'He's missed so much already,' says Austin Tice's niece of her captive uncle

She had just turned 3 when her uncle, freelance journalist Austin Tice, was captured and held hostage in Syria covering the war there. Now 11, Maia Edaburn told National Press Club President Lisa Matthews how important it is to her, her younger siblings and “little cousins” that her uncle come home and “see us grow up."

 “He’s missed so much already,” she said.

As the only child participating in three presentations at a National Press Club virtual event Monday in observance of World Press Freedom Day, Maia provided a unique perspective. The presentations highlighted the cases of journalists Tice, Maria Ressa,  and Emilio Gutierrez-Soto, each of whom is struggling against government repression or captivity. Each has received the John Aubuchon Award, the Club’s highest honor for press freedom. 

“I’d want to show him things I like to do … so I can connect and bond with him,” she said of her uncle from her Houston home. That’s especially so around Christmas, she said, when the family spends a week in Gulf Shores, Ala.

“We could start a new tradition with him,” said Maia. She said she hoped once he was home he’d attend “special things like my softball games like my other uncles do, and be like a normal uncle.”

“We work to find ways to keep Austin’s name in the news,” Matthews said. “Together with Austin’s family, the National Press Club Journalism Institute and our press freedom friends and partners, we’ve held press conferences, canvassed restaurants and businesses across the country, written letters and knocked on every door on Capitol Hill,” she said, as well as enlisting award-winning chefs to raise funds to free the award-winning journalist and Marine veteran.”

Maia told Matthews she was proud of her uncle. “He’s a really important person,” she said, “making the world a better place. I also know that he was a Marine.” 

What would she tell President Biden or Vice President Harris, given the chance?  It’s all about family, she said, and how great it would be “to have him in our lives again.” She also thinks his return would “set an example for other journalists to come home.” 

Maia said that, just as Austin Tice did as a journalist and communicator, she too would like to inform people.  Like her uncle, she’s the oldest child in her family, so she said they have lots to talk about.