Page 237 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

1 | Journal sts n Per l

VeroniCa guerin: ireland’s Crusading Journalist
Veronica Guerin’s murder in 1996 caused headlines around the world. She was Ireland’s
best known and most fearless crime reporter. The IPI lists her as one of its “50 Heroes of
Press Freedom.”
In 1994, Guerin started to write about crime for Ireland’s Sunday Telegraph. She took on
criminal bosses and drug lords in her fearless reports. Guerin used nicknames for under-
world characters to avoid libel laws, but she still made her point—and plenty of enemies.
In 1994 and 1995, Guerin was shot at and physically attacked in response to her work. She
was offered protection by her paper, but complained that it got in the way of her reporting.
“I vow that the eyes of justice, the eyes of this journalist will not be shut again,” she said after
one of the attacks. “No hand can deter me from my battle for the truth.”
On June 26, 1996, Guerin was sitting in her car outside of Dublin, at a stop light, when two
men on a motorcycle drove up to her car and shot her dead. Her death, the first ever of an
Irish journalist, shocked the nation. Irish Prime Minister John Bruton called it “an attack on
democracy.” The following criminal investigation led to over 150 arrests and a hunt against
Irish organized criminal gangs. Several men were later jailed for Guerin’s murder.
Guerin’s life has been immortalized in two movies and several songs. The IPI writes, “Ve-
ronica Guerin devoted her career and life to exposing the drug barons and leading figures in
Dublin’s underworld. ‘I am simply doing my job,’ she said. ‘I am letting the public know how
this society operates.’ She paid the ultimate price for her pursuit of truth.”

food or water while a Russian officer threatened to shoot her. Later that year,
she had to flee to Austria after receiving death threats from a military officer ac-
cused of crimes against civilians. She returned to Russia and continued to work
but those she exposed kept her in their sights. One afternoon in October 2006,
Politkovskaya was shot and killed as she carried groceries into her apartment
building. It was clearly a professional contract killing and those who worked
with her understood it was linked to her work.

CovEring wars
War is always a dangerous place for journalists to work. Reporters have been
killed covering wars as long as there has been modern journalism. But the dan-
gers are increasing. In World War I, for example, only 2 reporters were killed,
according to statistics from the Freedom Forum. The battlefields of Europe be-
came more dangerous during World War II, and from 1941 to 1945, 69 war
correspondents lost their lives covering the conflict. One of the most dangerous
assignments was flying with Allied troops on bombing raids over Nazi-held ter-
ritory when planes were regularly shot down. The most famous reporter to travel
with foot soldiers was Ernie Pyle of the Scripps Howard newspaper chain. Even
though Pyle made it through the whole war in Europe unhurt, he was hit in the
head and killed by a Japanese sniper while on a routine patrol near Okinawa in