James Foley (journalist)

James Wright Foley (October 18, 1973 – c. August 19, 2014) was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012 in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen executed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Before becoming a journalist, Foley was an instructor for Teach For America. By spring 2008, in Iraq, he became an embedded journalist with an Indiana National Guard unit, writing a story for In These Times about condolence payments paid to Iraqis. In 2008, he became an embedded journalist with USAID-funded development projects in Iraq. He was an embedded journalist with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and in January of 2011 he began writing for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes from his post there. Later in 2011 he reported for GlobalPost in Libya. There, he was captured by Gaddafi loyalist forces and held for 44 days. The next year, Foley was captured in Syria while he was working for Agence France-Presse and GlobalPost.