Journalism is a dangerous business. Whether in Colombia or Brazil, Myanmar or Thailand or Lithuania, or as Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange are proving, even the US and the UK, journalists who report inconvenient truths have a way of disappearing, and being disappeared.
Serena Shim was born in Detroit. She attended high school in nearby Livonia MI, and graduated from the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut. She was married with two children, and at the time of her death worked for the Iranian news outlet Press TV.
Shim covered events in Ukraine, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, none of them happy or peaceful places, but all of them locations with stories that had to be told. One of her last stories was a report that Turkey was smuggling pro-US ISIS-ISIL fighters into contested areas of Syria in vehicles marked with insignia of the World Food Organization and other NGOs. After capturing the footage, Shim told her employers that agencies of the Turkish government had accused her of esoionage, and might choose to come after her,. Two days later, a cement truck intercepted their car on the way back to the hotel on October 19, 2014, killing Serena Shim and severely injuring her camera person, who was driving. The cement truck and its driver disappeared. There were services held for Serena Shim in Detroit and in Lebanon, where she was laid to rest near Beirut.
A fund and an award has been established in her honor, the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism. Black Agenda Report is a proud and grateful recipient of that award this year. Each and every week since October 2006 we and our contributors have tried to deliver news, information and analysis from the black left, and we hope to continue to honor the brave tradition of Serena Shim for a long time to come.
The Canadian government turned what should have been an ordinary photo opportunity with Ukraine's president into a political debacle when a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator was honored in parliament. Now…
Remembering Haitian resistance “Caco” fighter Charlemagne Peralte, demonized by the U.S. occupation forces as a “bandit,” the same label given to Nicaraguan freedom fighter, Augusto Sandino.
Why did Menendez ignore Egypt’s human rights record and attack Ethiopia’s?
This week’s featured author is Rizvana Bradley. Bradley is Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book is Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and…
Haiti has suffered under western occupations and interference in its affairs. The people of that nation are struggling to break free from that domination and can look to mass movements in Francophone…
