List of journalists killed in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Numerous journalists have been murdered or killed in the United States while reporting, covering a military conflict, or because of their status as a journalist. At least 39 of these have been directly targeted as a result of their journalistic investigations.[1]
The most dangerous sector of the US media after 1980 has been the race and ethnic press.[2][3] According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, ten journalists serving the Vietnamese, Haitian and Chinese immigrant communities were killed in political assassinations between 1980 and 1993.[4][5][6] Chauncey Bailey, who was the editor at a large circulation African American newspaper, was murdered in 2007 for his investigative reporting.[7]
Since the September 11 attacks, terrorism-related deaths involving journalists is another trend.[8][9]
In some cases, journalists have been attacked but survived, such as Victor Riesel.[10]
| Date | Name | Employer | Location | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 7, 1837 | Elijah Parish Lovejoy | Alton Observer | Alton, Illinois | This abolitionist editor was killed by a pro-slavery mob.[11][12] |
| June 6, 1843 | James Hagan | Vicksburg Sentinel | Vicksburg, Mississippi | Hagan was killed in a duel by Daniel Weisiger Adams-the son of a man he had criticized in his newspaper.[13][14][15][16] |
| February 29, 1844 | James A. Ryan | The Vicksburg Sentinel was a Democratic paper and Ryan was killed by his rival Whig counterpart in a duel on their second fight.[14] | ||
| September 15, 1848 | John Jenkins | Killed in a fight with an attorney after the two had a previous altercation.[13] | ||
| June 22, 1854 | Joseph Mansfield | San Joaquin Republican | Stockton, California | Mansfield was killed in a fight with a rival editor, both of whom were Democrats.[17] |
| May 20, 1856 | James King of William | Daily Evening Bulletin | San Francisco, California | Killed by a rival journalist.[18][19] |
| April 6, 1862 | Irving W. Carson | New-York Tribune | Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee | First journalist to be killed during the U.S. Civil War. Killed by a cannonball fire while covering the Battle of Shiloh and General Ulysses S. Grant.[20] |
| June 23, 1863 | Lynde Walter Buckingham | New York Herald | Aldie, Virginia | Killed as a result of an ambush during the U.S. Civil War. He was buried at the Mount Zion Old School Baptist Church-VDHR 53-339 in Aldie.[21] |
| October 6, 1863 | James R. O'Neill | Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper | Baxter Springs, Kansas | O'Neill was an artist-correspondent murdered by Quantrill's guerrillas at the Baxter Springs Massacre.[22] |
| May 6, 1864 | Samuel Wheelock Fiske (aka Dunn Browne) | Springfield Republican | Fredericksburg, Virginia | Capt. Fiske wrote under the name Dunn Browne and served in the army and was mortally wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness.[23] |
| September 14, 1866 | Ridgeway Glover | Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper | Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming | While covering the American Indian Wars, Glover was killed and mutilated during the construction of Fort Kearny in 1866.[24] |
| November 5, 1871 | Frederick Wadsworth Loring | Appleton's Journal | Wickenburg, Arizona | Was killed while on assignment out west in what is known as the Wickenburg Massacre, an attack on a stagecoach by Native Americans.[25] |
| November 14, 1874 | J. M. Cleet | New Orleans, Louisiana | Journalist killed during the fighting at the Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans. | |
| June 25, 1876 | Mark Kellogg | Associated Press | Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana | The first Associated Press journalist to die while reporting.[26] |
| March 27, 1877 | J. Clarke Swayze | Topeka Daily Blade | Topeka, Kansas | Swayze was killed after publishing a critical article about his murderer.[27] |
| April 23, 1880 | Charles de Young | The Daily Dramatic Chronicle | San Francisco, California | With his brother M. H. de Young, he founded the newspaper that would become the San Francisco Chronicle. The mayor's son killed him in revenge for a feud de Young had with his father.[28] |
| November 17, 1881 | A. B. Thornton | Boonville News | Boonville, Missouri | The town marshal killed Thornton because of criticism from the newspaper and won acquittal based on the perception that the criticism was too intense.[29] |
| March 27, 1884 | Charles L. Kusz | The Gringo and Greaser | Manzano, New Mexico | Shot through his window by unknown gunman on horses. His newspaper was reform oriented and created enemies as it sought changes.[30] |
| May 5, 1887 | Roderick D. Gambrell | The Shield and Sword | Jackson, Mississippi | Shot by Colonel Jones S. Hamilton for publishing allegations of corrupt business practices Hamilton was engaged in with the state of Mississippi. Hamilton was shot by Gambrell, but survived and was later acquitted of his murder by a jury.[31][32][33] |
| May 1, 1888 | John H. Martin | New Mississippian | Jackson, Mississippi | Shot in a street encounter with ex-Confederate General Wirt Adams, who was also shot and killed by Martin. Martin published numerous attacks on Adams's character in part due to his association with Colonel Hamilton, killer of the aforementioned Roderick D. Gambrell.[33][34] Wirt Adams was the brother of Daniel Weisiger Adams who 45 years before had killed a Vicksberg newspaper editor in a duel |
| February 1, 1891 | Ignacio Martínez | El Mundo | Laredo, Texas | Owned a newspaper that wrote critical articles on the regime of Mexican President Porfirio Díaz. His murderers fled to Mexico and were never arrested.[35] |
| February 23, 1891 | Albert C. Osborne | Sunday World | Columbus, Ohio | Killed in a shootout with William J. Elliott, a rival editor of the Sunday Capital, and Elliott's brother, Patrick. A bystander was also killed and a number of others wounded. Elliott was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment at Ohio Penitentiary.[36][37][38] |
| April 1, 1898 | William Cowper Brann | Iconoclast | Waco, Texas | Wrote critical articles about Baptists. Shot in the back during a duel.[39] |
| January 15, 1903 | Narciso Gener Gonzales | The State | Columbia, South Carolina | He was killed by James H. Tillman, the Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, who was acquitted of murder by a jury.[40] |
| November 9, 1908 | Edward W. Carmack | Nashville American | Nashville, Tennessee | Former congressman and senator. He was killed by a former army officer who disapproved of his name appearing in an article and threatened the editor.[41] |
| December 25, 1915 | Huang Yuanyong | Shao Nian Zhong Guo Weekly | San Francisco, California | The Chinese national was murdered while visiting the United States. The case remained unsolved but Kuomintang (KMT) supporters were suspected of carrying out the assassination at the Shanghai Low restaurant.[42] |
| July 16, 1926 | Don Mellett | Canton Daily News | Canton, Ohio | Shot to death in his garage as a result of a conspiracy with a crime boss and the police chief of Canton.[1] |
| June 9, 1930 | Jake Lingle | Chicago Tribune | Chicago, Illinois | Killed in gangland-style by associates of Al Capone. In addition to his job as a reporter, Lingle was on the payroll of Capone's criminal organization.[43] |
| July 23, 1930 | Jerry Buckley | WMBC-AM | Detroit, Michigan | Gunned down on election night.[44] |
| September 6, 1934 | Howard A. Guilford | The Saturday Press | Minneapolis, Minnesota | Editor of a newspaper that exposed rampant corruption and organized crime in Minnesota involving Jewish mobsters such as Kid Cann and prominent local and state politicians, including Governor Floyd B. Olson. He and partner Jay Near won the US Supreme Court decision in Near v. Minnesota.[45][46] |
| December 9, 1935 | Walter Liggett | Midwest American | He wrote about political corruption and organized crime, exposing links between Minneapolis Jewish mob leader Kid Cann and Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson. He is believed to have been killed on the orders of Cann, possibly with the knowledge or consent of Olson.[47][48] | |
| January 11, 1943 | Carlo Tresca | Il Martello (The Hammer) | New York City, New York | Radical socialist newspaper editor and labor activist; believed to have been killed by a Mafia hitman.[49] |
| January 22, 1945 | Arthur Kasherman | Public Press (alternative) | Minneapolis, Minnesota | His death at E. 15th St & Chicago Ave S near North Central University figured into Hubert Humphrey's mayoral victory.[50] |
| July 29, 1949 | W.H. "Bill" Mason | KBKI (AM) | Alice, Texas | Known as a crusading radio journalist in a county ruled with an iron hand by local law enforcement, Mason was shot dead by Sheriff deputy Sam Smithwick, who Mason had publicly accused of running a strip club. The senate candidate who lost to Lyndon B. Johnson believed that Smithwick had information about how the election had been rigged but Smithwick was hanged before their meeting. Mason's tombstone reads: "He had the nerve to tell the truth for a lot of little people."[1][51][52][53] |
| September 30, 1962 | Paul Guihard | Agence France-Presse | Oxford, Mississippi | Guihard was a British-French civilian who was killed during the civil rights era at the University of Mississippi. He was assigned to photograph the events surrounding James Meredith's attendance when he turned his focus on riots and in the confusion was shot. His murder remains an unsolved case.[54] |
| August 29, 1970 | Rubén Salazar | Los Angeles Times | Los Angeles, California | Salazar was killed by deputies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department while covering the Chicano Moratorium protest in East Los Angeles. The park where the protest took place was later renamed Salazar Park in his honor.[55][56] |
| June 2, 1976 | Don Bolles | Arizona Republic | Phoenix, Arizona | Murdered by a car bomb. Initially assumed to have been a mafia hit,[57][58][59] three local men were later convicted of his death. The motive was determined to have been feared exposure of involvement in a land fraud scheme.[60][61][62] |
| March 9, 1977 | Maurice Williams | WHUR-FM | Washington, D.C. | He was murdered during the 1977 Hanafi Siege.[63] |
| June 28, 1978 | John A. Kelly | WHDH-TV | Boston, Massachusetts | Killed during the Blackfriars Massacre.[64] |
| July 21, 1981 | Duong Trong Lam | Cai Dinh Lang (The Village Temple) | San Francisco, California | Killed by gunfire from a member of one of two anti-communist groups that claimed responsibility for his assassination.[5][6][65][66][67][68] |
| August 24, 1982 | Nguyen Dam Phong | Tu Do (Freedom) | Houston, Texas | Was assassinated at his home by an anti-communist group.[5][6][65][66][69] |
| June 19, 1984 | Alan Berg | KOA (AM) | Denver, Colorado | A Jewish radio show host with liberal views who was murdered by a white nationalist group.[70] |
| October 15, 1984 | Henry Liu (a.k.a. Chiang Nan) | Freelancer and author | Daly City, California | A critic of the Kuomintang who was assassinated on the orders of the Kuomintang.[71] |
| August 9, 1987 | Tap Van Pham (a.k.a. Hoai Diep Tu) | Mai | Garden Grove, California | He was assassinated by arson while sleeping in his office by an anti-communist group that took responsibility.[5][6][65][66] |
| November 22, 1989 | Nhan Trong Do | Van Nghe Tien Phong | Fairfax County, Virginia | A layout designer who worked with Triet Le, he was the first employer of the Vietnamese-language magazine to be assassinated.[5][6][65][66][72] |
| September 22, 1990 | Triet Le | Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia | A columnist of controversial content for the same Vietnamese magazine that employed Nhan Trong Do. Assassinated.[5][6][65][66][72][73] | |
| February 18, 1991 | Jean-Claude Olivier | WLQY | Little Haiti, Miami, Florida | A colleague of Fritz d'Or, he was known for his controversial commentary and was assassinated on his way to his car.[74][75] |
| March 15, 1991 | Fritz d'Or | A colleague of Jean-Claude Olivier's at WLQY, he was assassinated as he left a club.[74][76] | ||
| March 11, 1992 | Manuel de Dios Unanue | El Diario La Prensa | Queens, New York City, New York | Murdered by Colombian drug traffickers for writing about drug trade.[77][78] |
| October 24, 1993 | Dona St. Plite | WKAT | Little Haiti, Miami, Florida | St. Plite was attending a benefit for former colleague Fritz d'Or when he was also assassinated for supporting Jean-Bertrand Aristide.[74][79] |
| August 19, 1997 | Dennis Joos | Colebrook News and Sentinel | Colebrook, New Hampshire | Joos, the editor of the News and Sentinel, was at work when 62-year-old Carl Drega entered the building and shot a local judge (whose office was located in the same building as the News and Sentinel). Joos attempted to disarm Drega but was fatally shot. Drega, who had earlier killed two state troopers in a parking lot, then fled to Bloomfield, Vermont, where he wounded four more troopers in a shootout before being killed by police.[80] |
| October 18, 2000 | James Edwin Richards | Citizen journalist, editor and publisher | Venice, Los Angeles, California | Richards was murdered at his Oakwood neighborhood home in the neighborhood where he had established himself as a citizen crime reporter.[81][82] |
| September 11, 2001 | Bill Biggart | Freelance photographer | Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York | Killed while photographing the rescue effort outside the World Trade Center before the North Tower collapsed.[83] |
| Glen Pettit | News 12 Long Island | Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York | Petit, who worked for the New York City Police Department video production unit and as a photojournalist for News 12 Networks, was last seen in the South Tower of the World Trade Center with his camera before its collapse.[84] | |
| October 5, 2001 | Robert Stevens | Sun | Boca Raton, Florida | Murdered as one of the media targets of the 2001 anthrax attacks less than a month after 9/11.[85] |
| August 2, 2007 | Chauncey Bailey | The Oakland Post | Oakland, California | After investigating corruption and criminal activities connected to Your Black Muslim Bakery, Bailey was murdered on his way to work by an associate of the bakery.[1][7] |
| August 26, 2015 | Alison Parker | WDBJ 7 | Moneta, Virginia | Parker, a reporter, and Ward, a photojournalist, were shot on live television by one-time colleague Vester Flanagan while interviewing a subject about tourism.[86] |
| Adam Ward | ||||
| May 30, 2018 | Zachary “ZackTV” Stoner | Citizen journalist | Chicago, Illinois | Stoner, a music journalist who ran a YouTube channel covering the Chicago hip hop scene and life in his community, was shot and killed while leaving a concert. Stoner's murder remains unsolved.[87] |
| June 28, 2018 | Gerald Fischman | The Capital | Annapolis, Maryland | Five employees (four journalists and a sales associate) of The Capital were murdered during the Capital Gazette shooting in the newspaper's office. The suspect in the shooting, Jarrod Ramos, had held a grudge against the newspaper since it published a story about his guilty plea in a criminal harassment case in 2011.[88] Hiaasen was an editor and columnist, Fischman was an editorial columnist, Winters was a features journalist. McNamara was a sports reporter for the Capital and the editor for the affiliated weekly Bowie Blade-News. Also killed in the shooting was Rebecca Smith, a sales associate for Capital Gazette Communications.[89][90][91][92][93] |
| Rob Hiaasen | ||||
| John McNamara | ||||
| Wendi Anne Winters | ||||
| April 25, 2021 | Aviva Okeson-Haberman | KCUR-FM | Kansas City, Missouri | Okeson-Haberman was an investigative political reporter for National Public Radio. She was killed by a bullet that entered her apartment through a window.[94] |
| March 19, 2022 | Sierra Jenkins | The Virginian-Pilot | Norfolk, Virginia | The 25-year-old reporter was one of two people killed when gunfire erupted outside a popular Norfolk, Va. nightspot. [95] |
| September 3, 2022 | Jeff German | Las Vegas Review-Journal | Las Vegas, Nevada | German, an investigative journalist, was stabbed multiple times outside his home.[96] On September 7, Clark County public administrator Robert Telles was arrested as the suspect in German's murder.[97] German had written an investigative series about alleged mismanagement in Telles' office, and Telles had lost a primary election for his position that June.[98] |
| February 22, 2023 | Dylan Lyons | Spectrum News 13 | Pine Hills, Florida | Lyons, a television news reporter for Spectrum News 13, was shot and killed while filming a story on a homicide that happened earlier that day. His colleague, photographer Jesse Walden, was injured but survived. The police arrested the suspect in the original homicide, who is expected to face murder charges for allegedly committing the first homicide, the shooting of the journalists, and a later shooting in which a woman was injured and her nine year old daughter was killed.[99][100][101][102] |
| October 2, 2023 | Josh Kruger | Freelance | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Kruger, a Philadelphia-area freelance journalist, was shot and killed in his Point Breeze home early in the morning of October 2.[103] 20-year-old Robert Davis pled guilty to third-degree murder the following June.[104] |
Other journalists and media workers killed on 9/11
The only professional, working journalist to die while covering the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City was photojournalist Bill Biggart, who was killed by falling debris as he was taking photographs.[105][106] However, the International Federation of Journalists, which also counts media workers, said that six other media workers and a journalist who were not working at the time died in the attacks. Among those media workers listed as killed were six broadcast TV engineers, who worked inside a tower, and another professional photojournalist, who was a passenger on the first plane that was flown into the WTC.[107]
- Gerard J. "Rod" Coppola, TV engineer for WNET-TV, WTC (North Tower)[108]
- Donald Joseph DiFranco, TV engineer for WABC-TV, WTC (North Tower)[108]
- Steven A. Jacobson, TV engineer for WPIX-TV, WTC (North Tower)[108]
- Robert Edward “Bob” Pattison, TV engineer for WCBS-TV, WTC (North Tower)[107][108]
- Thomas Nicholas Pecorelli, professional freelance photojournalist, American Airlines Flight 11 passenger[107]
- Isias Rivera, TV engineer for WCBS-TV, WTC (North Tower)[107][108]
- William V. "Bill" Steckman, TV engineer for WNBC-TV, WTC (North Tower)[108]
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