In December of 1603, a representative of Vlean arrived in Maplewood seeking an audience with this publication. She carried valid documents and, by all available accounts, intended to conduct a conversation with this correspondent directly. She did not survive to have it.
At the request of her family, this press has chosen not to publish her name. We will say only that she came here in good faith, seeking what every citizen of the Freelands is entitled to seek: a journalist willing to listen.
She was killed before that conversation could take place. This press was informed of her death by someone who considered the act a kindness.
It was not.
Special Investigative Press, and all other presses of the Freelands, derive our value from neutrality. We speak to ambassadors and adventurers, to nobles and farmers, to allies and to those whose motivations we do not yet understand. We do not discriminate between sources based on their origins, their politics, who they worship, or the suspicions of those around them.
When a source is killed on their way to speak with us, we lose more than an interview. We lose the intelligence that conversation might have provided, we lose the trust of every future source who hears about it and decides the risk is not worth it, and we lose the thread of a story that may have had consequences for every resident of the Freelands.
This press does not know what the representative came to say. That ignorance has a cost, and that cost affects everyone who is caught in the ongoing investigation.
We are asking, formally and publicly, that journalists and their sources be afforded safe passage throughout the Freelands. Those who wish to protect this press should do so by supporting its ability to function — and not by making decisions about who we are permitted to speak with.
If you have information regarding the circumstances of this incident, or regarding the Vleanoan delegation’s activities in the Freelands, I request that you come forward. You will be heard. You will be protected.
That is a promise this publication intends to keep.