The Death Of Journalists - Giving `Deadline' A New Meaning
MayorBob.
Posted to Media on Sun Mar 11, 2007 at 12:54:24 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
Here's a cost to add to whatever you pay for your daily newspaper or your monthly cable bill. Not a price you're going to be charged, it's a cost shouldered by journalists trying to report the news. It's the cost in lives of those just doing their jobs. This cost is rising each year and, but for an occasionally sensational case, these deaths largely go unreported and unnoticed.
At least someone is keeping track and that someone is the International News Safety Institute (INSI) in Brussels, Belgium. INSI released an 80 page report, titled Killing The Messenger (pdf doc) revealing that over 1,100 journalists and their support staff have died in the past decade. 2006 was the worst year on record for journalists with a total count of 167. That body count has been on the increase every year. Nearly half of the total were shot and most were murdered in their own country, covering the news during peacetime. Other means of death included stabbing, torture, and decapitation.
Iraq was the most dangerous country, accounting for over 130 deaths over the past decade. But the body count in Russia and Colombia (numbers two and three in terms of dangerous countries for journalists) was rung up in peacetime and totaled 160 over the same period. The BBC's Richard Sambrook finds this a sad state of affairs:"The figures show that killing a journalist is virtually risk free. Ongoing impunity for the killers of journalists, who put themselves in harm's way to keep world society informed, shames not only the governments who are responsible for their own lack of action but also the democracies that stand aside in silence."
Harold Evans, of the Times of London said the "second most shocking" thing about the report was how many of those who died were murdered. The INSI report revealed another shocking fact -- only one in eight deaths resulted in any prosecution. The report highlighted the fact that Russia, the Philippines, and Mexico were countries where a "significant level of violence" was directed against reporters not directly covering conflict. The report said most of these reporters were working on stories involving "corruption, drug trafficking and other criminal activity." Sounds like the sort of thing Ivan Safronov was working on right before he allegedly committed suicide. Uncharacteristically, Russian prosecutors say they will investigate this a bit more.
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