A photograph of the late journalist Lyra McKee has been unveiled in The Reporters Bar in Belfast to mark International Press Freedom Day.
Ms McKee (29) died after being struck by a bullet fired at police during rioting in the Creggan area of Derry on April 18th, 2019. The New IRA admitted responsibility.
Before her death, Ms McKee was also a campaigner for women’s reproductive rights and for equality for people in the LGBTQ+ community.
Just a few weeks before her death, she had been listed by The Irish Times as one of the 10 rising stars of Irish writing.
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The Reporters Bar, which opened in 2021, is located in what was once the home of many of the city’s press offices and is next to the old Belfast Telegraph building. The bar reflects Belfast’s publishing past and features dozens of photos Northern Ireland reporters and framed articles.
The picture was unveiled at an event attended on Saturday by Ms McKee’s sister, Nichola McKee Corner, and National Union of Journalists assistant general secretary Seamus Dooley, Anne Hailes, who is chair of the union’s Belfast and district branch, and Ciaran Hanna from the branch.
World Press Freedom Day was established in 1993 by the UN General Assembly to celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) declared 2024 had been the “deadliest” year for journalists since it began collecting data three decades ago. At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the CPJ.
In a statement to mark the 2025 press freedom day, the Council of Europe warned that journalists across the council’s 46 member states continued to face “growing threats to their safety, their integrity, and their right to inform”.
“Freedom of the press cannot exist where fear prevails,” said Maja Zaric, chair of the committee for media and information society of the Council of Europe. “Freedom of the media is freedom for all of us, and journalist safety is not a privilege – it is a democratic necessity. Let us defend it – today and every day.”
