Martin John Lars Adler (30 October 1958 – 23 June 2006) was a Swedish cameraman and journalist.
Adler was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Swedish father and a British mother. He grew up in Västerås and became a journalist after studying anthropology in London.
Adler specialised in independent reporting from the world's most troubled countries, exposing poverty, human rights abuses and the fate of individuals in the midst of war and genocide. He had experience working in over two dozen war zones, including El Salvador, Rwanda, the Republic of Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea and Iraq.
In 2001, he won the Amnesty International Media Award (news category) for his story on the kidnapping and sale of women in China.[1] He was also awarded the Silver Prize for Investigative Journalism at the 2001 New York TV Festival. In 2004 he was the Winner of the Rory Peck Award for Hard News for his work On Patrol with Charlie Company in Iraq.[1]
Martin Adler died on 23 June 2006[2] after being shot at close range by an unknown assailant during a crowded rally in the Somalian capital, Mogadishu, held to support the peace agreement. The gunman disappeared into the crowd. He is survived by his wife and his two daughters.[3]
In 2007 the Rory Peck Trust inaugurated the Martin Adler Prize which is awarded on an annual basis at the British Film Institute in recognition of Adler's "great talents as a journalist, filmmaker and storyteller". The prize is intended to honour a freelance cameraman or camerawoman, journalist, fixer, driver or translator for their role in the reporting of a significant news story, to "raise awareness of the value of the recipient’s work" and to "help them to progress their career".[4]