The Frontline Club

Tyler Brule talks to John Owen about the media, consumerism, style and world politics. Canadian-born Brule is best known for the now legendary Wallpaper and Monocle magazines, publications that revolutionalised the world of glossy magazines, combining serious content with serious style. He is also the man behind Winkreative, a full-service intelligence-driven design agency and Winkontent, the company responsible for The Desk, a new media show broadcast on BBC Four, and Counter Culture, a six part series on global consumerism commissioned by the BBC. Moderated by John Owen Chairman of the Frontline Club Charitable Trust and professor at City University.

As the race for the Democratic and Republican nominations reach the crunch point, we discuss pre-elections politics and what each party brings to the table. Gavin Hewitt - Special Correspondent for BBC News. He has covered 2008 Super Tuesday and will be returning from the US having covered the primaries in Texas and Ohio. William Schneider - is a leading U.S. political commentator and a CNN senior political analyst. Schneider has been labeled "the nation's electionmeister" by the Washington Times and "the Aristotle of American politics" by the Boston Globe. Harriet Sherwood - Foreign Editor of the Guardian. She has recently returned from the US after covering the campaign. Moderated by Jon Snow - Presenter Channel 4 News. He has been presenting news from the US during run up to the Super Tuesday.

Paul Radu of the Romanian Centre of Investigative Journalists talks about human trafficking from the Balkans and Russian organised crime infiltrating the football business in Eastern Europe. Having worked as an investigative journalist for many years, Radu taps an extensive network of investigative journalists from the Balkans, South America and South East Asia to help him conduct his investigation and to link the eastern European criminal organisations to criminal gangs worldwide. The event is organised in association with the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Sean Smith's work in Iraq has won praise for exposing the pain and suffering of both ordinary Iraqis and US troops, tasked with restoring peace in country falling apart. Here he will present examples of his work and discuss with the Guardian's diplomatic editor, Julian Borger, the story behind the images as well as where Iraq stands a year on from the controversial 'surge' of US troops. It was whilst in Iraq that Sean started to shoot video footage as well as stills, which resulted in two acclaimed short features: Inside the Surge and Iraq: The Real Story. Sean received two awards at the prestigious Press Photographer's Year 2007: Photograph of the Year and Best News photo for his image of a hooded detainee in Hawijah, Iraq. He recently returned from Pakistan where he documented the events running up to the 18 February elections.

Award winning journalist and TV presenter gives his opinions on the media, current affairs, politics and politicians. Jeremy Paxman began his television career as a reporter covering the troubles in Northern Ireland. In 1977, he moved to London to work as a reporter on Tonight, and after two years he became a reporter on Panorama. His assignments over the next five years took him around the world. It was during this period he wrote A Higher Form Of Killing with Robert Harris, an acclaimed history of chemical and biological warfare. His investigation into the mysterious death of Italian banker Roberto Calvi, Called To Account, won the Royal Television Society award for international current affairs. It was while travelling in El Salvador researching for his book about Central America - Through The Volcanoes - that he received a call inviting him to present the BBC's new Six O'Clock News. He joined Newsnight in 1989, shortly before publication of his portrait of the British Establishment: Friends in High Places. Jeremy received a broadcasting award for outstanding contribution to television by the Voice of the Listener and Viewer in 1994 and 1997 as well as the Richard Dimbleby Award, Bafta's most prestigious award for current affairs, in 1996 and 2000. In 1998 he won the Interview of the Year award for his famous questioning of Michael Howard. In 2002 he was named presenter of the year at the Royal Television Society Journalism awards. Moderated by Prof. Roy Greenslade - one of Britain's foremost media teachers. Greenslade is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently writes for the London Evening Standard and blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and the editorship of the Daily Mirror.

With the murder of Benazir Bhutto and national elections due in February, the future of Pakistan is once again in the spotlight. Our panel discusses how Bhutto's assassination has affected Pakistani politics and what the likely outcome of the elections will be in this country that is so crucial to world stability. Owen Bennett-Jones - presenter and correspindent for the BBC. Former BBC Islamabad Correspondent. Aamir Ghauri - head of News and Current Affairs, GEO TV, UK and Europe Bureau. Victoria Schofield - journalist and author, specialising in South Asia. Friend and Oxford contemporary of Benazir Bhutto. She is the author of Afghan Frontier: Feuding and Fighting in Central Asia and Kashmir in Conflict, among many others. M. Ziauddin - London Bureau chief of Dawn newspaper. Moderated by Mishal Husain - Presenter, BBC World, BBC Breakfast and Weekend News. Reported recently from Pakistan on the aftermath of the Bhutto assassination. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy - award-winning journalist and filmmaker, specialising in Pakistan and Afghanistan - will not be able to take part in the discussion due to urgent changes in her travel plans.

Kenya's abrupt descent into mayhem after President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election tarnished one of Africa's most promising economies and badly damaged its tourism industry. And a year on since the UN brokered peace agreements were signed it seems apparent to all that Kenya's underlying issues are still unresolved. There is continuing ethnic unrest and tens of thousands of displaced persons still living in camps. So have the peace agreements achieved anything or have the country's wounds simply been papered over? And with a series of corruption scandals over the last few months and the economy in a downward spiral, what does the future hold for this country once renowned for its stable economy and democracy? Michela Wrong is author of It's our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower - which tells the story of her Kenyan friend John Githongo - Kenya's anti-corruption tsar. Michela is also a distinguished international journalist, and has worked as a foreign correspondent covering events across the African continent for Reuters, the BBC and the Financial Times. She is also the author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz and I Didnt Do It for You - both based on her experiences in Africa. Professor John Lonsdale is emeritus professor of modern African history and fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. Among his books are (as co-author) Unhappy Valley: conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey, 1992) and (as co-editor) of Mau Mau and Nationhood (James Currey, 2003); he is also the author of seventy articles or book chapters on Kenyan and African history Joseph Warungu is editor of the BBC’s two flagship daily news and current affairs radio programmes for Africa as well as a quarterly magazine, Focus on Africa. Martin Kimani is a writer, newspaper columnist and security consultant. Lindsey Hilsum is International Editor for C4 news.

Following Kenya's disputed elections and post-election unrest our panel discusses whether democracy can win in this divided country. More information to follow. Dr. Muzong Kodi - Associate Fellow, Africa Programme, Chatham House. Solomon Mugera - Head of BBC Swahili Service. David Blair - Diplomatic Editor of The Daily Telegraph, former Africa Correspondent. Moderated by Richard Dowden - Director of the Royal African Society.

Legendary TV presenter, interviewer, producer and author, Sir David Frost talks about his remarkable career in television. Sir David Frost has been described as a "one man conglomerate". He hosted and co-created That Was the Week it Was, has produced countless television programmes, has written 15 books, produced 8 films, he is a lecturer, a publisher and an impresario. But he is perhaps best known for being one of the best television interviewers in the world. His Nixon Interviews, according to the New York Times achieved "the largest audience for a news interview in history". Peter Morgan's play, Frost/Nixon achieved great success in London and Broadway this year. He is the only person to have interviewed the last seven Presidents of the United States (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush) and the last seven Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom (Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown). Sir David now presents Frost Over The World weekly for Al Jazeera English with a variety of newsmakers from Hamad Karzai, President Lula of Brazil, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev and Benazir Bhutto after the assassination attempt, to Gerry Adams, Madeleine Albright, Gen. Wesley Clark, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dame Helen Mirren and the first interview with Lewis Hamilton and continues to make Frost Tonight weekly for ITV. He is taking Through The Keyhole into its 21st year on the BBC, has recorded The Frost Years for Radio 4 and is Executive Producing a remake of the film, The Dam Busters with Universal and Peter Jackson.

London's former ambassador to the UN and the first British envoy to Iraq talks about British foreign policy in the new world order. Sir Jeremy Greenstock was a British diplomat between 1969 and 2004, serving in Paris, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Washington DC and New York. He is a critic of the US and British approach to the war in Iraq and argues for a more calibrated approach towards the trans-Atlantic special relationship. Greenstock sees terrorism as one a leading international issue which will remain in sharp focus for years to come. He also believes, however, that issues such as nationalism, competition over energy resources, migration, natural disasters and nuclear weapons will continue to dominate world politics. What should the role of Britain be in the years to come? Moderated by Yahia Said - Director, Middle East Revenue Watch at the LSE.

Editor of the Times and favourite to become the new editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson, talks to Roy Greenslade about the media, news and journalism. Robert Thomson, who was born in Australia, became the editor of The Times in 2002 after 17 years at The Financial Times. Since then the newspaper has changed format, from broadsheet to 'compact' to attract younger audiences. Under his leadership the newspaper has also started paying more attention to world politics, business and finance and sport. As part of the Frontline Editors Roundtable series. Moderated by Prof. Roy Greenslade - one of Britain's foremost media teachers. Greenslade is a leading commentator and columnist on the media, and currently writes for the London Evening Standard and blogs for The Guardian. As a journalist he rose to the highest levels of management in a career taking in The Sun, the Sunday Times, and the editorship of the Daily Mirror.

As an ever greater number of journalists are killed and kidnapped, we discuss whether there is a need for a special international convention to protect journalists working in war and conflict zones. According to the figures from the International News Safety Institute, this year alone 140 journalists and media professionals have died - the worst year since records began. Many argue that it is now time for journalists, who have increasingly became targets in their own rights, to have a special international convention to protect them. Our panel debates whether the convention is needed or whether the profession should lobby national governments to act on existing laws to protect them as it has a duty to protect all civilians in war zones. Geoffrey Robertson QC - counsel in many landmark cases in constitutional, criminal and media law in the courts of Britain and the commonwealth and he makes frequent appearances in the Privy Council and the European Court of Human Rights. In 2002, Justice Robertson was appointed as an appeal judge for the new UN war crimes court in Sierra Leone, and served as that court's first President. Knut Doerman - Deputy Head of the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva, since June 2004. Before he had been Legal Adviser at the ICRC Legal Division between December 1998 and May 2004, he was inter alia Member of the ICRC Delegation to the Preparatory Commission of the International Criminal Court. Aidan White - General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, a prime mover of the motion on defence of journalists and media staff in war zones agreed by the United Nations Security Council in 2006. Others - TBC. Moderated by Stewart Purvis - Professor of television at City University.

The Tamil Tigers are looking closer than ever to military defeat as government forces continue to overrun the last remaining rebel strongholds in the north of the country. With an end to the military stalemate and the 25 year civil war potentially in sight, what is the future for the LTTE and what are the consequences more generally for Sri Lanka? Will a military defeat for the LTTE mean a return to its insurgency roots and will the Tigers continue to use their notoriously heavy-handed tactics on the Tamil people? Or can we now expect to see a new era in Sri Lankan politics with the government and the LTTE returning to dialogue and peace-building? What will happen to the thousands of displaced persons and injured civilians that have resulted from this war - a situation that the international aid agencies have declared to be a humanitarian disaster?  And what is the likelihood that the end of the war will bring with it a return to press freedom and an improved human rights record? Frances Harrison was the BBC's Colombo correspondent from 2000 to 2004 during the last peace process between the Tamil Tigers and the government. She is now a freelance journalist.  Charu Lata Hogg worked as an international journalist in India and Sri Lanka for over 12 years, writing for numerous publications. As Associate Fellow in the Asia Programme at Chatham House, she has briefed governments, NGOs, corporations and the media on a range of issues in South Asia covering political, economic and security trends. She is currently also researcher with Human Rights Watch and covers developments in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. Pearl Thevanayagam is an exiled journalist from Sri Lanka from the Tamil minority. She has been a print journalist since 1990 for various newspapers in Sri Lanka including the Weekend Express (independent English weekly) where she served as a news editor until she was forced to resign under pressure from the government in 1997 and had to go into hiding until 2001. She was also Colombo Correspondent to Times Of India. Pearl is a founder member and secretary of  EJN (Exiled Journalists Network) and in October 2007 was co-organiser of the Press Freedom Forum on Sri Lanka in the UK parliament to highlight the increasing threats, murders and abductions of media personnel. Lal Wickrematunge is the managing editor of the Sunday Leader, the newspaper founded by his brother Lasantha Wickrematunge who was killed on 8 January 2009. Raj Jayadevan is the leader of the Tamil Democratic Congress and the General Secretary of the recently formed Alliance for Peace and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka (APRSL). He has been involved in Sri Lankan politics since the mid 1970's and came to the UK to study in 1979 following anti-Tamil violence in 1977. He was taken captive in 2005 by the LTTE and released after 62 days. Priyath Liyanage is head of the Sinhala Service at the BBC

Investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark reveal a vast nuclear black market sanctioned by Pakistan's military elite, financed by aid money from the US, Saudi Arabia and Libya and receiving assistance from China. Levy and Scott-Clark are renowned investigative journalists and have been nominated three times for the British Press Awards. They specialise in covering unusual issues such as the Burmese government's involvement in drug production and the Yaba industry in Thailand. In 2002 their work was selected by El Mundo in Spain and Courrier Internationale in France, as among the best of courageous European journalism. Their latest investigation took them to Pakistan, a key western ally in the "war on terror". They discovered a booming nuclear market sanctioned by Pakistan's military elite with weapons secretly sold to Iran, North Korea and many others - with the apparent knowledge of the US government. Evidence has also been uncovered that successive US administrations have conducted a deliberate cover-up, facilitating the spread of the very weapons they vilify. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are the authors of several books including The Stone of Heaven, The Amber Room and most recently Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy. The event is organised in association with the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and the longest serving western journalist in Iraq, John Fisher Burns talks about life in Iraq before and during the war and during the ongoing occupation. The New York Times' chief foreign correspondent has been reporting from Iraq for five years. He was based in Baghdad during the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003 and has covered the war and occupation extensively. Burns has worked for The New York Times since 1975 and received two Pulitzer Prizes for  "his courageous and thorough coverage of the destruction of Sarajevo and the barbarous killings in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina" in 1993 and "for his courageous and insightful coverage of the harrowing regime imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban" in 1997. He has now moved to the UK to become The New York Times Bureau Chief in London. Moderated by Paul Wood - BBC Defence Correspondent.