Lizzie Phelan


Lizzie Phelan, is the managing director of redfish GmbH, a Berlin-based media company that focuses on creating critical short-documentaries. redfish is a subsidiary of RT's video news agency and Phelan was formerly employed as a reporter by RT, and specializes in reporting as a war correspondent, having filed dispatches from the field during the fall of the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi, the Syrian Civil War, and war on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Personal

Elizabeth Cocker took the name Phelan from her Irish grandmother and uses it for her professional work. Her great-grandfather was William Phelan, who was a member of the Irish Citizen Army. She did a postgraduate study in journalism.

Career

She first worked for the Daily Mail for experience before leaving after a few months for the Morning Star, under the byline Lizzie Cocker. Later she changed her byline to Lizzie Phelan. Lizzie Phelan is a freelance journalist, and her work has appeared in RT and the Iranian news network Press TV. Phelan was a freelance journalist in Libya and used as an analyst for reaction by PressTV. In Damascus, Syria, she worked with Mostafa Afzalzadeh on a documentary called Manufacturing Dissent. After completing her work in Syria, she reported from Managua, Nicaragua as a correspondent for Press TV and appeared on RT, reporting from Venezuela. In 2013, she was head of the newsroom at RT's Ruptly.tv, and is now RT's correspondent in Damascus, Syria.

Journalism

Reporting from Libya

During the 2011 military intervention in Libya, Phelan referred to Libyan rebels as "counter revolutionaries" and stated that "90% of the tribes in Libya are supportive of the government". She also reported witnessing war crimes committed by the National Transitional Council with the complicity of NATO in September.
Although she was among the western journalists held captive by pro-Qaddafi forces during the siege of the Rixos hotel in the hours prior to the fall of Tripoli, she appeared on a Skype interview on Russia Today claiming she was being "protected" by the government and that gunfire were actually "fireworks and celebratory gunfire" because the rebels having been defeated.
Phelan also wrote about the "millions" of black Libyans who were under risk of violence by rebels. Phelan claimed that there were summary executions of members of the Qadhadhfa tribe by members of the National Transitional Council:
When Tripoli then fell to the NTC, she was evacuated by the Red Cross to the Corinthia Hotel. She was able to leave Tripoli on a fishing boat on 29 August to Malta along with former US congressman Walter E. Fauntroy who had also been reported missing during his negotiation mission in Libya.

British regulatory response to reporting

In September 2012, UK broadcast regulator Ofcom, found that two Libyan dispatches broadcast by Phelan on RT in August 2011 were in breach of its code on accuracy and impartiality.
The channel responded to Ofcom's allegations insisting that "subsequent developments of the situation in Libya did however confirm", in their opinion "that Lizzie Phelan was correct in her assertions", referring to reports of civilian casualties by opposition and NATO forces by Amnesty International and the International Rescue Committee.
Ofcom ended the availability of Press TV in the United Kingdom in January 2012 because its license was being controlled from Iran instead of from the UK. Phelan has worked for Press TV as a correspondent in Libya and then in Nicaragua. The Guardian said her Libyan reporting was "controversial".

Reporting from Syria

Lizzie Phelan covered the Syrian conflict from the ground from September 2015 until April 2017. In 2015. she interviewed the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad along with a group of Russian journalists. She covered the operation to recapture Palmyra by the Syrian Army and Russian airforce in 2016 and 2017, both times being the first international journalist on the ground. In December 2016 she covered Aleppo coming back under Syrian government control and was the first to report from the Old City when opposition forces were defeated. Additionally she reported multiple times from Kurdish areas in Syria, including being the first international reporter in Afrin in 2016 after the siege on the city was lifted, and she covered the early days of the Raqqa offensive where she captured US Marines on the frontline in Tabqa, despite American claims that they had no military personnel deployed on frontlines.