Colleagues Remember Marie Colvin
Update 11:15 a.m.: The Sunday Times has lifted its paywall on Colvin's final piece.
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Fearless, fantastic, and brave seem to be the instant reactions to the death of journalist Marie Colvin, but it's her own powerful words over the years that are the most fitting and perhaps the most eloquent way to remember her life. Colvin, who suffered an eye injury while reporting in Sri Lanka, said in 2010 service commemorating fallen journalists, "I faced that question when I was injured. In fact one paper ran a headline saying, has Marie Colvin gone too far this time? My answer then, and now, was that it is worth it."
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The New York Times' Jim Roberts pointed to Colvin's own reaction to the fallen Anthony Shadid who died in Syria less than a week ago--words that could very well describe Colvin's own career:
Shocked by the news of the death of Anthony Shadid, a brilliant journalist and writer whose work glowed with his humanity and was always so kind and gentle. He will be so missed at a time when he was the best person to shed light on this strange new Middle East.
In her last interview with Reuters, the day before she died, Colvin described the increasingly "sickening", "merciless" violence in Syria and snipers in Baba Amr.
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Colvin also called in to CNN's AC360 show last night--again reporting on the gruesome violence in Homs which claimed the life of a baby.
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"Marie was an extraordinary figure in the life of The Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered." said the paper's editor John Witherow in statement released today. "She was a woman with a tremendous joie de vivre, full of humour and mischief and surrounded by a large circle of friends, all of whom feared the consequences of her bravery."
Colvin's love for life was the tone Sky News' Sam Kiley's tribute:
Marie could party harder and longer than most and drank with a glorious abandon when it suited her.
She chain-smoked and her laughter decorated some of the finest bars in the weirdest parts of the world, such as the Gandamak Lodge in Kabul, the al Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, the Olympic Hotel, Beirut and everyone's favourite, the American Colony in Jerusalem.
She was, however, never coarse. Always elegant.
"Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice," Colvin said in that 2010 commemoration. "We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?" With her courageous life and compassionate work, Marie Colvin answered that question.
