Subject: categories: Terrible news -- young Myles

From: Peter Freyd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 08:01:08 -0500 (EST)

''The death of Myles Tierney has robbed international 
     television of one of its brightest young stars. He was a
     consummate professional, highly talented and highly 
     resourceful.''

     ''On top of his professional skills he was renowned among
     colleagues and competitors for his great good humor and 
     generosity of spirit''

                   Copyright 1999 Associated Press
                              AP Online
             January 11, 1999; Monday 06:23 Eastern Time

SECTION: International news

LENGTH: 593 words

HEADLINE: AP Journalists Shot in Sierra Leone

DATELINE: FREETOWN, Sierra Leone

   BODY:
   A television producer for The Associated Press was killed and an AP
bureau chief was seriously wounded when their car was hit by gunfire
while covering the civil war in Sierra Leone.

   Myles Tierney, a Kenya-based producer for Associated Press
Television News, and Ian Stewart, based in Ivory Coast, were among
journalists and government Information Ministry officials who were
traveling Sunday in four cars through embattled downtown Freetown.

   They were being escorted by troops of a West African coalition
force, known as ECOMOG, which is protecting the elected government.

   According to other journalists in the group, the AP journalists
were in a station wagon that was approached by an armed man on the
street in downtown Freetown. The man opened fire on the car with a
semiautomatic rifle after an exchange of words with an ECOMOG soldier
also riding in the car.

   Tierney, 34, of New York City, was shot and died instantly.
Stewart, 32, suffered a head wound. AP photographer David Guttenfelder
of Waukee, Iowa, was also in the car and suffered cuts from broken
window glass.

   The journalists were rushed to a nearby ECOMOG base, and then flown
to Conakry, Guinea. Stewart and Guttenfelder were transported from
there to Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

   ''We are devastated by the news of Myles' death and Ian's serious
injuries,'' said Thomas Kent, international editor of The Associated
Press. ''It is another bitter example of the sacrifices made by
correspondents who go in harm's way to cover the news.''

   Nigel Baker, head of news at Associated Press Television News,
said: ''The death of Myles Tierney has robbed international television
of one of its brightest young stars. He was a consummate professional,
highly talented and highly resourceful.''

   Freetown has been carved into neighborhoods of rebel and loyalist
control. The rebel Revolutionary United Front controls most of eastern
Freetown and parts of the downtown, and has rejected calls for a
cease-fire. Sporadic shelling had been heard overnight, but
street-to-street fighting had tapered off Sunday morning.

   State-controlled radio warned all civilians to stay indoors, saying
loyalist troops were patrolling the streets in search of rebel
fighters who have been using residents as human shields.

   Tierney joined AP as a freelance producer for the agency's TV
division in Africa during 1996, organizing coverage of a military coup
in Burundi. Later that year he joined the staff and set up the
agency's first TV bureau in New York.

   In January 1997, he shifted to Africa, based in Nairobi. For the
next two years he chronicled the turmoil across east and west Africa.
He was part of an AP team that for three months reported exclusively
on the advance of then rebel leader Laurent Kabila in eastern Zaire,
now Congo.

   During the assignment, he pioneered use of new technology which
allowed video to be dispatched over a conventional satellite
telephone. It meant the TV coverage was ahead of all opposition.

   He also had covered conflicts in Rwanda, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea and
Somalia.

   ''On top of his professional skills he was renowned among
colleagues and competitors for his great good humor and generosity of
spirit,'' Baker said.

   Stewart is AP's West Africa bureau chief, based in Abidjan. He
began working for AP in Pakistan, moved on to Hanoi in 1996 and began
his present assignment last year. A Toronto native, he graduated from
Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and has a master's degree
from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.