The CEW Bean Foundation works to honour those lost at war in pursuit of the truth.

It’s named after Australia’s first official war correspondent, Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean, more famously known as the founder of the Australian War Memorial and as the historian who wrote the history of Australia in World War I.

Established in 2001, the foundation successfully lobbied for a commemorative space at the war memorial in honour of their namesake and for the broader recognition of war correspondents (that also included photographers, artists, camera operators, sound crews and filmmakers).

The War Correspondents Memorial was dedicated on September 23, 2015, exactly 100 years since journalist Keith Murdoch sent a letter to then prime minister Andrew Fisher about the horrors of Gallipoli. 

Its design is a large and highly polished granite oculus that evokes a camera lens or a human eye, and is suggestive of the act of observing or bearing witness to an event. 

The oculus is 2.4 metres in diameter, with a single line of commemorative text engraved around the circumference.

The foundation recently hosted a commemorative ceremony to observe the 10th anniversary of the memorial’s dedication. 

“The placing of the memorial was very deliberate,” said foundation secretary and former journalist Warwick Costin.

“Representing war correspondents on the edge of the battlefield, the oculus was placed on the very end of the monument garden and looking inwards, as they took in the bigger picture.

“It’s a journalist’s role to see, listen, interpret and get the message across to the world,” he says. 

“The memorial was designed to have ripples coming out of the oculus, representing the story being spread across the globe.” 

The monument’s inscription says: “Amid dangers known and unknown war correspondents report what they see and hear. Those words and images live beyond the moment and become part of the history of Australia.”

There in the trenches with everyone else

“War correspondents have the hardest gig, it’s not your normal style of journalism,” Mr Costin said. 

“They are often there in the trenches with everyone else, exposed to harm and suffering conditions no one would dream of, all the while working around the clock to keep the world updated.

“As readers, I think it is often taken for granted that someone will always be there, regardless of the risk.

“But if someone didn’t do it, there would be a vacuum of news.”

In two years, the Gaza war has claimed more journalists’ lives than World Wars I, II, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Ukraine combined, with about 230 media deaths to date. 

Mr Costin said it was also a privilege to honour the Balibo Five murders in East Timor, 50 years on. 

The Balibo Five was a group of journalists working for Australian commercial television networks who were murdered on October 16, 1975, in the period leading up to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor on. The journalists were based in the town of Balibo in East Timor (then Portuguese Timor).

Chief Reporter for 7 News Chris Reason gave the closing address. 

“They do it because they have to… new young journalists stepping up to take on the most dangerous form of reportage there is,” he said. 

“Because they know that it is critical we put independent eyes on a conflict, to record all of the horrors, as well as the heroes. 

“To take the grim statistics – and give them names and faces, mothers and fathers, background and context.” 

War reporting, he said, dealt with all this and much more. 

“It’s high risk, but it’s higher-importance, next-level journalism,” he said. 

“And my grave fear is that, the way the world is heading, we will be needing more war correspondents – not less – in the years to come.”