| At our evening meeting on Monday, Tony Birtley gave The Rotary Club of Maidenhead a fantastic presentation: 'Who's Truth is it Anyway', which looks at where we get our 'truth' and why we believe it, and he also discussed the challenges for a correspondent covering conflict. Tony is multi-award-winning TV journalist and has covered some of the biggest conflicts since the Second World War. He has been wounded three times in the course of a career spanning more than 40 years. Many members bought his book, 'The Edge of Madness', based on the war in Bosnia in the 1990’s which he covered extensively. Tony Birtley’s first war was in Lebanon, and since then he has reported on conflicts in many other countries including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Somalia, Chechnya, and Libya. Tony spent the best part of four years covering the conflict in Bosnia. He took incredible risks to get into the besieged Muslim enclave of Srebrenica and his smuggled, graphic reports gave the outside world the first view of the widescale killing, ethnic cleansing and hunger. He was badly wounded there and had to be airlifted out but his reports helped the town become a safe haven. Tony has notched up some other world exclusives including the fall of Kabul to the Mujahadeen in 1992, the crackdown in Myanmar in 2008 and the capture of Muamar Gadaffi in 2011. He has worked for ABC News (US), Channel 4 News, BBC, ITN, CNN and TV-am, and has reported for Aljazeera English since 2006, first as Asia correspondent and then in Israel. |   The club’s members were enthralled and also challenged by Tony’s presentation and agreed that war was horrific. President Maria Scavetta thanked him for a very interesting and moving talk. |
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