, Fisk often drawing audiences of more than 1,000. An event in Dublin, organized by a journalist friend of his Conor O’Clery, was attended by 1,200 people. Fisk’s work was also described in the 2019 documentary. This is not a movie.
That was the impulse of a man who had spent decades helping readers understand the world, and its injustices, as much as he could.
Robert Fisk is survived by his wife, filmmaker and human rights activist Nelofer Pazira
Robert Fisk was born on July 12, 1946 and died on October 30, 2020
