Marie Colvin

In 2018, a film based on Colvin's life, A Private War, directed by Matthew Heineman, written by Arash Amel, and starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin, was released, based on the 2012 article Marie Colvin's Private War in Vanity Fair Magazine by Marie Brenner.

In July 2016, lawyers representing Colvin's family filed a civil action against the government of the Syrian Arab Republic claiming they had obtained proof that the Syrian government had directly ordered her assassination, leading to a judge finding the Syrian government guilty of her assassination in early 2019, awarding Colvin's family $302 million in damages.

In July 2016, Cat Colvin filed a civil action against the government of the Syrian Arab Republic for extrajudicial killing claiming she had obtained proof that the Syrian government had directly ordered Colvin's targeted assassination. In April 2018, the accusations were revealed on court papers filed by her family. In January 2019, an American court ruled that the Syrian government was liable for Colvin's death and ordered that they pay $300m in punitive damages. The judgement stated that Colvin was "specifically targeted because of her profession, for the purpose of silencing those reporting on the growing opposition movement in the country. [The] murder of journalists acting in their professional capacity could have a chilling effect on reporting such events worldwide. A targeted murder of an American citizen, whose courageous work was not only important, but vital to our understanding of war zones and of wars generally, is outrageous, and therefore a punitive damages award that multiples the impact on the responsible state is warranted."

In February 2012, Colvin crossed into Syria on the back of a motocross motorcycle, ignoring the Syrian government's attempts to prevent foreign journalists from entering Syria to cover the Syrian Civil War without permission. Colvin was stationed in the western Baba Amr district of the city of Homs, and made her last broadcast on the evening of February 21, appearing on the BBC, Channel 4, CNN and ITN News via satellite phone. She described "merciless" shelling and sniper attacks against civilian buildings and people on the streets of Homs by Syrian forces. Speaking to Anderson Cooper, Colvin described the bombardment of Homs as the worst conflict she had ever experienced.

Colvin died on February 22, alongside photojournalist Rémi Ochlik. An autopsy conducted in Damascus by the Syrian government concluded Marie Colvin was killed by an "improvised explosive device filled with nails." The Syrian government claims the explosive device was planted by terrorists on February 22, 2012, while fleeing an unofficial media building which was being shelled by the Syrian Army. This account was rejected by photographer Paul Conroy, who was with Colvin and Ochlik and survived the attack. Conroy recalled that Colvin and Ochlik were packing their gear when Syrian artillery fire hit their media centre.

On the evening of February 22, 2012, people of Homs mourned in the streets in honour of Colvin and Ochlik. Tributes were paid to Colvin across the media industry and political world following her death.

Colvin's funeral took place in Oyster Bay, New York, on March 12, 2012, in a service attended by 300 mourners including those who had followed her dispatches, friends and family. She was cremated and half of her ashes were scattered off Long Island, and the other half on the River Thames, near her last home.

In 2011, while reporting on the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, she was offered an opportunity to interview Gaddafi again, along with two other journalists that she could nominate. For Gaddafi's first international interview since the start of the war, Colvin took along Christiane Amanpour of ABC News and Jeremy Bowen of BBC News.

Colvin twice married journalist Patrick Bishop; both marriages ended in divorce. She also married a Bolivian journalist, Juan Carlos Gumucio, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El País in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. He took his own life in February 2002 in Bolivia, following depression and alcoholism.

Colvin lost the sight in her left eye while reporting on the Sri Lankan Civil War. She was struck by a blast from a Sri Lankan Army rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) on April 16, 2001, while crossing from a Tamil Tigers-controlled area to a Government-controlled area; thereafter she wore an eyepatch. She was attacked even after calling out "journalist, journalist!" She told Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News that her attacker "knew what he was doing." Despite sustaining serious injuries, Colvin, who was 44 at the time, managed to write a 3,000 word article on time to meet the deadline. She had walked over 30 miles (48 km) through the Vanni jungle with her Tamil guides to evade government troops; she reported on the humanitarian disaster in the northern Tamil region, including a government blockade of food, medical supplies and prevention of foreign journalist access to the area for six years to cover the war. Colvin later suffered post traumatic stress disorder and required hospitalisation following her injuries.

Specialising in the Middle East, she also covered conflicts in Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and East Timor. In 1999 in East Timor, she was credited with saving the lives of 1,500 women and children from a compound besieged by Indonesian-backed forces. Refusing to abandon them, she stayed with a United Nations force, reporting in her newspaper and on television. They were evacuated after four days. She won the International Women's Media Foundation award for Courage in Journalism for her coverage of Kosovo and Chechnya. She wrote and produced documentaries, including Arafat: Behind the Myth for the BBC. She is featured in the 2005 documentary film Bearing Witness.

In May 1988, Colvin made an extended appearance on the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, alongside Anton Shammas, Gerald Kaufman, Moshe Amirav, Nadia Hijab and others.

From 1986, she was the newspaper's Middle East correspondent, and then from 1995 was the Foreign Affairs correspondent. In 1986, she was the first to interview Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi after Operation El Dorado Canyon. Gaddafi said in this interview that he was at home when U.S. planes bombed Tripoli in April 1986, and that he helped rescue his wife and children while "the house was coming down around us". Gaddafi also said reconciliation between Libya and the United States was impossible so long as Ronald Reagan was in the White House. "I have nothing to say to him (Reagan)", he said, "because he is mad. He is foolish. He is an Israeli dog."

Colvin worked briefly for a labor union in New York City, before starting her journalism career with United Press International (UPI), a year after graduating from Yale. She worked for UPI first in Trenton, then New York and Washington. In 1984, Colvin was appointed Paris bureau manager for UPI, before moving to The Sunday Times in 1985.

Colvin also started writing for the Yale Daily News "and decided to be a journalist", her mother said. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in anthropology in 1978. During her time at Yale, Colvin was known for her strong personality and quickly established herself as a "noise-maker" on campus.

Marie Colvin was born in Astoria, Queens, New York, and grew up in East Norwich in the town of Oyster Bay, Nassau County, on Long Island. Her father, William J. Colvin, was a Marine Corps veteran of WWII and an English teacher in New York City public schools. He was also active in Democratic politics in Nassau County. He served as Deputy County Executive under Eugene Nickerson. Her mother, Rosemarie Marron Colvin, was a high school guidance counselor in Long Island public schools. She had two brothers, William and Michael, and two sisters, Aileen and Catherine. She graduated from Oyster Bay High School in 1974. She spent her junior year of high school abroad on an exchange program in Brazil and later attended Yale University. She was an anthropology major but took a course with the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer John Hersey.

Marie Catherine Colvin (January 12, 1956 – February 22, 2012) was a British/American journalist who worked as a foreign affairs correspondent for the British newspaper The Sunday Times from 1985 until her death. She died while covering the siege of Homs in Syria.