Last year, I had the chance to watch the film entitled “Veronica Guerin”. This film is based on a true story about Veronica Guerin (played by Cate Blanchett), an Irish journalist and a reporter for The Sunday Independent, Ireland’s leading newspaper, who exposed some of Dublin's most powerful crime barons and drug lords in 1996. In that same year she was gunned down by assassins hired by the same criminal drug lords she exposed.
Veronica paid a very dear price for her passion for truth and liberty: her very own life. She was afraid because she knew the risks attached to her profession and she was well aware of the dangers not only of being hurt but also of being killed. She was terrified when one of the drug lords threatened her that he would abduct her son and kill her if she would press charges again him. In one of the scenes that she even threw up out of fear and told her husband not to tell anyone that she was actually afraid.
Veronica’s search for the truth was worthwhile because she was able to awaken the awareness of people to make a campaign against crime and drug addiction. At first, it seemed she was all alone in this battle but at the end everybody was crying out the same desire that she had.
One of the most interesting scenes in the film, journalistically speaking is when Veronica and an envoy of the drug lords were talking inside a bar where she was being bribed to stop the reports she was doing about the drug lords. Guerin told the envoy that she could not be paid and went away leaving him in the pub. Veronica, as a professional, was not afraid and not hesitant to say NO to the offer.
Her death was not in vain or useless because it served as a spark, a push to move the people to fight against crime and drug addiction maybe not only in Dublin but also all over Ireland. What she initiated was continued by the people who saw that Veronica Guerin died for a very good cause. ®
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