"She lied to a military police officer down by a hospital ship, said she was going to interview nurses about the 'woman’s angle,' and they let her on, because, as she said, no one gave a hoot about the woman’s angle. It served as the perfect forged passport for her," said Somerville. She resorted to those measures because her husband, Ernest Hemingway, tried to take over her journalist career.

This Saturday, June 6, will be the 76th anniversary of D-Day, the battle that would come to represent the beginning of the end of World War II. 

There was just one woman, a war correspondent, on the beaches at Normandy that day the allied forces liberated Western Europe from Nazi Germany: the singular Martha Gellhorn. Author Janet Somerville traces Gellhorn’s extraordinary life in her book Yours, For Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love and War.

"Since 1937, Martha had been a war correspondent for Collier’s magazine. She knew about the Allied invasion, that there was a plan to cover the Allied invasion of Normandy, and she was determined to cover that," Somerville said. 

The problem was, her very famous husband at the time, Ernest Hemingway, pulled the rug out from under her professionally.

"Hemingway had gone to New York, introduced himself to her editor at Collier’s and said ‘I’ll be your war correspondent.’ And he took her accreditation papers. Which was a bit of a problem," said Somerville.

Each publication could send just one correspondent. But Gellhorn was resourceful and clever. She found herself passage on a munitions ship from New York that would get her to Europe. She was the only woman and the only civilian aboard that ship, which landed in Liverpool. Then, she just needed to get to Normandy.

"She lied to a military police officer down by a hospital ship, said she was going to interview nurses about the 'woman’s angle,' and they let her on, because, as she said, no one gave a hoot about the woman’s angle. It served as the perfect forged passport for her," said Somerville.

Once on board the hospital ship, Gellhorn locked herself into a bathroom until they sailed. When the ship docked in Normandy, she waded ashore through waist-deep water with some of the medical officers.

"She became the only woman and the only war correspondent to be actually on the beaches at Normandy, evacuating the wounded."

Though she was there as a journalist to write about the event, she couldn’t help but tend to the wounded soldiers. She had an uncanny ability, Somerville says, to focus on what needed to be done. So when she saw that the wounded were hungry and thirsty, she set to work.

"She just took it in her stride and found somebody who could bring teapots to tip into their mouths,if they couldn't hold a glass. She just took charge and made sure that they got something," Somerville said.

She also managed to be one of many correspondents who wrote about D Day.

"The incredible thing about D-Day is that accredited correspondents produced 700,000 words of text, just about D-Day," Somerville said. "Martha was one of them. She had a piece called 'Over and Back' that Collier’s published."

Gellhorn went on to report into her old age, from all corners of the globe. She filed her last piece, about the murdered street children of Salvador, Brazil, more than 50 years after D-Day, when she was 87 years old.

Yours, For Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love and War, 1930-1949 by Janet Somerville is available at the link above, or wherever you buy your books.

Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune receives the New York Newspaper Women's Club special citation as the outstanding woman reporter of the year, November 17, 1950. The citation commended Higgins for her reporting of the Korean conflict, for her courage under fire, and for her bravery in administering blood plasma to the wounded. Presenting it is Margaret Mara of the Brooklyn Eagle, president of the club, at the organization's Front Page Dinner Dance.

Photo: Marty Lederhandler for the AP

Hey everyone, I started a new (free) newsletter about music here in Seattle and beyond. I am writing about artists old and new, festivals, other live events, and have grunge retrospectives planned.

I am covering my first live event tomorrow! And there are some other exciting things on the horizon.

Gail Collins

Gail Collins was born in 1945 in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1995, Collins joined The New York Times, and in 2001, she became the first woman to serve as the editor of the paper's editorial page. She held the position until 2007. Collins is the author of multiple books, and served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Caroline Rémy de Guebhard (27 April 1855 – 24 April 1929) was a French journalist with anarchist, socialist, communist and feminist views, best known under the pen name Séverine.

Undaunted: the untold story of women in American journalism

I can see how it warps the mind, the perception of the world and our place in it. Power is enticing. Like Lewis Hamilton? You can eat steaks that cost the same as your electricity bill and meet him again. You, too, can bask in the balding aura of Prince Harry and the fake glow of Instagram models. Any wealth and status you lack, you can perform. What I received wasn't a crash course in Formula 1—in fact, Formula 1 only became more mystifying to me—but journalism, as viewed by the other side. The great irony of the other side is that they need journalism. The petrochemical companies, deeply powerful institutions, need journalists to write about all the things they attach themselves to that are not being a petrochemical company. Formula 1, on a rapacious tangent for growth and new markets, needs journalists to spread the good word of the richest sport in the world. Unfortunately for the other side, journalism still remains a double-edged sword.

This article by Kate Wagner, published on 1 Mar 2024, was removed from Road & Track later that same day. Link goes to archived copy.

yes girl you are so [if i loved you less i might be able to talk about it more] [hands are unbearably beautiful] [i'll take care of you it's rotten work not to me not if it's you] [if you are intolerable let me be the one to tolerate you] [i could recognise him by touch alone] [i love you i want us both to eat well] [on purpose i love you on purpose] [whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same] [i am half agony half hope] [you have bewitched me body and soul and i love love love you] [he is half of my soul as the poets say] [i'm sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for but i'm so lonely] [i love you most ardently] [let me stay tender hearted despite despite despite] [someone has to leave first this is a very old story there is no other version of this story] [mostly i want to be kind] [tell me how all this and love too will ruin us] [you said i killed you haunt me then] [someone somewhere can you understand me a little love me a little] [i will love you as misfortune loves orphans as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong] [sorry about the blood in your mouth i wish it was mine] [who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me] can we kiss now

An ob-gyn in Virginia performed unnecessary surgeries on patients for decades. He took their reproductive organs, gave them false cancer diagnoses, and did other terrible harm. When his victims learned the truth, they fought back. Issue no. 146, DAMAGES, is now available: 

[Debra] requested her medical records and was stunned to find discrepancies with what Perwaiz had said to her during appointments. Most glaringly, she didn’t see any mention of precancerous cells on her cervix; the tests Perwaiz performed on her had come back normal. “If I was normal,” Debra said, “why did I have a surgery?”

There were other inconsistencies. One form from an appointment described Debra complaining of back and pelvic pain, which she told me she never did. Another document dated the day before her surgery stated that she “insisted on having those ovaries removed through the abdominal wall incision and not vaginally,” and that the “consent obtained after entirely counseling the patient [was] for abdominal hysterectomy.” In fact, she had requested the opposite surgical approach, and she recalled no such conversation with Perwaiz; the only time she’d spoken with him in the lead-up to her procedure was in passing in the hospital hallway.

Debra was sure she had a malpractice case. She went to several lawyers, but none of them would take her on as a client. “So many men—man after man saying, ‘You had a decent amount of care, and that’s all you’re afforded,’ ” she said. Frustrated, she came up with a new plan: “I said, ‘Alright, I’m going to learn how to sue this bastard myself.’ ”

Journalism can be a deadly job to begin with.

By Britt Gronemeyer

Since the eruption of mass anti-government protests in mid-September 2022, the Islamic Republic has waged a war on women journalists in Iran. The targeting of journalists is not new. However, security forces have deliberately gone after women journalists and jailed them at a rapidly increasing rate. While the international community has spoken out in support of the Women, Life, Freedom revolution, they have done little to protect the women journalists at the heart of this movement. 

In September 2022, Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi were imprisoned on alleged charges of espionage. They had attempted to report on the death of twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini—a Kurdish-Iranian woman who had been killed by the so-called morality police for “violating” mandatory hijab. Hamedi wrote for the reformist newspaper Shargh and was the first journalist to report on the death of Amini, doing so from the hospital in Tehran where Amini had been on life support. Mohammadi had reported on the protests at Amini’s funeral in her hometown of Saqez in northwest Kurdistan province.

In January of this year, journalist Nazila Maroufian revealed that she had been jailed and sentenced to two years on alleged charges of “anti-government propaganda and spreading false news” after publishing an interview with Amini’s father, Amjad Amini.

These three women and their experiences do not exist in a vacuum. The targeting of female journalists has been a direct response to the rise of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. More than seventy journalists have been imprisoned in Iran since the beginning of the protests, 44 percent of whom are women. This is an unprecedented number in Iranian history.

According to journalist and activist Yeganeh Rezaian, a senior researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Women, Life, Freedom uprising would not exist without female journalists.

“The Women, Life, Freedom movement was started by the unfortunate death of a woman, but also by women’s coverage of that terrible incident. So, if it was not for those first two female journalists who covered the death of Mahsa Amini, there would be no clarity about what had happened to her,” Rezaian explained to me.

What the constitution says

This phenomenon is not limited to Iranian journalists covering the ongoing protests. The Islamic Republic has a long history of jailing journalists as well as subjecting them to extreme censorship and political pressure. 

Under the Islamic Republic, the legal framework for freedom of the press is constituted by a combination of sharia law and Islamic cultural norms. While there are provisions within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran developed in 1979 that protect freedom of expression and address the freedom of the press, these provisions are often overlooked or subjected to severe restrictions.

Article 24 of the Constitution establishes the rights of the press to freedom of expression, yet they are subject to exceptions in favor of the principles of Islam and the rights of the public. Article 168 of the Constitution reinforces the restrictions on the freedom of expression by laying out the procedures relating to offenses by the press. The 1986 Iranian Press Law established the Mission of the Press, the Rights of the Press, and the Limits of the Press. The provision regarding the limitations placed upon the press would prove to be the most significant in justifying contemporary restrictions of the press.   

By adopting rhetoric pointing to national security concerns and the spread of propaganda, the Islamic Republic has abused its jurisdiction over national security. The Iranian state uses national security charges as an increasingly transparent façade for the wrongful detention of journalists in an effort to eliminate criticism of the regime and prevent the exposure of other human rights violations they have committed.

Waging war on women journalists

Rezaian claimed that the current targeting of female journalists is not shocking. She has commented that these efforts have become so prolific that they no longer attempt to hide the detention of journalists, noting that they are shameless in raiding these women’s homes without warrants and providing purpose for their imprisonment.

CPJ has declared the Islamic Republic the worst jailer of journalists in the world for 2022. The sheer number of detentions is worsened by the conditions in which these women journalists are being treated. Journalists in Iran are subjected to poor prison conditions, including being frequently kept in solitary confinement. Furthermore, female journalists are specifically targeted as victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. 

So, while the international community says that they stand with the women of Iran, they must step up in the face of a war against female journalists and ensure that they are given the freedom to continue to fight for the rights of their peers. 

Freedom of the press in the international community is addressed through numerous bodies of international law. UNESCO declares that access to information is a fundamental freedom as well as an integral component of freedom of expression. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Islamic Republic of Iran has ratified, holds that everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression. This includes the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.” The blatant dismissal of these rights by the Islamic Republic must be recognized and condemned by the international community. 

There are other ways to hold the Islamic Republic accountable, including the use of targeted financial sanctions and travel bans against companies and individuals that are responsible for the unjust treatment of journalists. Additionally, European Union states could summon their ambassadors back to their countries in protest of the wrongful detentions and the harsh treatment of female journalists. Lastly, countries with universal jurisdiction laws can and should investigate the detentions of women journalists to bring the individuals responsible to justice.  

As women journalists risk their lives to share the realities of the Islamic Republic’s brutality with the world, the international community must support them with deliberate action.  

Britt Gronemeyer is a Young Global Professional at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.

Zelda: Gods Link is probably disgusted at my inability to do my job. He probably thinks i'm wasting time just working on sheikah technology. I don't care. I really don't anymore.

Link, writing on his journal while kicking his feet: the princess looked at me today. She was very pretty today!!!

in another life, i find out i am autistic at 12 instead of at 29. i am still bullied, but my parents put me in another school. i get the support i need. i find friends who love me for who i am. my mom and dad don’t yell. instead, they comfort me during my meltdowns. they support me. i grow up knowing who i am, what i am, and i learn how my body works instead of wondering why i can’t speak the language of everyone else around me despite having english as my native language.

Hala Gorani

Hala Gorani was born in 1970 in Seattle, Washington. Gorani's work as a journalist has taken her to some of the most dangerous places in the world. She has covered the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the war in Ukraine. Gorani has won three Emmy Awards, and her reporting on the 2010 earthquake in Haiti contributed to CNN winning the Golden Nymph Award. She has interviewed Tony Blair, the Dalai Lama, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Nicolas Sarkozy. Gorani was the anchor of Hala Gorani Tonight on CNN International, and is now an international correspondent for NBC News. In 2024, she published a memoir, But You Don't Look Arab: And Other Tales of Unbelonging.