'Free Austin': Campaign targets missing U.S. reporter

Emma Hinchliffe | USAToday

Austin Tice has been missing for two years, six months and four days. A freelance journalist covering Syria, Tice was last heard from on Aug. 13, 2012, two days after his 31st birthday.

This month, the Tice family is expanding its efforts to bring him home through an extensive awareness campaign run through the Paris-based advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders. With the tagline, "When journalists are targeted, we are all blindfolded," the ad campaign will put the hashtag #FreeAustinTice on the home pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA TODAY and numerous other news websites, as well as on full pages in print newspapers.

"We really believe public pressure can encourage the U.S. administration to do more to bring Austin back home," says Delphine Halgand, U.S. director of Reporters Without Borders.

A former Marine and a student at Georgetown University's law school, Tice crossed the Syrian-Turkish border to cover the conflict from outside Damascus. At first a photojournalist, Tice began reporting for McClatchy Newspapers as well as for The Washington Post

Three months after arriving in Syria, Tice disappeared. In September 2012, a video posted on YouTube showed Tice, blindfolded but physically unharmed, with captors dressed in traditional Islamic outfits. No individual or group has come forward to seek ransom or claim Tice as their hostage.

In the more than two years since, Tice's parents have worked quietly with the U.S. government, studied up on the ongoing Syrian conflict and traveled to Beirut to meet with Middle East-based journalists and others who might be able to help find their son. The family has even communicated with Bashar Assad's Syrian government, which has said that it is not holding Tice.

The Tice family decided to launch its new campaign to coincide with heightened public awareness of the plight of journalists worldwide after the Islamic State extremist group murdered journalist James Foley this summer.

In 2014, 119 journalists were kidnapped and 40 were still held at the end of the year, according to Reporters Without Borders. At the end of 2014, there were at least 22 journalists held in Syria, which Reporters Without Borders names as the deadliest country for journalists.

"So many Americans didn't know about these missing journalists — even James Foley, whose situation was so public — until they came to this brutal end," says Tice's mother, Debra Tice. "Americans need to know the sacrifices journalists make, the risks they take to bring us the real news, the news about things that are going on in other parts of the world."

Tice, who grew up in Houston, had a career in the military and was on his way to a law degree before he decided to try reporting, but his desire to become a journalist was long-brewing.

"He wanted to be a journalist from the time he first came to his knees, crawling across the Sunday paper," says Debra Tice. "He has ink in his veins and grit under his fingernails."

Tice's knowledge of a world outside journalism is what helped him excel as a correspondent in Syria. His stories included coverage of the Syrian rebels' weaponry as well as interviews with rebels and civilians.

"Austin, because of his military background, actually understood what he was seeing from a military perspective, something in the middle of 2012 you weren't getting a lot of knowledgeable reporting on," says Tice's McClatchy editor, Mark Seibel. "He filed great copy, and he had a good eye for a story."

To those who criticized his decision to move to Syria, Tice posted a response on his Facebook page in July 2012, published by McClatchy after his capture.

"I don't have a death wish — I have a life wish," he wrote. "So I'm living, in a place, at a time and with a people where life means more than anywhere I've ever been — because every single day people here lay down their own for the sake of others. Coming here to Syria is the greatest thing I've ever done, and it's the greatest feeling of my life."

Tice loved Syrian culture and its emphasis on faith, family and community, his parents said.

"He didn't go there because it was dangerous," Tice's father, Marc Tice, says. "He went there because something was happening he felt people needed to know about."

Since Tice, the oldest of seven children, has been gone, he's missed two weddings and three college graduations.

As the #FreeAustinTice campaign takes off this month, his family hopes it will encourage the U.S. government to do more to bring Tice home and that it will reach the ears of Tice's Syrian captors. Supporters of the campaign are encouraged to post photos of themselves wearing blindfolds and to sign a petition urging President Obama to bring Tice home.

"Austin's absolutely alive," says Debra Tice, "and we're waiting for him to come home."