He joined The Sun newspaper in 2003 as a graduate trainee.[21] He moved to The Times in 2010 before returning to The Sun in 2020.
Afghanistan
In 2006 he moved to Kabul, Afghanistan, to write propaganda for Nato's International Security Assistance Force[22] (Isaf). He served with the Combined Joint Psy-Ops Taskforce (CJPOTF) which produced a fortnightly newspaper called Sada-e Azadi, or Voice of Freedom in Dari. He resigned after six months, complaining that the newspaper was "terrible".[22] Later he wrote in The Times how Sada-e Azadi was sold by the kilogram as scrap before it could reach readers.[23]
During the raid, on 12 February 2010, unidentified special forces soldiers killed five innocent people including two pregnant women, a teenage girl engaged to be married and two brothers who worked for the local government in Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan.[30] All of the victims were from the same family. Initially the soldiers said the women were victims of a triple honour killing.[34] They said they discovered the women's bodies "tied up, gagged and killed"[35] and that the dead men were insurgents.[35]
When Starkey challenged Nato's account they accused him of lying.[36][37] However, four weeks later William H. McRaven, the commander of America's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), admitted his soldiers were responsible.[38]McRaven travelled to the family's compound, outside Gardez and offered to sacrifice a sheep outside their door in a ritual act of Nanawatai, to seek their forgiveness.[38][39][40]
In 2010, Jerome was nearly killed during an embed with British troops in Helmand Province when an Improvised explosive device (IED) exploded fewer than 10 metres in front of him.[41][42] The explosion, inside a designated safe area which had recently been cleared by the Royal Engineers, killed Corporal David Barnsdale[43] and injured two others. The British army tried to censor his account on the grounds that it was too graphic. Senior officers, who were not at the scene, claimed the bomb was not inside the safe area.[44]
In August 2024 Starkey reported from occupied Russian Kursk which Ukrainian forces had captured in a surprise attack.
A court in Kursk accused Starkey of entering Russia illegally and put him on an international wanted list. Starkey quipped it was "nice to feel wanted"[51][52] and has continued to report from across Ukraine.
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