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Marie Colvin, Pierre Zakrzewski, Simon Cumbers – just a few of the journalists killed whilst reporting from some of the most dangerous places on earth.
Between 2000 and 2022, 16 UK journalists were killed while reporting from warzones, and a new campaign is set to honour these newsgatherers with both a physical and digital monument.
The campaign, titled On the Record, is running a competition to decide on the design of the monument, with entries open until 9 January. Judging will take place in March and a planned unveiling during spring 2027.
The National Memorial Arboretum, which describes itself as “the UK’s year-round centre of remembrance” is set to host the memorial, alongside existing pieces dedicated to the armed services.
Sarah Sands, former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and Chair of Trustees for the campaign, stressed the importance of the journalist as a physical witness during conflicts.
She said: “Their role in testimony and truth-telling seems incredibly important at the moment… the sense of someone who’s there, for no other reason than to observe and tell and bring back the truth and let the world know what’s happening.”
Among the other trustees is former BBC foreign editor Jon Williams, executive director of the Rory Peck Trust, a charity providing support to freelance journalists and which was set up following the 1993 death of freelance cameraman Rory Peck.
Discussing the importance of the proposed monument, Williams said: “The sacrifices that people make in service of finding out the facts and verifying the truth is a public service that all of us should be grateful for and those who pay the ultimate price deserve to be remembered.”
“More journalists have been killed in 2025 than at any time in history of journalism, and so it’s not as if the problem is going away. If anything, it’s getting worse.”
The CPJ reported 127 journalists and media workers killed globally last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2024.
Williams went on to say: “It’s about remembering the collective endeavour of journalism and the importance of eyewitness reporting. And the best way to do that is to salute those who’ve lost their lives in the service of the truth.”
Williams talked about his connection to photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed whilst covering the Libyan civil war in 2011: “He was a little bit younger than me, but we’ve grown up pretty close to each other, just north of Liverpool. And in fact, when I took Mark Thompson to Libya in the autumn of 2011 we went to Misrata and laid some flowers at the site where Tim had been killed.”
Index on Censorship works closely with the Tim Hetherington Trust as well as Liverpool John Moores University to provide a fellowship to a freshly graduated journalist each year.
The physical monument will not include names, however an online digital tribute, which Williams described as a “living memorial”, will include names as well as contributions from family and colleagues.
Williams said: “Nobody should have to die in the service of the truth alone, and we try to ensure that nobody does.”
Karola Zakrzewska got involved with the campaign after her brother Pierre was killed whilst reporting for Fox News in Ukraine. She said: “Just before he died, we were talking to him, and were saying, ‘It’s getting a bit dangerous now.’
“He said: ‘No, I’ve got to stay. I’ve got to stay to tell people what Putin’s doing.’”
She described how war journalists like her brother want to keep reporting because they have to continue to tell the stories.
“They have to put themselves, unfortunately, at risk to be able to bring us the stories back as we watch it on our very comfortable sofas, in our very comfortable lives,” she said.
“But without them, we wouldn’t know what was happening. It’s incredibly important that we just spend a minute as we walk past and remember them, or just take a couple of minutes thinking about why they’re the guys who tell us what’s happening in the world.”
The project aims to raise £1 million, with half going to the monument itself and the rest to its upkeep. Already having received pledges by organisations such as Bloomberg and News UK, according to Sands, the campaign is still seeking donors.
The On the Record website can be found here.
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