Serena Shim1985 – 2014

Press

For journalists writing about Serena

Anniversaries and case developments bring reporters here. This page keeps the record straight at the source.

Media inquiries

PLACEHOLDER — family-approved contact channel (email address and preferred response window) to be provided by Judith Poe.

Fact sheet

  • Serena Ali Shim, journalist. Born October 10, 1985, in Michigan; raised in Dearborn and Livonia.
  • Correspondent for Press TV from 2007, based at the Beirut bureau; reported from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Ukraine.
  • Died October 19, 2014, aged 29, in a car–truck collision near Suruç, Turkey, while covering the siege of Kobani.
  • On October 17, 2014, she said on air that Turkish intelligence had accused her of spying and that she feared arrest.
  • No trial was ever held, no autopsy results were ever published, and no authority has issued public findings on her death.
  • Survived by her husband and two children, her mother Judith Poe, her father Ali Shim, and her siblings.
  • The Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism was established in her honor in 2019.

Press kit

PLACEHOLDER — approved portrait photographs, the family statement, and a downloadable fact sheet will be published here by the family.

Photography on this site

Stills of Serena and the family photographs on the home page are frame captures from Press TV broadcasts as preserved in the network’s 2023 documentary “I Am a Reporter” (© Press TV), shown here in her memory. The remaining scene-setting imagery comes from open-license archives — the places and events she reported on. Sources and licenses:

On accuracy

The often-remembered quote “I don’t know what I did” does not appear in any verifiable transcript of her final broadcast. Her verified words were: “I have nothing to hide, I’ve never done anything aside from my job.” Please quote from the verified transcript, as this site does.