This event will be the inaugural memorial lecture for the late Ian Black, former visiting fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Middle East editor for The Guardian.

In this first lecture, Jim Muir, Ian’s colleague at the LSE Middle East Centre and fellow seasoned journalist of the Middle East, will explore how reporting on the Middle East has been challenged and had to adapt in the extraordinary conditions prevailing since October 7, 2023.

Now more than ever, a year on since Hamas’ surprise attack on southern Israel, and Israel’s continued assault on Gaza, the role of journalists and media organisations has been vital, but it has also been called into question. With little direct access into Gaza for foreign journalists, the world has been relying on citizen journalists to document their lives, broadcast mainly through social media. What new modes of reportage have been created through these developments, and how has traditional media been affected by this? What role has social media played in exacerbating and debunking misinformation, and how can we understand the future of reporting on Israel and Palestine, and the broader Middle East in light of the past year?

Meet our speaker and chair

Jim Muir (@MuirJim) is a British journalist formerly with the BBC. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1975. Jim has covered the Lebanese Civil War, the Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, he moved to Cairo as BBC Middle East correspondent in 1995, then Tehran, where he chronicled the election of the reformist President Khatami. He covered the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, and spent time in Iraq until the Arab Spring, providing much of the BBC’s Syria coverage.

Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.

More about this event

The LSE Middle East Centre  (@LSEMiddleEast) builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.

Ian Black (1953-2023) was a veteran Middle East journalist who held a PhD in government from LSE. For 36 years, Ian was based at the Guardian as Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor. He reported and commented extensively on the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath in Syria, Libya and Egypt. Ian also wrote the introduction to The Arab Spring: Revolution, Rebellion and a New World Order; Israel's Secret Wars, Zionism and the Arabs, 1936–1939; and contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. His most recent book was the highly successful Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017.

Ian spent his final years back at LSE as a senior visiting fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and contributed extensively to the Centre’s activities. This lecture series will centre the ethos and rigour that Ian carried with him in his journalistic and academic work, specifically in relation to Israel and Palestine, but also more broadly across the Middle East. Ian was dedicated to understanding the opinions of all communities and working closely with local journalists. He was an authority on Israel and Palestine specifically in the British media landscape and he possessed the rare quality of being able to transcend political divides while keeping true to facts on the ground.

This first lecture of the series will be delivered by Jim Muir, former BBC Middle East correspondent and colleague to Ian, who has been reporting from the region for very nearly 50 years. Armed with a degree in Arabic from Cambridge, Jim arrived in Beirut in early 1975 and is still based there now, after stints as BBC correspondent in Cairo, Tehran and Baghdad.

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