Monthly Archives: June 2008

Route Irish Times – Part 2

Interviews

An Interview with Lara Marlowe, Foreign Correspondent for the Irish Times

In Part 1 of this interview Lara Marlowe described life in an Iraq 5 years into foreign occupation, based on experiences during her last visit reporting for the Irish Times. In Part 2 of this interview, she puts the current escalation towards Iran in historical context and laments the failures of the mainstream news media in the run up to the Iraq war

(LM – Lara Marlowe, MB – MediaBite, David Manning and Miriam Cotton)

MB: Iran is obviously coming up a lot these days, have you come across any evidence that Iran is supplying weapons or training to Iraqi resistance fighters?

LM: I lived in Lebanon for eight years and the Iranians helped create Hezbollah in Lebanon. When I interviewed the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, he said ‘we support all legitimate resistance movements’. And they believe that the occupation is illegal. So it follows that they may be supplying weapons and training. But you must also consider that the US lied about Saddam Hussein’s inexistent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Their “intelligence” on Iraq cannot be considered credible, if for no other reason because of their past record.

Continue reading Route Irish Times – Part 2 →

Route Irish Times – Part 1

Interviews, lara marlowe

An Interview with Lara Marlowe, Foreign Correspondent for the Irish Times

For 12 years Lara Marlowe, as foreign correspondent for the Irish Times, has covered events from Algeria and Serbia to Iraq and the wider Middle East as well as providing regular reports on events from France where she is based.

Since 2003 she has offered a consistently critical account of the Iraq war and occupation. Hers is one of the few voices to challenge the mainstream narrative at a time when many of her colleagues were and still are turning a blind eye to the sorts of realities that she has brought to attention.

This critical account does not go unnoticed by those in the profession less concerned with journalistic standards. She has been derided for writing what are wilfully misdescribed as ‘bad news stories’:

“Prime Time’s Mark Little is now so well informed on Middle East politics that we no longer have to depend on doomy dirges from Lara Marlowe.” (‘Rising parade: compliments, complaints and sheer boredom’, Eoghan Harris, Irish Independent, 23rd April 2006)

Continue reading Route Irish Times – Part 1 →