Journalist Lyra McKee Dies in Northern Ireland Shooting

Published 2019-04-26

On April 18th, a gunman shot and killed a young journalist, Lyra McKee, during turmoil in Derry (officially Londonderry) in Northern Ireland. Police clashes with “dissident republicans”, Irish nationalists in the country who do not support the Good Friday Agreement, characterized the unrest. The event preceded Easter weekend which marks the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, an important date for Irish republicans. McKee stood next to a police vehicle when a masked gunman fired at a small crowd of police and bystanders. Police transported her to the hospital where she died from her wounds.

The New IRA, an Irish republican group, took responsibility and apologized for the shooting. The slaying underscores fears that the tumultuous Brexit deal might cause latent sectarian violence to flare up on the UK-Ireland border. The bloodshed follows a car bomb explosion that occurred in Derry earlier this year.

The Charlie Hebdo shootings cause a spike in EU journalist deaths in 2015. Data source is CPJ, graph is author-created.

Condemnation of the slaying is particularly strong in the journalist community. Some news outlets consider McKee’s death further evidence that it is increasingly dangerous to be a journalist. Data gathered by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), however, suggest McKee’s slaying is a rare tragedy.

According to CPJ data collected since 1992, McKee is the first slain UK journalist since Martin O’Hagan’s murder in 2001. A loyalist paramilitary group in North Ireland killed O’Hagan, who had republican ties, for his reporting on a loyalist drug dealing ring. The similarity between the two journalists’ deaths is both tragic and ironic. However, the slaying of journalists from EU countries remains rare. Since 1992, 21 journalists from EU countries† were killed. Only 5 of these killings took place on foreign soil.††

Journalist deaths by crossfire are rare. Data source is CPJ, graph is author-created.

The circumstances surrounding McKee’s death are also rare. The majority of journalists killed each year are male. The same holds true for EU journalists—5 of the 21 slain journalists are female. Since the gunman shot into a crowd, CPJ labels McKee’s murder a death at the hands of crossfire. This is also an infrequent cause of death for journalists.

The rarity of the killing makes McKee’s death all the more tragic. Lyra received an MA in investigative journalism and carried on a muckraker tradition. Much of her work focuses on the legacy of the Troubles, in particular its effect on the generation coming of age in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement. Whether her slaying is the result of increasing sectarian discord or is an isolated incident, the world lost a journalist courageous enough to brave violence in order to make sense of a troubled world.

†I counted only journalists who belonged to countries in the EU at their time of death.

††2 of these 5 killings took place within the EU. CPJ considers Martin O’Hagan an Irish reporter so his death in Northern Ireland is considered “foreign”. Kim Wall was a Swedish journalist killed in Denmark known as the “submarine case”.