Yesterday I spent a sombre evening of recollection and commemoration at the Kurt Schork Memorial awards in London. Founded in honour of my friend and Balkan reporting colleague Kurt Schork, the awards celebrate the achievements of freelance journalists and local reporters. These are the brave men and women who provide so much of the material used by international media but get little of the recognition enjoyed by the journalistic stars.

Alas, for the second year, one of the awards was posthumous. Sahar al-Haideri, 44, a journalist with the independent Aswat al-Iraq (Voice of Iraq) news agency, was killed by gunmen in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in June. She left a husband and three daughters. Sahar, who also worked with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, was put on a death list by insurgents who objected to the clarity and fearlessness with which she reported the murderous campaigns of intimidation being waged by sectarian groups in Iraq.  The award recognised Sahar’s bravery and stubbornness, qualities exemplified by Kurt, who was killed in Sierra Leone in 2000 while on assignment for Reuters. A colleague read extracts from an article by Sahar on the brutal “honour killing” of a 17-year-old girl from the Yezidi sect which sparked a horrifying round of reprisal attacks and ethnic strife. The audience was shocked into silence. One of the 2006 awards went to Steven Vincent, who was shot in Basra, southern Iraq, in August 2005, for writing about the infiltration of local police by death squads.

The war in Iraq has been the deadliest conflict ever for journalists, according to media watchdogs. Figures vary, depending on which organisation you consult, because they categorise journalists and media support workers differently. The Committee to Protect Journalists counts 123 journalists and 42 support workers killed by hostile action in Iraq since March 2003.  The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders group counts 206 journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq with two still missing and 14 kidnapped. The International News Safety Institute records 235 media casualties.

What is clear is that the vast majority of deaths are of Iraqis reporting on their own country. CPJ says 85 percent of those killed are Iraqi. Rodney Pinder, who leads INSI, put the figure higher last night, reminding the audience that most of the deaths were deliberate murder. “The targetting is vicious. Journalists can’t even admit to being journalists,” said Pinder. The pattern is repeated elsewhere. It is not foreign correspondents who are most vulnerable, but local journalists trying to uncover crime, corruption and official misdeeds who are most at risk globally.

Some of the pain has been felt at Reuters. Three of our Iraqi staff were killed in Baghdad in July, two by fire from a U.S. military helicopter, the third shot by gunmen. Two other Iraqi journalists working for us and a Ukrainian and Palestinian have been killed by American soldiers since the 2003 invasion. Our friends at Aswat al-Iraq, which has been supported by the Reuters Foundation, have lost three reporters, including Sahar, this year.  

Amid the gloom, what consolation? Journalism has never been an easy profession and each violent death in the industry poses difficult questions. But it would be wrong to retreat and give up. After all, the Schork awards are there to acknowledge success, not failure. They celebrate the ability of brave people to get stories out to readers who need them. Sahar’s husband, Hassan An-Naqeeb, paid a fitting tribute to the best of our profession, and gave his wife a moving epitaph, with his words: “The truth is an honour beyond all honour.”

Sean Maguire is Editor, Political and General News at Reuters