Pakistan: AKI's Marra remembers slain Pakistani journalist

May 14--ROME -- Adnkronos International (AKI) director and editor in chief Giuseppe Marra in an interview with the Xinhua news agency remembers slain Pakistani reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad. The AKI stringer was killed in May 2011. His tortured body was found 150 kilometrs from Islamabad.
Shahzad's name was included on the Journalists Memorial at the Newseum in Washington in a ceremony on Monday.
Q: Being a journalist is a life mission as well as a profession. Is there something in particular that you and the agency you run learned from Shahzad's work?

A: His lesson was exemplary. He loved his job to such a point that he endangered his life and made precarious those of his wife Anita and his three children whom he loved deeply. He was the example of a journalist-hero. Through his correspondences and dispatches, always accurate and timely, you felt as if you were in the theatres of war that he crossed. We could not forget him forever, and his photo will have a place of honour in our editorial. He was the best of all of us.
Q: At times the courage to tell the truth in bloody areas of the world is hindered by the need to protect yourself from violence that killed the journalist. And unfortunately, many other journalists have lost their lives for the same cause. Do you see the possibility of the international media creating safety net to protect their journalists?
A: Worldwide journalism suffers from an unacceptable legislative delay as not only there is no safety net, but not even a code that protects the best and dismisses the worst. Instead, as operators of information and communication, which are now inseparable, we should give ourselves a new international ethical code that protects those who are an honour to our work and sanctions those who humiliate it by making journalism a megaphone of whispers and shouts only functional to this or that power, and not a mission to serve the truth without any adjectives. As operators of information and communication, which are now inseparable, we should give ourselves a new international ethical code that protects those who are an honour to our work and sanctions those who humiliate it by making journalism a megaphone of whispers and shouts only functional to this or that power, and not a mission to serve the truth without any adjectives. In the future Adnkronos will step up the flow of information from the regions where Shahzad reported to honour his memory. He was not just a friend and colleague, but a brother. 
This article was distributed through the NewsCred Smartwire. Original article © Adnkronos International, Rome 2012