Stanley Barrell-Kane gives Marie Colvin the recognition she truly deserves

Marie Colvin was an inspirational journalist whose dedicated attitude saved thousands of lives. And you probably don’t even know who she is.

Colvin was a reporter whose front line journalism never forsook her moral duty to the people she was reporting on. And it was her desire to reveal the truth in warzones that eventually led to her death. Nearly three years ago she was killed in a nail-bomb attack while working in Syria.

Colvin began her career working for United Press International after graduating from Yale University. She moved to The Sunday Times in 1985, and was made their Middle East correspondent in 1986. She became the first person to interview Colonel Gaddafi following American airstrikes on Libya – as a US journalist this was an extraordinary achievement given the relationship between the two nations.

And while her career went under the radar for the next decade the quality of her reporting never faltered. She continued to produce high quality articles for various prestigious newspapers until 1999. It was in this year that she would show her credentials as an amazing human being as well as an incredible journalist.

She sacrificed her safety to expose the truth

It’s widely accepted that she saved the lives of 1,500 women and children from a compound in East Timor besieged by Indonesian forces. All other journalists had fled – understandably considering the volatile environment – but Colvin bravely refused, resolutely reporting on the horrific conditions they were enduring. They were eventually rescued after four days of fighting by UN forces.

It wouldn’t be the last time she sacrificed her safety to expose the truth. Two years on, Colvin lost the sight in her left eye when hit by shrapnel in Tamil, Sri Lanka. Despite this, she continued to report on the humanitarian crisis in the area, submitting a 3,000-word article to meet her deadline. This was a significant moment for war reporting in Sri Lanka, as following her article and news of her injuries, journalists were allowed to travel freely at their own risk.

In 2011 she was given permission to interview Colonel Gaddafi once again, this time during the Arab Spring uprisings – his first for news outlets outside of Libya since the beginning of the conflicts. She was allowed to choose two journalists to accompany her. She stayed on the frontline, travelling to Syria to report on the crisis unfolding in Homs, 90 miles north of capital city Damascus. She filed her last report to the BBC on 21 February 2012, describing the horrific scenes she had witnessed that day. Less than 24 hours later she was dead.

Marie Colvin was an exceptional journalist. She covered the human aspect of war and got as close to the events as any reporter can get. As devastating as her death undeniably was, the real tragedy is that more people don’t know about how truly heroic and courageous this woman was.