Obituary column
Radio journalist killed in Congo
Alfred Nzonzo Bitwahiki is reportedly among 20 killed in a battle for control of Kiwanja in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Radio Racou journalist was confirmed killed by Human Rights Watch. The International Federation of Journalists has released a statement condemning the killing, “Our colleagues covering the conflict in the eastern part of the […]
Croatia Car bomb kills Nacional editor
Ivo Pukanić, the editor of the Nacional Magazine, and the publication’s marketing executive Niko Franić, were killed when a car bomb exploded in the coutyard of the magazine’s offices on Palmoticeva Street in central Zagreb yesterday evening, “I heard a terrible explosion and shaking, at first I thought it was an earthquake, I have not […]
Dutch journalist killed by cluster bomb
[video:youtube:B-epO3SDVYg] A Dutch government investigation has found that a Russian cluster bomb killed a television cameraman in Georgia in August, the Foreign Ministry said Monday. Russia denied using cluster munitions during its brief war with Georgia in August, but human rights groups say both sides unleashed the widely denounced weapons. link We previously linked to […]
Journalist Diyar Abbas gunned down in Kirkuk
Diyar Abbas Ahmed, a journalist with Eye Media in Iraq, was reportedly gunned down in the northern city of Kirkuk on a day of attacks across the country killing at least 19 people, The worst single attack was in Baghdad’s mainly Sunni quarter of Dora where a car bomb blast at a crowded market killed […]
Question over death of Gerda Taro
Gerda Taro was the first female war photographer. She photographed the Spanish Civil War. We’ll be celebrating her work at the Frontline Club on 17 October. Writing in the New Statesman Robin Stummer believes the pictures the 26-year old later became famous for are what led to her murder, According to the German academic Irme […]
Warlord jalied for BBC killing
Mukhiddin Olimpur, the BBC’s chief Farsi language correspondent in Tajikistan, was murdered in 1995. Nasrullo Sharifov, a rebel warlord, was jailed for 15 years today for murdering the journalist, “Sharifov was directly involved in the murder and confessed during the investigation and court hearings that he personally fired twice at Mukhiddin Olimpur from a Makarov […]
Soumya Vishwanathan shot dead in Delhi
Soumya Vishwanathan, a TV journalist with the Delhi-based Headlines Today, died after being shot in the head in her car after returning from a late night shift last night, Police said they got a call from an autorickshaw driver about the incident at 3:41 am. “Her Maruti Zen had hit the divider of the road. […]
100,000 signatures commemorate death of Kenji Nagai
Protesters in Japan presented the Myanmar Embassy in Tokyo a 100,000 signature petition protesting the murder of video journalist Kenji Nagai in the Burmese capital Rangoon one year ago. The group also asked for the return of his camera equipment, The group led by Kota Kinoshita, who was a close friend of Nagai, had collected […]
FBI investigate death of Cambodian journalist
Two FBI agents arrived in Cambodia this week to help investigate the killing in July of local journalist Khim Sambo and his son. Khim was gunned down in the streets of the Cambodia capital in July. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior reportely invited the duo to contribute in a “purely supportive” role, Chan Soveth, […]
Francoise Demulder dies age 61
Francoise Demulder, the French war photographer who became the first woman to win the World Press Photo award in 1976, has died, according to the International Herald Tribune today. She died of a heart attack at a hospital in Paris. She was 61 years old. “She was considered by all her colleagues as very courageous,” […]
Russian TV journalist Abdulla Alishayev shot dead
Abdulla Alishayev, a journalist from the republic of Daghestan died today after being attacked by gunmen on Tuesday. Alishayev worked as the anchor to a popular religious programme Peace to Your Home. He was attacked in his car in the village of Separatorny near Daghestan’s capital, Makhachkala. An official said he died in hospital. Earlier […]
Alistair Cooke cut up and sold
Gruesome news from Philadelphia. Two former funeral directors have admitted to “selling cadavers to a ring that cut them up and sold the body parts to hospitals for implants”. Not only that, but one of the bodies was that of esteemed foreign correspondent and voice of Letter from America, Alistair Cooke. One of the bodies […]
Anna Politkovskaya remembered
[video:google:-1006358898865632661&ei] Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya would have celebrated her 50th birthday today had she not been gunned down in Moscow in October 2006. Russian human rights groups intend to gather in central Moscow today to remember her, “On August 30, on the day of Anna Politkovskaya’s birthday, we want to honor her memory and again […]
UN condemns murder of Nigerian journalist
Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, a reporter with the Nigerian newspaper ThisDay, was shot and killed in the Nigerian capital Lagos on 17 August. His killer or killers have still not been found. Simon Kolawole a colleague of Ogundeji, bemoaned the state of the justice system in such killings, Those of us who have no police escorts, […]
Leroy Sievers dies age 53
Leroy Sievers, who worked as an embedded journalist in Iraq with Ted Koppel, has died of colon cancer age 53. Sievers covered a lot of war in his time; including Desert Storm, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He worked for ABC News and CBS, Sievers began writing about [his experience with cancer] experience […]
Thai Rath reporter Charlee Boonsawat killed
Two bombs exploded in the the southern Thai town of Sungai Kolok today. Charlee Boonsawat, a reporter on the Thai Rath newspaper, was among the dead. The first bomb, which caused minimal damage, is believed to have been planted on a motorcycle. The second bomb exploded as onlookers, police and journalists attended the scene of […]
Alexander Klimchuk laid to rest
[video:youtube:7-o8qgZY1MQ] Alexander Klimchuk was killed in Tskhinvali, the capital of the embattled region of South Ossetia nearly two weeks ago. Russian Today reports from his funeral in the video above. He was found dead in the streets of the South Ossetian capital along with another Georgian reporter, Grigol Chikhladze. Alexander headed up the photographic agency […]
Michael Holmes on shooting journalists
CNN correspondent Michael Holmes reflects on a week in which an alarming number of journalists have been either killed, injured and/or targetted in Georgia. Michael wasn’t stuck in a car in Georgia like the Turkish reporters he empathises with, but he’s experienced a imilar situation in Iraq, On January 27, 2004, our two-car convoy was […]
Israeli soldiers off the hook over Fadel Shana killing
David Schlesinger talks about his disappointment in the report this week from Israel’s senior military lawyer stating that Israeli forces will not face legal action following the killing of Reuters man Fadel Shana, I’ve written before that a camera is not a weapon, that a journalist is not a combatant, that the pen and the […]
Remembering Alexander Klimchuk
Matthew Collin, a foreign correspondent in the Caucasus region, is heading out of Tbilisi. He takes time out in today’s Guardian to reflect upon his adopted home and the death of his friend, the journalist Alexander Klimchuk, Last autumn, Klimchuk and I worked together in South Ossetia, covering a government-sponsored Boney M concert in a […]
John Cooley dies
From Democracy Now, The longtime foreign correspondent John Cooley has died. He covered the Middle East for more than fifty years, mostly at the Christian Science Monitor. He was the author of eight books, including Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism. link
Russian bombs kill journalist in Gori
From AP, A Dutch television journalist was killed overnight when Russian warplanes bombed the central Georgian city of Gori. The television news station RTL reported on its Web site that its cameraman Stan Storimans, 39, was killed and correspondent Jeroen Akkermans was wounded in the leg in the attack. RTL said, in all, five people […]
Journalists killed in South Ossetia
A Moscow radio station reports two journalists have been killed in Tskhinvali, the capital of the embattled region of South Ossetia. The International Herald Tribune has more, The station, Ekho Moskvy, cited a Russian Newsweek magazine correspondent Orkhan Dzhemal as saying that both went into the separatist Georgian province from the Georgian side and were […]
Richard Mills found dead in Harare
Richard Mills, a photographer with The Times newspaper, was found dead in a hotel room in Harare on July 14 after a suspected suicide. The Belfast Telegraph reports that Richard officially died of “asphyxiation by hanging”. Richard was working on an undercover assignment in Zimbabwe when he was found dead. He had previously worked in […]
Eric Silver dies aged 73
Tim McGirk writes on the TIME blog about the funeral of freelancer Eric Silver, a 73 year old originally from Leeds, who made Jerusalem his home and died recently of pancreatic cancer, Eric turned down a job back in London as a foreign editorial writer to return to Jerusalem as a freelancer. It was a […]
One year on: Reuters still waiting for US Army video
The U.S. military said on Friday it was still processing a request by Reuters for video footage from U.S. helicopters and other materials relating to the killing of two Iraqi staff in Baghdad a year ago. Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in a U.S. helicopter air strike in […]
Warren Zinn on the suicide of Joseph Dwyer
Photographer Warren Zinn reacts to the news of Joseph Dwyer’s death. Dwyer was a US Army medic in the Iraq when Zinn took the photograph above. He writes about his reaction to the news in the Washington Post, For years, I’d proudly displayed the front page of USA Today featuring the photo. It was a […]
Charles Wheeler dies age 85
Sir Charles Wheeler, has died at the age of 85. He was the BBC’s longest serving foreign correspondent and reported from Spain, Germany and India after the Second World War. Martin Bell writes about his legacy in The Guardian, He was no swashbuckler – quite unlike like his heirs and successors who tend to see […]
Mapping media deaths
MSN have created an interactive map of journalists killed in 2008, Plotted according to where they were killed, the map shows 31 deaths this year, according to figures from the International News Safety Institute. link via journalism.co.uk
Tribute to Nasteh Dahir Farah
Media workers from across Somalia paid tribute today to Nasteh Dahir Farah at a Safety awareness training course organised by National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) and the International News Safety Institute. Nasteh Dahir Farah was the Vice president of the NUSOJ, before he was murdered in Kismayu on 7 June, “Journalists work in the […]
