Robert Fisk Biography

Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist. He has been Middle East correspondent intermittently since 1976 for various media; since 1989 he has been correspondent for The Independent, primarily based in Beirut.

 Fisk holds numerous British and international journalism awards, including the Press AwardsForeign Reporter of the Year seven times.

He has published a number of books and reported on several wars and armed conflicts.

An Arabic speaker, he was among the few Western journalists to interview Osama bin Laden, which he did on three occasions between 1993 and 1997.

Robert Fisk Age

Robert Fisk is a British journalist and best-selling author known for his coverage of the Middle East. Apr 10, 2019. He was born on 12 July 1946 in Maidstone, United Kingdom. He is 72 years old as of 2019.

Robert Fisk Early Life And Education

Fisk was an only child, born in Maidstone, Kent. His father, already in his mid-50s, was Borough Treasurer at Maidstone Corporation and had fought in the First World War.

He was educated at Yardley Court, a preparatory school, then at Sutton Valence School and Lancaster University, where he worked on the student magazine John O’Gauntlet.

He later gained a Ph.D. in Political Science, from Trinity College, Dublin in 1983. The title of his doctoral thesis was “A condition of limited warfare: Éire’s neutrality and the relationship between Dublin, Belfast, and London, 1939–1945”.

Robert Fisk Personal Life

He has been a relationship with American journalist Lara Marlowe. They married in 1994. However, due to some obligations in their married life, they separated in 2006.

Till their married life, they don’t bless by any child. There are no other relationships related to him. His sexual orientation is straight; he does not gay. At the current time, he is single and concerned about his career.

Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk Career

Newspaper correspondent

Fisk worked on the Sunday Express diary column before a disagreement with the editor, John Junor, prompted a move to The Times.

From 1972 to 1975, at the height of the Troubles, Fisk was The Times Belfast correspondent, before being posted to Portugal following the Carnation Revolution in 1974.

He then was appointed Middle East correspondent (1976–1988). When a story of his was spiked (Iran Air Flight 655) after Rupert Murdoch’s takeover, he moved to The Independent in April 1989.

The New York Times once described Robert Fisk as “probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain”. In addition to the Troubles and Portugal, he reported the Iranian revolution in 1979.

War reporting

Fisk has lived in Beirut since 1976, remaining throughout the Lebanese Civil War. He was one of the first journalists to visit the scene of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, as well as the Syrian Hama Massacre. His book on the Lebanese conflict, Pity the Nation, was first published in 1990.

Fisk also reported on the Soviet-Afghan War, the Iran–Iraq War, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the Algerian Civil War, the Bosnian War, the 2001 international intervention in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Arab Spring in 2011 and the ongoing Syrian Civil War.

During the Iran–Iraq War, he suffered partial but permanent hearing loss as a result of being close to Iraqi heavy artillery in the Shatt-al-Arab when covering the early stages of the conflict.

After the United States and allies launched their intervention in Afghanistan, Fisk was for a time transferred to Pakistan to provide coverage of the conflict. While reporting from there, he was attacked and beaten by a group of Afghan refugees fleeing heavy bombing by the United States Air Force.

He was ultimately rescued from this attack by another Afghan refugee. In his graphic account of his own beating, Fisk absolved the attackers of responsibility and pointed out that their “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.’”

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Fisk was based in Baghdad and filed many eyewitness reports. He has criticized other journalists based in Iraq for what he calls their “hotel journalism”, reporting from one’s hotel room without interviews or first-hand experience of events.

His opposition to the war brought criticism from both Irish Sunday Independent columnist and senator, Eoghan Harris, and The Guardian columnist, Simon Hoggart.

Fisk has criticized the Coalition’s handling of the sectarian violence in post-invasion Iraq, and argued that the official narrative of sectarian conflict is not possible: “The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it’s Al Qaeda, it’s the Sunni insurgents.

It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militiamen who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. (…) We need to look at this story in a different light.”

Osama bin Laden

Fisk interviewed Osama bin Laden on three occasions, reporting the interviews in articles published by The Independent on 6 December 1993, 10 July 1996, and 22 March 1997.

In Fisk’s first interview, “Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace,” he wrote of Osama Bin Laden: “With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr. Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend.

Chador children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom” while noting that he was accused of “training for further jihad wars”.

During one of Fisk’s interviews with Bin Laden, Fisk noted an attempt by Bin Laden to convert him. Bin Laden said; “Mr. Robert, one of our brothers had a dream…that you were a spiritual person … this means you are a true Muslim”. Fisk replied; “Sheikh Osama, I am not a Muslim. … I am a journalist [whose] task is, to tell the truth”. Bin Laden replied:

“If you tell the truth, that means you are a good Muslim”. During the 1996 interview, Bin Laden accused the Saudi royal family of corruption. During the final interview in 1997, Bin Laden said he sought God’s help “to turn America into a shadow of itself”.

Fisk strongly condemned the September 11 attacks, describing them as a “hideous crime against humanity”. He also denounced the Bush administration’s response to the attacks, arguing that “a score of nations” were being identified and positioned as “haters of democracy” or “kernels of evil”, and urged a more honest debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East.

He argued that such a debate had hitherto been avoided “because, of course, to look too closely at the Middle East would raise disturbing questions about the region, about our Western policies in those tragic lands, and about America’s relationship with Israel”.

In 2007, Fisk expressed personal doubts about the official historical record of the attacks. In an article for The Independent, he claimed that, while the Bush administration was incapable of successfully carrying out such attacks due to its organizational incompetence, he is “increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11” and added that he does not condone the “crazed ‘research’ of David Icke, but is “talking about scientific issues”.

Fisk had earlier addressed similar concerns in a speech at Sydney University in 2006. During the speech, Fisk said: “Partly I think because of the culture of secrecy of the White House, never have we had a White House so secret as this one.

Partly because of this culture, I think suspicions are growing in the United States, not just among Berkeley guys with flowers in their hair. (…) But there are a lot of things we don’t know, a lot of things we’re not going to be told. (…) Perhaps the [fourth] plane was hit by a missile, we still don’t know”.

Bill Durodie notes that “recently published compilation of Osama bin Laden’s writings reveals how frequently he is inclined to cite Western writers, Western diplomats, and Western thinkers. At one point he even advises the White House to read Robert Fisk, rather than, as one might have supposed, the Koran.”

Robert Fisk Net worth

Robert started his professional career from Sunday Express. There he filled in as an editorial manager and after having a fight with John Junor, he joined The Times as their news reporter.

He was the fundamental man to cover the fallout of the repercussions of the Carnation Revolution. In April 1989, he joined The Independent.

He increased huge popularity after The New York Times asserted him to be the most celebrated remote reporter in Britain.

Since the start of his profession, he has revealed a few war news, for example, news identified with the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, and the Algerian Civil War.

Other than being the popular columnist, he is likewise the considerable author. From 1976, he lived in Beirut and he saw the Lebanese Civil War with his own particular eyes.

Subsequent to communicating such pity things throughout his life, he incorporated each one of those in one story and distributed his book Pity the Nation in 1990. In addition, he is prominent on the planet for bringing a meeting with Osama container Laden for three unique circumstances.

He brought him initially to meet with him on the sixth of December 1993. Osama container Laden truly valued him and he likewise guaranteed Robert to be one of his siblings.

In 1993, he delivered a video titled From Beirut To Bosnia and it was discharged a three-section arrangement. The fundamental point about his video was to discover why an expanding number of Muslims had come to abhor the West. It was at first discharged on Discovery Channel.

His monstrous 2005 work, The Great War for Civilisation, with its feedback of Western and Israeli ways to deal with the Middle East, was for the most part generally welcomed by critics and understudies of worldwide undertakings and is maybe his best-known work.

In any case, the commentator for The Guardian, the previous British envoy to Libya, Oliver Miles, was less energetic. He has a huge net worth and a good salary in millions but the exact figure is unknown.

Robert Fisk Views

Fisk has described himself as a pacifist and has never voted. He has said that journalism must “challenge authority, all authority, especially so when governments and politicians take us to war.” He has quoted with approval Israeli journalist Amira Hass:

“There is a misconception that journalists can be objective … What journalism is really about is to monitor power and the centers of power.” He spoke on “Lies, Misreporting, and Catastrophe in the Middle East” at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley on 22 September 2010, and stated, “I think it is the duty of a foreign correspondent to be neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer, whoever they may be.”

He has written at length on how many contemporary conflicts have their origins, in his view, in lines drawn on maps: “After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father’s war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies.

In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career—in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad—watching the people within those borders burn.”

Fisk has also written extensively about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and has supported moves to persuade the Turkish Government to acknowledge the truth of what happened in it.

Robert Fisk Awards And Honors

Fisk has received the British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times and twice won its “Reporter of the Year” award.

He also received Amnesty International UK Media Awards in 1992 for his report “The Other Side of the Hostage Saga”, in 1998 for his reports from Algeria and again in 2000 for his articles on the NATO air campaign against the FRY in 1999.

• 1984 Lancaster University honorary degree
• 1991 Jacob’s Award for coverage of the Gulf War on RTÉ Radio 1
• 1999 Orwell Prize for journalism
• 2001 David Watt Prize for an investigation of the 1915 Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire
• 2002 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
• 2003 Open University honorary doctorate
• 2004 University of St Andrews honorary degree
• 2004 Carleton University honorary degree
• 2005 Adelaide University Edward Said Memorial Lecture
• 2006 Ghent University honorary degree Political and Social Sciences
• 2006 American University of Beirut honorary degree
• 2006 Queen’s University Belfast honorary degree
• 2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize worth $350,000
• 2008 University of Kent honorary degree
• 2008 Trinity College Dublin honorary doctorate
• 2009 College Historical Society’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse
• 2009 Liverpool Hope University honorary degree
• 2011 International Prize at the Amalfi Coast Media Awards, Italy

Robert Fisk Works

Books

His massive 2005 work, The Great War for Civilisation, with its criticism of Western and Israeli approaches to the Middle East, was generally well received by critics and students of international affairs and is perhaps his best-known work.

However, the reviewer for The Guardian, the former British ambassador to Libya, Oliver Miles, was less enthusiastic. He wrote that “a deplorable number of mistakes” in the 1,366 pages long book “undermine the reader’s confidence”, and that “vigilant editing and ruthless pruning could perhaps have made two or three good short books out of this one”.

• The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster (1975). London: Times Books/Deutsch. ISBN 0-233-96682-X
• In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939–1945 (2001). London: Gill & Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-2411-8 (1st ed. 1983).
• Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (3rd ed. 2001). London: Oxford University Press; xxi, 727 pages. ISBN 0-19-280130-9 (1st ed. was 1990).
• The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (October 2005) London. Fourth Estate; xxvi, 1366 pages. ISBN 1-84115-007-X
• The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings (2008) London, Fourth Estate ISBN 978-0-00-727073-6
• Robert Fisk on Algeria (2013) Independent Print Limited

Robert Fisk Video Documentary

Fisk produced a three-part series titled From Beirut To Bosnia in 1993 which Fisk says was an attempt “to find out why an increasing number of Muslims had come to hate the West.

“ Fisk says that the Discovery Channel did not show a repeat of the films, after initially showing them in full, due to a letter campaign launched by pro-Israel groups such as CAMERA.

Robert Fisk’s Rumors And Controversies

Fisk’s reporting and commentary stirred controversy. His depreciators questioned his journalistic fairness, referring to his restriction to the Iraq War and his feedback of U.S. what’s more, Israeli strategies.

His supporters, then again, battled that most Western columnists are aimlessly steady of the United States and Israel and that Fisk’s work in the examination is interestingly objective and impartial.