SHSU's Global Center Speaker Event: Target! Journalist featuring Mary Fitzgerald

SHSU's Global Center for Journalism and Democracy is proud to present its next speakers series event, Target! Journalist, featuring Irish Times Foreign Affairs Correspondent Mary Fitzgerald.

More than two dozen journalists have been killed covering the conflict in Syria, labeled the most dangerous place on Earth for the press. Still, some brave reporters have ventured into the country to let the world know what is happening there. Irish journalist Mary Fitzgerald, is one of them.

To enter Syria, Mary had to team up with rebel forces because the Syrian government still bans most journalists from entering. She trudged through muddy fields in the middle of the night with only the moon to light her way. She walked for hours, crawled through barbed wire fences, and sneaked past government checkpoints. Everything she needed, she had to carry on her back.

Once inside, she had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get her through her days. Her life and the lives of those helping her were at constant risk as the bloody uprising raged on. Communication with the outside world was nearly nonexistent.

Mary is no stranger to danger. Just ten days after the very first anti regime protests, Mary crossed the border into rebel-held eastern Libya. No reporter had been allowed to freely report from the country for decades.

Despite the danger, Mary says she couldn't stand by as history was being made, "The story of what has happened in the Middle East and North Africa since the spring of 2011, from the early euphoria of Egypt and Tunisia's revolutions to the continuing bloodshed in Syria, will be a defining one for my generation of reporters".

Target! Journalist will take place April 18th, 2013 in the LSC Theater on the SHSU campus at 7PM. Free to the public.