Jeremy Paxman writes for Vice about Guantnamo Bay censorship
Jeremy Paxman has diversified his journalism and presenting since quitting as Newsnights long-serving anchor earlier this year. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
Though famously derisive of the internet and many of the people who use it, Jeremy Paxman has broadened his post-Newsnight portfolio by writing for digital media darling Vice. The online-only article is about the first world war poet Wilfred Owens work being banned from the Guantnamo Bay prison library.
Paxmans piece along with articles from Melvyn Bragg, Irvine Welsh, John Pilger, John Le Carr and Frederick Forsyth, also on literature banned at the notorious US military detention camp form part of Vice Medias new Guantnamo Bay editorial project, the flagship of the companys website redesign.
Paxman, 64, who earlier this year presented a BBC docudrama on the war poet, writes in his Vice piece: I find it fascinating that Wilfred Owen is banned in Guantanamo. He is, famously, the great anti-war poet.
Yet by no stretch of the imagination can he be considered either malevolent or unpatriotic Funnily enough, many soldiers like his poetry very much.
Paxmans book The English has been passed as suitable in the detention camp, and former British Guantnamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg once showed him the rubber stamp inside the cover of his copy.
The Guantnamo Bay project, Behind the Bars, will feature 30 pieces of original content and provide a rare insight into the lives of the people inhabiting one of the worlds most infamous, yet secretive, jails.
It will be led by long-form essays, drawings and satire. Shaker Aamar, the last British resident to be held in US super-max prison, on the island of Cuba, pens a satirical take on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as a fable about Colonel John Bogden.
Vice was able to gain access to the articles from detainees by working with the lawyers at Reprieve, a global non-for-profit organisation which represents many of the inmates.
Since leaving Newsnight, which he presented for 25 years, Paxman has joined the Financial Times as a contributing editor for the weekend issue, making his debut this weekend, writing an account of the mysterious death of Lord Kitchener, the war hero and British military commander in the first world war. Paxman will also anchor Channel 4s general election coverage next year.
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Jeremy Paxman writes for Vice about Guantnamo Bay censorship