The deputy chairman of DC Thomson publisher of The Courier this week paid tribute to journalist Marie Colvin after her death in Syria.
Ms Colvin, a Sunday Times journalist, and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the besieged city of Homs when the house where they were staying was shelled.
Paying tribute to his friend, Christopher Thomson described her as ”a true heroine of our industry.”
He added: ”She was, unknown to many, a true friend to all of us. She represented something admirable that we in journalism can all recognise and try to emulate dispassionately telling the truth and somehow by doing that in her case in the most ghastly circumstances protecting the rest of us from tyranny.”
Recalling some of the stories she had covered, Mr Thomson said: ”Marie was the most fearless person I ever met. I recall her telling me that she had organised a taxi to take her from Turkey to Kurdish Iraq, dressed as the wife of a local man who was working on the dams, to bring out the truth of the massacre of the Kurds in Iraq which Saddam Hussein had of course flatly denied.
”More recently she had tried to broker a deal between the UN Secretary General and the Sri Lankan government to prevent any killing when the Tamils laid down their arms. Regrettably to no avail. She was very angry at the loss of life which she had tried so hard to prevent.”
Mr Thomson said Ms Colvin had also reported from the frontline with British troops in Afghanistan.
He said: ”She told me of the time she had gone out on patrol with our boys in Afghanistan without night goggles or flak jacket her own fault, she said. She told me she had never been so frightened. She had gone out with a platoon of 11 on three consecutive nights and each night one of them had been shot by sniper.
”I asked her why she did this. She said she did not think it was right to write about things she had not physically experienced.
”She was a true heroine of our industry. She was the best.”
Photo by Joel Ryan/PA Wire