Journalists Risk Everything Because The Work Is So Important

In nan first weeks of Russia’s penetration of Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians were displaced successful 1 of nan fastest wide movements of group successful caller history. Train stations became shelters. Theaters became assistance centers. Borders became waiting rooms for grief. Journalists moved successful nan other direction, toward uncertainty, because without witnesses, displacement becomes statistic and warfare becomes abstraction.

I was 1 of them, reporting pinch my workfellow and friend, Brent Renaud.

On March 13, 2022, we crossed what remained of a destroyed span into Irpin, a suburb northbound of Kyiv wherever families were fleeing Russian bombardment. Ukrainian soldiers helped aged people, children and nan wounded move crossed twisted actual and rebar, carrying what small they had managed to save. Dogs wandered betwixt abandoned cars. The sound of artillery echoed successful nan region — a hit that quickly becomes nan inheritance sound of war.

As seasoned journalists, Brent and I had spent caller years documenting displacement — migrants crossing rivers successful Central America, refugees moving done camps successful Greece, families uprooted by hurricanes and conflict crossed nan Americas. Movement had go nan communicative we followed. In Ukraine, that activity felt faster, heavier, irreversible.

Minutes aft accepting a thrust from a section driver who offered to return america toward an removal point, gunfire erupted. I retrieve nan sound of solid breaking, bullets tearing done metal, nan small heart to property my look to nan level of nan car. When nan conveyance stopped, Brent was slumped beside nan driver, bleeding from his neck. I tried to extremity nan bleeding pinch my hands. He was already unconscious.

That was nan infinitesimal I stopped being only an observer.

Brent believed profoundly successful nan work of journalists to archive history and carnivore witness. We met arsenic fellows astatine Harvard and built a relationship grounded successful activity that sought to make distant suffering visible without spectacle. We drove toward disasters alternatively of distant from them — not retired of bravery, but retired of a shared condemnation that nan nationalist has a correct to firsthand accounts, to meticulous accusation astir events that style their lives and futures.

Four years ago, he became nan first American journalist killed successful Ukraine aft nan invasion.

When journalists are killed for reporting nan news, we must conflict to guarantee truth does not go a casualty too. Focusing only connected individual nonaccomplishment risks obscuring nan larger truth. Brent’s decease was not an isolated tragedy.

Across conflicts astir nan world, journalists proceed to beryllium injured, detained and killed astatine alarming rates. A study published by nan Committee to Protect Journalists recently found that 2025 was nan deadliest twelvemonth connected grounds for nan press, pinch 129 journalists and media workers killed worldwide. Since nan commencement of nan Russia-Ukraine warfare and Brent’s killing, much than 400 journalists and media workers person been killed worldwide.

Journalists are often described arsenic neutral observers, but warfare makes that thought fragile. The statement betwixt documenting unit and becoming portion of it tin vanish successful seconds. Protective vests, property markings and acquisition do not guarantee safety. What they guarantee is exposure.

In nan months aft nan attack, arsenic I recovered from aggregate surgeries, I struggled pinch a mobility acquainted to galore survivors: why him and not me? Survivor’s guilt is not dramatic. It is repetitive. It lives successful mini specifications — a spot successful a car, a determination made quickly, a representation that replays without resolution.

During nan penetration of Ukraine, nan world saw images of families crossing destroyed bridges, wide graves uncovered and cities reduced to rubble. Those images shaped nationalist understanding, argumentation debates and humanitarian response. They existed because a journalist stood adjacent capable to grounds them.

The costs of that proximity is often invisible.

I retrieve nan removal train leaving Kyiv days aft nan attack. I realized past that I was nary longer down nan camera. I was different personification being evacuated, different assemblage moved by conflict. War rearranges roles without warning.

I often return to nan past moments earlier nan attack, nan mean speech successful nan car, nan presumption that we would decorativeness nan time and proceed working. War interrupts clip without warning. What remains are fragments: a seat, a sound, nan weight of a camera, nan representation of a friend whose life was defined by paying attraction to others.

In nan years since, trying to make consciousness of that time became portion of nan activity itself. Brent’s life and decease are now nan taxable of nan documentary “Armed Only With a Camera,” which I produced. Making nan movie meant confronting achy images and memories, but we deliberately chose not to look away. We did not soften nan cruelty of warfare aliases hide nan reality of Brent’s death, because nan unit journalists witnesser — and sometimes strengthen — is precisely what nan world is often shielded from. Bearing witnesser requires honesty, moreover erstwhile it is uncomfortable.

Today, U.S.-based journalists are facing conditions that could 1 time reflector nan warfare zones we’ve covered abroad. At nan aforesaid time, nan erosion of spot successful nan property has coincided pinch a increasing tolerance for attacks connected those who archive war.

I still return to nan places wherever activity defines people’s lives, borders, removal routes, communities surviving pinch uncertainty, not because nan questions person answers, but because nan enactment of documenting resists disappearance. Brent understood this instinctively. The activity was ne'er astir recognition; it was astir presence.

Journalism does not extremity violence. But it makes denial harder. It creates a grounds that cannot beryllium easy erased.

That is nan work Brent carried. It is nan 1 galore journalists proceed to transportation now, equipped only pinch a camera and nan belief that nan truth matters.

Juan Arredondo is simply a photojournalist and shaper of “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud.”