Journalism is often mistaken for a comfortable profession of bylines, microphones and air-conditioned newsrooms. In reality, it is a calling walked barefoot on broken glass. It is a job where the pen is carried like a shield, and sometimes like a target. Many who enjoy the safety of reading the news with morning tea rarely pause to ask what it cost for that truth to reach them.
In August 1990, during the Liberian civil war, two Nigerian journalists, Krees Imodibie of The Guardian and Tayo Awotunsin of Daily Champion walked straight into history’s firing line. Captured in Monrovia by rebel forces loyal to Charles Taylor, accused of espionage, they were killed in captivity. Their only crime was curiosity. Their only weapon was the truth. Others survived that same inferno, Aniete Usen of Newswatch escaped to Freetown, Frank Nwuabueze of National Concord was rescued but Imodibie and Awotunsin never came home. Nigeria mourned them, angrily, loudly, helplessly.
They are not alone. Journalism’s graveyard is crowded, stretching across borders and decades. In Nigeria, Dele Giwa’s name still rings like a wound that refuses to heal. Killed in 1986 by a parcel bomb delivered to his home, Giwa’s murder remains one of the darkest stains on press freedom in Africa. His death mirrors that of other journalists across the world who were silenced not by accident, but by design, like Jamal Khashoggi, lured into a consulate in Istanbul and murdered for daring to criticise power. Different countries, same message: speak too loudly and you may not live to finish the sentence.
The figures are chilling. According to the International Federation of Journalists, 111 journalists were killed in 2025 alone. Nearly half died in Gaza. Others fell in Yemen, Ukraine, Sudan, Mexico and India. Since 1990, over 3,100 journalists have paid with their lives. Thousands more sit in prison cells in China, Russia, Myanmar, Israel, Egypt, Vietnam, detained not for lies, but for uncomfortable truths. Journalism has become one of the few professions where doing your job properly can get you jailed, exiled or buried.
The dangers are not always dramatic or televised. Sometimes they creep quietly into families. I know this personally. My own blood sister was kidnapped, an experience that stripped our family of sleep, certainty and peace. That fear, that helpless waiting, gave me a small taste of what journalists and their loved ones endure daily: the knock on the door that comes too late, the call that never comes, the silence that screams. Journalism does not only endanger those who practise it; it places a permanent question mark over the lives of those who love them.
Yet, despite all this, journalists keep going. They work through war zones, courtrooms, slums and cyberspace. They are beaten, detained, sued, trolled, starved and threatened. They are accused of bias, espionage, disloyalty. They are misunderstood, undervalued and often unpaid. Still, they show up. Because if they don’t, darkness wins by default.
We see you. We value you. We respect you.
Just to make the news reach us, you risk your lives. Just to serve your nation and humanity, you gamble with freedom, safety and sometimes life itself. Journalism is not perfect; it has its bad days, its bad actors, its ethical battles. But without it, power grows wild, corruption sleeps soundly, and injustice learns to smile.
So this is a salute to Imodibie and Awotunsin, to Dele Giwa, to the unnamed reporters in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, to the imprisoned voices in China and Myanmar, to the journalists who died so the rest of us could know. May their courage outlive their killers. May their pens never truly run dry. And may the world one day learn that protecting journalists is not charity — it is survival.
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