Perils that Media Practitioners Face in Covering Wars and Peace

Journalist documents events at the Independence Square in Ukraine, Kyiv, in 2014. | Photo by Mstyslav Chernov/Unframe via Wikimedia Commons.

Part VII: The Ukraine Crisis

Many members of the Fourth Estate are killed or injured in covering wars and even in peace. Yes, even in supposedly-peace times, as what happened in the Philippine island of Mindanao. To the limited knowledge of this columnist, the world record of media practitioners dying in a single massacre occurred in Mindanao in November 2009.

This writer penned this article about the 30 Filipino writers, reporters and broadcasters shot to death and buried in mass graves by the goons of a political warlord. The Filipino journalists were accompanying the wife and her party that was about to submit the certificate of candidacy of her husband, the warlord’s opponent in the coming election for governor of Maguindanao. More details of the Maguindanao Massacre in this report, “Remembering Bong Reblando (1956-2009) and the Maguindanao 30 Slain Journalists.”

Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine has claimed the first fatal casualty among media practitioners covering it.

Brent Renaud, a 50-year-old filmmaker and journalist, was killed when Russian troops opened fire. Andriy Nebytov, the head of Kyiv’s regional police force, confirmed it. Nebytov posted a graphic photo purportedly of Renaud’s body on Facebook and pictures of his American passport and media credentials issued by The New York Times.

A spokeswoman for The Times said Renaud was “a talented filmmaker who had contributed to The New York Times over the years,” most recently in 2015, but he “was not on assignment for any desk at The Times in Ukraine.” TIME issued a statement later Sunday confirming that Renaud had been “in the region working on a TIME Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis.”

According to local news and a video posted by a spokeswoman for a public hospital in Kyiv, the report said that another documentary filmmaker Juan Arredondo was injured in the attack. (Ed. Note: According to the Indian Express, four journalists have been killed in the war.)

A woman employee of one of Russia’s state-owned networks interrupted her channel’s main news broadcast by holding up a sign saying “No War” and telling viewers not to believe the station’s “propaganda” as millions watched on March 14th, Monday night.

On Monday, the woman was identified as Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee of the Russian state-owned network Channel One, by independent human rights group OVD-info. The group said Ovsyannikova was detained after the protest, and it’s unclear where she now is being held. More details are at this Yahoo.com report.

At least 150 journalists and 54 media support workers were killed in Iraq from the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to the declared end of the war in December 2011, according to the research of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

At least 150 journalists and 54 media support workers were killed in Iraq from the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to the declared end of the war in December 2011, according to CPJ research.

Fatalities in Iraq far surpass any other documented war-time death toll for the press. CPJ, founded in 1981, recorded the deaths of 58 journalists during the Algerian civil war from 1993 through 1996, another 54 fatalities in the undeclared civil conflict in Colombia, which began in 1986, and 36 deaths in the conflict in the Balkans from 1991 to 1995.

Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to the free press, has compiled lists of journalists killed in conflicts before 1981. The organization lists 89 journalists killed in the Central American clashes from 1979 to 1989; 98 deaths in the Argentine conflict from 1976-1983; another 68 died in World War II and 66 deaths in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975.

More recently, CPJ has documented the deaths of 35 journalists covering the Syrian civil war. This toll includes a reporter who died across the border in Lebanon and a journalist injured in Syria who later died in Turkey. The war in Afghanistan has taken the lives of 21 journalists from its beginning in 2001 until March 2013.