Journalists down in Homs

Francis Sedgemore, Wednesday 22 February 2012 at 11:49 UTC

Marie Colvin, journalist (killed in Homs, 22 February 2012)   Rémi Ochlik, journalist (killed in Homs, 22 February 2012)

Marie Colvin was all over British TV news programmes yesterday, reporting on the ground on the indiscriminate slaughter of Homs residents by forces loyal to the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Veteran war correspondent Colvin’s reporting was professional, clear and to the point, as befits a journalist of her calibre and experience. Today Colvin is dead, having been caught up in the Syrian army shelling of a makeshift media centre in the Baba Amr district of Homs. Colvin’s colleague, the photographer Rémi Ochlik, was also killed in the blast.

You will have to excuse this professional indulgence, but the news of two journalists killed while doing their jobs, in our service, fills me with a terrible grief. Along with countless others I have been following events in Syria as best I can, and every story of civilian deaths is painful. But, in an age of rolling broadcast news, with graphic images of human suffering, one can so easily become inured to barbarity of the kind we see in Syria. Among Colvin’s last reported words were “I saw a little baby die today.” Almost as tragic as this horrific image is that we have come to expect such things.

RIP Marie Colvin & Rémi Ochlik


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Comments

  1. jams o donnell

    Wednesday 22 February 2012 at 13:48 UTC

    RIP. Sadly two more names to be put on the RSF memorial at Bayeux

  2. Francis Sedgemore

    Wednesday 22 February 2012 at 15:11 UTC

    More to add, this time from a speech made by Colvn last year, on the importance of war reporting…

    “Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children.

    “Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?”

    Colvin’s message should be heeded not only by those looking at the violence of the state, but also those who might glorify armed revolutionary resistance. The latter is all too easily glossed over when the cause is seemingly right.

    This comment should not be taken as a value judgement on the Syrian revolution. My concern is with the reality on the ground, and how it affects ordinary people. Reporting on such matters is what war correspondents such as Colvin and Ochlik do, but their words and pictures can become decontextualised in the thick of political battles waged in the war zones and elsewhere.