Brent Renaud, First US Reporter Killed in Ukraine, Praised for Exposing Horrors of War

Mar 14, 2022 • On Sunday, the U.S. journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud was shot dead near Kyiv while working on a documentary about refugees. He is the first foreign journalist known to have been killed in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. Ukrainian officials are accusing Russian forces of his death. We discuss Renaud’s remarkable documentary work and feature part of an interview he gave on Democracy Now! after he was embedded in Iraq with the National Guard from his home state of Arkansas. We are joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ann Marie Lipinski, who got to know both Renaud and photographer Juan Arredondo during their time as fellows at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, which Lipinski curates. “Brent was a very, very special journalist, yes, but also person,” says Lipinski. “He just brought a very, very rare humanity and patience to the work.” We also hear from Cora Weiss, former board of directors chair of Downtown Community Television, where Brent and his brother Craig started their filmmaking career in the same former firehouse building that housed Democracy Now! for over a decade. “He shouldn’t have been killed,” says Weiss. “Brent was terribly important as an educator for all Americans to understand the horrors of war and the unnecessary expense in life.” Carlos Martínez de la Serna of the Committee to Protect Journalists says Renaud’s killing amounts to a war crime.