Rory Carroll

Rory Carroll (born 1972) is an Irish journalist working for The Guardian who has reported from, among other locations, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and Latin America. He is currently based in Los Angeles as U.S. West Coast correspondent for The Guardian. His book on Hugo Chávez, Comandante, was published in March 2013.

Early life and career
Born in Dublin, Carroll is a graduate of Blackrock College, Trinity College and Dublin City University. He began his career at The Irish News in Belfast, working as a reporter and diarist from 1995 to 1997, when he was named young journalist of the year in Northern Ireland's media awards.

He moved to London to work as a researcher on two Channel 4 documentaries, Getting Away with Murder and The Devil Amongst Us. In November 1997 he joined The Guardian as a reporter, covering stories in Britain and returning to Northern Ireland to cover the peace talks. From 1999, he was deployed as a foreign correspondent in Yemen. and Serbia for the aftermath of the Kosovo war.

In late 1999 he was posted to Rome as Southern Europe correspondent for The Guardian, where he wrote on topics such as The Vatican, Silvio Berlusconi, Macedonia, immigration and human trafficking from northern Africa, and the Middle East. After 9/11 he reported from Pakistan and Afghanistan. His report from Qalaye Niazi, where a wedding party was bombed by US planes, fuelled criticism of the Pentagon's air campaign. He broke the news about the UK's first overseas combat deployment since the first Gulf War.

Africa correspondent
In 2002 Carroll was posted to Johannesburg as Africa correspondent for The Guardian. He wrote about the massive problems facing Zimbabwe and South Africa, as well as the continent's food and public health problems. His interview with a Liberian female rebel commander (nicknamed "Black Diamond"), prompted Hollywood interest in making a film about her life, but it has not materialized. His article about rape in Congo provided the introduction to an essay by Cherie Blair for a Human Rights Watch volume on torture.

Carroll's article about Hamilton Naki that appeared in The Guardian in 2003 was cited by the New York Times as the original source of their erroneous reporting in 2005  about the role Hamilton Naki played when the first heart transplant was performed at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967.

Iraq correspondent
Carroll took over The Guardian's Baghdad bureau in January 2005. He covered the US occupation, suicide bombings, the formation of Iraqi military and police units, growing sectarian tension, and the death of several friends, including Marla Ruzicka.

On October 19, 2005 he was abducted in Baghdad after carrying out an interview with a victim of Saddam Hussein's regime in Sadr City. The interview had been arranged with the assistance of the Baghdad office of Moqtada al-Sadr. Carroll was released unharmed by his captors a day later after the British, Irish and Iranian governments, among others, lobbied for his release. The Guardian published Carroll's account of the kidnapping soon after.

Latin America correspondent
In April 2006 he was appointed The Guardian's Latin America correspondent, based in the newspaper's Caracas bureau. His report about oil exploration in Peru's Amazon was disputed by the oil company Perenco. A series he wrote in 2010 on Mexico's drug war was longlisted for the Orwell prize. An article about aid tourists in Haiti stirred debate in the aid community over whether well-meaning amateurs should visit disaster zones. Carroll's reporting from Caracas was criticised by Red Pepper in 2008 for what was judged to be a trend of misrepresentation of the Venezuelan reality and its leader, Hugo Chávez. Carroll also said that he is "not a champion of impartiality", but he says he is open-minded: "I see a government that is doing some good things and some bad things ".

"I try to give a sense of how bizarre and funny some things are,"..."like when Chávez, on his own [weekly] TV show, Aló Presidente, ordered the mobilisation of 9,000 soldiers and tanks to the Colombian border. On the one hand that's a serious story, but there is bombast too ... mobilisation on that scale never happened."

On 3 July 2011, The Observer published an article by Carroll featuring an interview with Noam Chomsky concerning the detention of Maria Lourdes Afiuni, an arrested Venezuelan judge, in which Chomsky criticised the government of Hugo Chávez. Chomsky said in an email exchange with the Znet blogger Joe Emersberger that the report was "deceptive" because of the omission of his comparison of the case of Bradley Manning with the arrested Venezuelan judge, among other points, and rejected the assertion that Venezuela was less democratic than before Chávez took office: "I don’t think so, and never suggested it." The article did in fact cite Chomsky mentioning the Manning case. Chomsky made no direct complaint to The Observer. The newspaper reproduced the entire transcript of Carroll's exchange with Chomsky the following day on its website. Chomsky said the transcript appeared accurate. The Observer's reader's editor, Stephen Pritchard, investigated complaints on Chomsky's behalf and found that there was no case to answer with the exception of the headline, which was too strong. It was subsequently amended.

In an article published in March 2013, shortly after Chávez died, Carroll said that the former Venezuelan President left an "ambiguous legacy of triumph, ruin and uncertainty". "Whither his '21st-century socialist revolution', a unique experiment in power fuelled by charisma and bountiful oil revenues?"

US West Coast correspondent
In April 2012 The Guardian posted Carroll to Los Angeles to cover the west and southern US. Carroll's interview with Rodney King, published at the beginning of May 2012, on the 20th anniversary of the LA riots was one of the last before King died.

Book on Hugo Chávez
Comandante was published on March 7, 2013—two days after the announcement of Chávez's death—by Penguin Press in the US and by Canongate in the UK. Translations are underway for editions in Brazil, China, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Estonia and Poland. It was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the 25 books to read in 2013.

John Sweeney in The Literary Review called the book “a well-considered and painfully fair epitaph” but said it was encumbered with respect for chavistas' aspirations.