SECRETARY KERRY: Last year alone, 71 media workers were killed while on duty and almost
200 were thrown into jail.
The most dangerous country was Syria, where the incomparable Anthony Shadid died in 2012.
And Shadid, as everybody here knows – made his name here at the Post, worked in Boston
too – had a rare gift for uncovering everyday stories that confirm, clarify, warn against,
or utterly defy conventional assumptions about the direction and meaning of events.
That’s the best of journalism.
And while pursuing these essential stories, he was shot and wounded in the West Bank,
kidnapped and beaten in Libya, stalked in Lebanon, all before he even secretly entered
into Syria to report on the civil war.
Years ago when I was in Vietnam, I would read occasionally or hear occasionally of a journalist
who was killed, who had died.
And almost always the reason was essentially an accident: someone caught in a crossfire,
perhaps stepping on a landmine.
I think what distinguished it is it was essentially anonymous.
That is not true today.
Journalists then were rarely hunted.
Today they are.
In our era, roughly two-thirds of the reporters who die violently are killed not in spite
of their profession but because of it.
And they are attacked for what they have written, silenced for what they have witnessed, or
kidnapped for the leverage that their capture might provide.
And in most cases, the perpetrators are never caught.
In October 2007, Salih Saif Aldin was shot and killed while reporting on sectarian violence
in a neighborhood southwest of Baghdad.
Who murdered him is still not known.
The why is anybody’s guess.
And years before, at the insistence of his employer at The Washington Post, he had moved
away from his hometown of Tikrit, where corrupt officials had placed a bounty on his head.
That’s the price of journalism today.
Salih’s colleagues remembered him as a fearless questioner who never shied away from the toughest
assignments, and he died in answer to a calling that matters, with the hope in his heart that
the information that he uncovered would help his troubled country find a better future.
The truth is that independent media – reporters, broadcasters, photographers, bloggers, even
cartoonists – are under constant pressure today, whether physical or political.
And here we are well into the 21st century, and yet only about one person in six lives
in a country where the press can truly be described as free.
So it is up to us, up to you, up to the defenders of liberty to close ranks.
And this begins with the recognition that no government, whatever its pretensions and
whatever its accomplishments, can fairly call itself great if its citizens are not allowed
to say what they believe or are denied the right to learn about events and decisions
that affect their lives.
So let me underscore: A country without a free and independent press has nothing to
brag about, nothing to teach, and no way to fulfill its potential.
To those who try to intimidate or imprison reporters, we need to stand up and say loud
and clear that committing journalism, reporting on the truth, is not a crime.
It is a badge of honor.
It is a public service.
And that is why I am proud that each day, when America’s embassies and consulates
demand answers, voice objections, press for accountability on behalf of imprisoned or
threatened journalists – I’m proud that the State Department and USAID have programs
that support independent media in more than 30 countries.
I’m also proud to think that since Thomas Jefferson up to this very moment, our country
has been associated more than any other nation on the face of this planet with liberty of
expression and thought.