Opinion: I’ve seen too many young journalists pay the ultimate price. It’s them I’ll be thinking of today

Editor’s Note: Jon Williams is executive director of the Rory Peck Trust, an international NGO that supports freelance journalists and their families in crisis. He is the former foreign editor of BBC News and ABC News. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more CNN Opinion.

In a shaded wood outside Bayeux in Northern France, a series of white memorial stones record the names of more than 2,000 journalists who paid the ultimate price while reporting on assignment since 1944. Among them are fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, daughters and sons as well as friends who never came home.

Bayeux was the first town in France to be liberated at the end of World War II. It is a short distance inland from Omaha Beach, a long, sandy strip that stretches as far as the eye can see, made famous on June 6, 1944 when units of the US 29th and 1^st Cavalry landed there as part of Operation Overlord, D-Day — the Allied invasion of Europe, that spelled the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

From Normandy, British, American and Canadian forces pushed on to Paris and beyond. Within a year, they had secured the German surrender.

Bayeux was liberated a day later and became home to the first newspaper, in “free France,” “La Renaissance”  or “The Rebirth” in English. It is still published to this day, a connection between the past and present of which Bayeux is proud.

In 1994, to mark the 50th anniversary of D-Day, the people of Bayeux created a unique memorial. Every year, they remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives to secure their freedom in 1944, by honoring the journalists killed while covering the conflicts of today.

The journalists’ names are read aloud and added to the white stone memorials that line the wood.

The memorial commemorates journalists including Simon Cumbers, gunned down in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago next month. Simon was on assignment for the BBC covering the aftermath of an Al Qaeda gun attack on foreign oil workers when he was shot dead in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He had everything to look forward to.

A freelancer and talented video-journalist, Simon moved from his native Ireland to pursue a career in London, and had just married the love of his life, a BBC producer named Louise.

His work had taken him to every continent, from South America’s Amazonian rain forests to the African deserts and the Arctic Circle. He had covered civil unrest in Indonesia; earthquakes in Turkey and India; and the 2004 train bombings in Madrid.

On a warm evening that very summer, it fell to me to break the devastating news to Louise that her husband had been shot dead. The following day, we boarded a flight to Riyadh to recover Simon’s body and bring him home on his final journey. He was just 36 years old.

Two decades on, his name lives on through that Normandy memorial. When a journalist is killed, it is not just their voice that is silenced: Press freedom is your freedom. The right to express and to communicate what you think about something is the foundation of our fundamental human rights. Without freedom of expression, there is no freedom.

It’s why America’s founding fathers enshrined press freedom into the First Amendment, with Thomas Jefferson proclaiming that “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press.” Jefferson believed a free press made political representatives accountable to ”We the People” and allowed the public discussion necessary for democratic self-government.

While technology has transformed the way we consume the news, more than two centuries later, journalists remain truthtellers and witnesses to history. Without them, to quote the masthead of The Washington Post, “democracy dies in darkness”.

Over 30 years ago, the United Nations recognized May 3 as World Press Freedom Day: a global reminder of the importance of press freedom and an opportunity to assess its health around the world. World Press Freedom Day aims to defend media from attacks on their independence and provides a moment of reflection for those killed in pursuit of the truth.

But these are dangerous days for the media industry. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found that at least 100 journalists and media workers have been killed since we last marked World Press Freedom Day. The majority were in Gaza, but journalists have been killed in every corner of the world, from Ukraine and Honduras to Sudan and the Philippines.

A near record number of media personnel also languish in jail. CPJ’s annual prison census found 320 journalists were behind bars as of December 1, 2023, the second highest total on the organization’s record. What’s more, it’s not just journalists on the frontline of this fight. Reporters Without Borders found that only 30% of the world enjoys a “satisfactory” level of press freedom, while nearly three quarters of the world’s 8 billion people live in an environment where press freedom is, at best, “problematic.”

All too often, the killers of journalists get away with murder. In almost 80% of cases, the families of slain journalists never see justice. For the corrupt and those abusing power, the ultimate form of censorship is silencing reporters, such as British freelance journalist, Dom Phillips (one of 40 names last year added to Bayeux’s white stones).

In 2022, Phillips was investigating allegations of illegal mining, fishing and logging in Brazil. Reporting in the midst of the current environmental crisis is the theme of this year’s World Press Freedom Day — and alongside covering wars and conflicts, environmental reporting is among the most dangerous beats for journalists. It takes them to remote areas, often beyond the control of police and security agencies, and frequently leads them to challenge powerful, criminal interests.

Phillips had travelled to the remote northwest of Brazil, home to one of the country’s largest indigenous communities. While there, he and his guide disappeared. Their bodies were found 10 days later. Both men had been shot dead.

The police say the man responsible was the boss of an illegal fishing operation in the Amazon, one of five men charged in connection with their killing. But a group of friends and colleagues were determined the mastermind of his murder would not silence Phillips. The writers from Brazil, Britain and the United States completed Phillips’ reporting. Next year, posthumously, they will publish the book he did not live to see.

Often, it’s freelancers like Phillips and Simon who risk it all to bring us the news. Or local journalists reporting their own lived experience. In places like Gaza, international reporters are prevented from accessing the territory by both Israel and Egypt. Increasingly, freelancers don’t only provide some of the story; without them, there is no story at all.

It is their local insights and contacts that form the basis of the story you will see or read. They may work for several different news organizations and are hired for a particular assignment. But sometimes that can mean they don’t have the same safety and legal protection as the staff of a news organization who fly in to cover breaking news.

Too often, they pay a heavy price for that journalism. Many have neither the training nor the equipment to ensure their own safety. And when things go wrong, there’s no large media organization to pick them up and put them back together.

That’s where the Rory Peck Trust steps in. For 30 years, the UK-based non-profit has supported freelance journalists around the world, helping more than 3,000 freelancers tell their stories. It provides safety and first aid training to freelancers similar to the courses large news organizations provide for their own staff.

The training equips them to assess the risks they might face in a conflict zone, whether to their personal safety from gunfire or missiles, or to their health from the lack of clean water.

And when things go wrong, the Rory Peck Trust offers both financial and mental health support to help those with nowhere else to turn, building both capacity and resilience — and ensuring that freelance journalists can return to the frontlines of the fight for press freedom.

Tragically, on this World Press Freedom Day, our work is needed more than ever.

This autumn, a record number of names will be added to Bayeux’s white memorial stones, after the deadliest period for journalism since records began more than 40 years ago.

On this World Press Freedom Day, the fallen who gave their lives for the truth should serve as a reminder as to why press freedom is really your freedom.

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