No Washington visits for Women Journalists Fallen in the Line of Fire
The profession of hard news reporting deserves protection and preservation,
care and professional diligence. Women journalists have risked their lives,
died in the line of fire. They too deserve recognition.
Some of the Recent Fallen
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Miroslava Breach Velducea,
a reporter for the Norte de Juárez and La Jornada newspapers who covered “organized
crime and local government corruption …, fatally riddled with bullets while in
her car” (March 23, 2017, Chihuahua, State of Chihuahua, Mexico). A few days
before the shooting, she had written “a story about an armed conflict between
the two leaders of a criminal group linked to the Juárez Cartel.”
Gauri Lankesh, editor of
the Lankesh Patrike weekly, known for her courage and determination in
defending “women’s rights and criticizing the caste system and Hindu
nationalism,” slain September 5, 2017, by a gunmen who opened fire with several
rounds as she opened the door of her home in Bangalore (Southern India). Before
the shooting she had been threatened on the Internet. Supporters of “Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had often attacked her.”
Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese
journalist, writer, anti-corruption activist, and blogger—
engaged in “investigative reporting into government corruption,
nepotism, patronage, allegations of money laundering, links between Malta’s
online gambling industry and organized crime, Malta’s citizenship-by-investment
scheme, and payments from the government of Azerbaijan”; denouncing “government
corruption, bribery, illegal trafficking, and offshore banking in Malta, the European
Union’s smallest country”; and writing “many articles about the involvement of
close associates of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in operations exposed by the
Panama Papers”—she was targeted and killed by a “car bomb” (Bidnija, Malta, October
16. 2017).
Kim Wall, a Swedish
freelance correspondent who “had traveled the world in the course of her reporting,”
was disappeared while on assignment, and weeks later her “dismembered body was
found at sea and on nearby beaches.”
Tuba Akyılmaz, a Turkish
journalist (professionally known as Nuzhian Arhan), who reported for the
feminist news website Sujin and the Kurdish news agency RojNews; while covering
conflict involving Kurdish forces, she “was fatally hit in the head by sniper
fire (March 2017, northern city of Sinjar).
Véronique Robert, a
Franco-Swiss journalist and war correspondent while “working for France
Télévisions on a report for the French TV documentary show Envoyé spécial,” was
“wounded in an explosion (mine explosion) in Mosul, Iraq” (June 19, 2017) and
died of her wounds a few days later “in a Paris hospital” (June 24, 2017).
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Leslie Ann Pamela Montenegro
(aka “Nana Pelucas”, El Sillón Show YouTube channel, video blogger) “murdered by
two gunmen at a restaurant in the ‘Golden Zone’ of Acapulco, Mexico, February
5, 2018” (reportedly had criticized politicians and government officials, all
political parties).
Wendi Winters, reporter,
editor, freelancer (Capital Gazette, Annapolis, Maryland, USA) killed in a newsroom
shooting, multiple victims, June 28, 2018.
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rior to 2017
Kidnapped, Wounded, Assassinated
2005 Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist working
for the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto and the German weekly Die Zeit,
“was kidnapped by (Iraqi) insurgents” (February 4, 2005) and en route to
Baghdad International Airport, after Italian intelligence officers had helped
secure her release (March 4, 2005), they came under military fire by “U.S.
forces.” Sgrena and one of the Italian
officers were wounded; Nicola Calipari, a Major General in the Italian military
intelligence service, was killed.
2006 Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, a
Russian journalist, writer, and human rights activist who reported on political
events in Russia and the Second Chechen War (1999–2005), was shot multiple times (in the chest, the shoulder, and the head at point-blank
range) and later found dead in the elevator of her residence (central Moscow, October
7, 2006).
2007 Zakia Zaki, Afghan journalist for the
Afghan Radio Peace (Sada-i-Sulh) station north of Kabul, Afghanistan; “the first
Afghani journalist to speak out against the Taliban after the US forces
initiated the War in Afghanistan (2001–2014)”; a champion of other Afghan causes
such as “gender equality and women’s rights”— shot dead in her home, several shots
fired by an unidentified gunman.
2012 Marie Catherine Colvin, a war correspondent
who had covered conflicts in Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Libya,
and East Timor and had lost an eye to shrapnel in Sri Lanka, was killed while stationed
in the western Baba Amr district of the city of Homs; she had crossed “illegally”
into Syria “on the back of a motocross motorcycle.” She was reportedly killed “by
an ‘improvised explosive device’” that had been “planted by terrorists” (February
22, 2012) as they fled “an unofficial media building that was being shelled by
the Syrian Army.”
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n Essential Hard to Come by in Today’s Global and Domestic Climate
Substantive news coverage in the public interest is at risk not only
when journalists become more entertainers than journalists but when dedicated
investigative journalists and correspondents are forced, by life-or-death necessity,
to abandon world coverage—
- because countries have become too dangerous to cover and/or…
- because good journalists choose to abandon the profession for less dangerous professions or less propaganda, theater, or entertainment.
The organization Reporters without Borders (Reporters sans Frontiers) notes
that “countries such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya” are “hemorrhaging
journalists.” And in Mexico, for example, hard news coverage is threatened by a
constant “a reign of terror” by “criminal cartels and local politicians.” In the United States, of course, corruption is rampant in government, that is among government officials and their partners; but the press prefers the easy stuff: partisanship, propagandist and pageantry.
In 2017, the percentage of women journalists dying in the line of fire
was 19 percent of the total number of journalists killed worldwide. Their percentage
more than doubled “the annual average of 7 percent and the highest number since
2009.” Populations, ordinary people, must pay attention to the press.
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he world must preserve and protect a free, responsible, and diligent
press; preserve and ensure good journalism—journalism that is practiced with
respect and without fear or favor—and protect those who practice hard news
coverage, good journalism. At the same time, world citizens must also work together actively
- to end the wars and conflicts;
- to end corruption in governments and other agencies, and
- to place checks on high crimes that threaten both practicing journalists, the public, and societies at large across the world.
Sources
Global Citizen “2017 Was Especially Dangerous for Female Journalists: An
unusually high number of journalists killed this year were women” December 22,
2017, Daniele Selby (Chime for Change) https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/journalists-killed-press-freedom-women
http://sanmiguelpen.com/2018/02/leslie-ann-pamela-montenegro/
Baltimore Sun http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/anne-arundel/bs-md-wendi-winters-20180628-story.html
Committee to Protect Journalists https://cpj.org/data/killed/2018/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&start_year=2018&end_year=2018&group_by=location
Committee to Protect Journalists (New York) “In Afghanistan, second female
journalist killed in a week” June 6, 2007, https://cpj.org/2007/06/in-afghanistan-second-female-journalist-killed-in.php
Reporters sans frontières (Reporters without borders)
https://rsf.org/en/journalists-killed
https://rsf.org/en/worldwide-round-journalists-killed-detained-held-hostage-or-missing-2017
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9ronique_Robert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliana_Sgrena
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Giuliana_Sgrena
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakia_Zaki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Colvin
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