Top 10 Fearless Female Journalists

In a career that spanned over three decades, Ethel Payne achieved a number of firsts. She was not only the first African American woman to cover international news, but also to join the White House corps and become a commentator on a national network - making her nickname “the First Lady of the Black Press” all the more fitting. Combining journalism and advocacy, she covered the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, and earned a reputation for tough, aggressive questions. When she grilled President Eisenhower on segregation, his reply was so harsh it made headlines; his Press Secretary subsequently tried (and failed) to revoke Payne’s accreditation. She’s remembered today as one of journalism’s most determined heroes.

Award-winning investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova is another reporter who’s gone head-to-head with her country’s President. Since 2010, the Azerbaijani writer has doggedly pursued stories about government corruption - directly implicating Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and his children. In 2012, she was threatened with the release of footage from a camera hidden in her bedroom if she didn’t “behave”. She refused to give in, and the next year was arrested when she took part in a peaceful protest. Since then, she’s had several other charges thrown at her, widely criticized as politically motivated. Sentenced to jailtime in 2015, she was later released on probation, and continues to be a thorn in the government’s side.

Described as a “one-woman WikiLeaks” by Politico, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia dedicated her life to exposing corruption. After joining “The Sunday Times of Malta” in 1987, Caruana Galizia became well-known for her stories on organized crime, gambling, and money laundering. Despite threats, lawsuits, and arrests, she refused to let up. She had her house set on fire twice, and two of her dogs were killed. Sadly, in 2017, after she published reports on government officials named in the Panama Papers, she was killed by a car bomb. Three men were charged, but never brought to trial.

Lydia Cacho’s tenacity beggars belief. A Mexican journalist and women’s rights activist, Cacho has defied threats from police, politicians, and businessmen to report on sex trafficking and violence against women. In 1999, she was beaten and sexually assaulted in what she described as a retaliatory attack for her reports. After exposing a paedophile ring in 2005, she was arrested and threatened with rape; an audiotape later emerged of Puebla’s governor and a prominent businessman mentioned in her exposé congratulating each other on her arrest. She continued reporting in Mexico, but in July 2019, thieves stole her research and killed her dogs, causing her to flee the country. Her work has been recognized internationally with the Civil Courage Prize, Wallenberg Medal, and Olof Palme Prize.

Irish journalist Veronica Guerin rose to prominence in the 90s for her reports on local criminals and the IRA. She had a knack for quickly earning the trust of her sources, and developed a reputation as a reporter who relentlessly pursued the truth, regardless of personal safety. However, her investigations into Dublin drug dealers elicited several death threats, and in 1994 two shots were fired into her home. The following year, she was shot in the leg in her doorway. Nonetheless, she resolved to forge ahead with her investigations. Tragically, in 1996, she was fatally shot by gang members who worked for drug trafficker John Gilligan. Her murder outraged the country, and her name continues to be revered as a symbol of bravery and perseverance.

Death threats, mock execution, and poisoning: these are just SOME of the failed attempts to deter Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. One of the most outspoken voices covering the Second Chechen War, Politkovskaya exposed to the world the human rights abuses committed by both sides of the conflict. Throughout her career, she was constantly harassed, and on one occasion beaten, humiliated, and subjected to mock execution by Russian military forces. She was no friend of Putin’s, accusing him of dragging the country back into “a Soviet abyss”. Sadly, in 2006, she was murdered in the elevator of her apartment building; the sponsor of the crime remains unknown.

Few journalists have blazed trails like Nellie Bly - the pen name of one Elizabeth Cochran. Pioneering a new kind of investigative journalism in the late 1800s, Bly worked undercover to report on female factory workers. When factory owners complained, she was reassigned to society reporting. So after a brief stint as a foreign correspondent in Mexico, she packed up and moved to New York. There she went undercover again to investigate patient mistreatment at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum. Feigning insanity, she was institutionalized, and experienced these abuses first-hand. Her reports prompted reforms and made her a household name. She later went on to circumnavigate the globe in a record time, inspired by Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.

Nicknamed “Maggie the Indestructible”, Margaret Bourke-White was America’s first female war photojournalist. As a photojournalist for Life magazine, she achieved recognition in the 1930s with her photos of Fort Peck Dam and the Dust Bowl. During World War II, she risked life and limb to photograph the German invasion of Moscow, and later documented the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp. She also became well-known for her photographs of the violence that erupted during the 1947 Partition of India. Surviving torpedoes, enemy fire, and a helicopter crash, Bourke-White was a legend in her own time.

Born a slave, one year before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Ida B. Wells grew up in the Jim Crow south. After both parents died from yellow fever when she was 16, she became a teacher to support her family. In 1889, she also became editor and co-owner of the Memphis “Free Speech and Headlight”. Her articles criticizing segregation lost her her teaching job, so she threw herself into investigative journalism. Her reports on local lynchings led to a white mob burning down her paper’s office, forcing her to leave Memphis. However, she continued to speak out, and also became an integral part of the women’s suffrage movement, as well as a founding member of the NAACP - the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Before we continue, here are a few honorable mentions:

Janine di Giovani

Helen Thomas

Ann Leslie

Amber Lyon

Margaret Fuller

Venturing where few would dare, Marie Colvin was a war correspondent of now legendary courage. Writing for The Sunday Times, she covered conflicts around the world, including the Middle East, Chechnya, Kosovo, and East Timor, where she helped save the lives of 1,500 women and children - staying with them while others fled. In Sri Lanka, she lost her eye to an RPG . . . but somehow still submitted her report on time. In 2012, she defied attempts to stop her from entering Syria, sneaking in via motorcycle. Her stories exposed many of the atrocities committed during the conflict, but tragically she was killed during the bloody Siege of Homs. She’s remembered today as one of the greatest war reporters of all time.