Newseum honors slain journalists
Capital Gazette staffers’ names added to memorial
Dozens of white roses were placed Monday in front of the Newseum’s Journalists Memorial, etched recently with the names of journalists killed in 2018.
Among the 21 new names were four journalists killed in The Capital Gazette newsroom on June 28 — Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters and John McNamara. Rebecca Smith, who worked in the advertising department at The Capital, also was killed in the attack.
The Newseum in Washington, D.C., and the Freedom Forum Institute hold the ceremony each year to honor those killed on the job. The museum selects journalists “whose deaths illustrate the dangers faced by journalists around the world,” according to the Journalists Memorial description.
The glass memorial stands tall with the names of over 2,300 names of reporters from around the world.
“It’s hard for me to speak those names and realize that they are more than the friends and colleagues I knew,” said Rick Hutzell, editor of The Capital, during the event. “By virtue of the events of June 28, the support of our community and the honors bestowed by our profession, they have become symbols.”
Monday’s event featured speakers who knew the journalists as well as a video of those who were killed.
According to Committee to Protect Journalists, 54 journalists around the world were killed while reporting in 2018, and 34 were targeted for their work. The ceremony included slain journalists from Afghanistan, Colombia, Turkey, Slovakia, Syria and the United States.
Jamal Khashoggi, the columnist from The Washington Post who was slain in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey, also was included in the ceremony.
Andrea Chamblee, McNamara’s widow, said she considered the tribute beautiful.
“Their commitment to honoring their memory is laudable, on the other hand when I see John’s name on a tribute like this — I want to scrub it off,” Chamblee said. “I want to say but he is not … he is not gone. He can’t be gone.”
Friends and neighbors of Winters also attended the ceremony.
Vicki Meade and her husband Pat O’Connell, of Annapolis, were friends of Winters and found out about the dedication through a volunteer at the Newseum.
“We really cared about Wendi,” Meade said. “I think people don’t realize the risks that journalists take. We just read their stories every day, we flip through them, but we don’t understand what goes into it and the danger that they face sometimes.”
The gunman accused of the newsroom shooting reportedly held a grudge against the newspaper and threatened
“We are coming up on the one year anniversary of my mother’s murder and it is not lost on me that one of the institutions that wants to memorialize her is not going to be here a year from now,” Montana Geimer, Winters’ daughter, said. “This memorial wall means so much to me, but at the same time it is temporary at this point.”
Earlier this year, the Newseum announced it would close at the end of 2019 and the location was sold to Johns Hopkins University. Though the fate of the memorial wall is unknown, the organization is working to find a new location in Washington to continue to recognize the work of fallen journalists, according to a spokesperson.
“I think that journalism is essential to our democracy and in this world that we are living in right now is so polarized,” said Jan Neuharth, the Chair and CEO of Freedom Forum. “There is so much news today that it is hard to define what is real news and what is fake, and, true journalists, we feel it is so important to honor them and to raise awareness to the rest of the world.”
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