GENEVA – The Philippines, Mexico, Somalia and Russia were the most dangerous countries for journalists in 2009, a global media group has reported.
A total of 132 journalists and support staff were killed or died while working last year, the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute said yesterday.
Just three international reporters were among those deliberately targeted, the dead being overwhelmingly local journalists covering dangerous stories such as high-level crime and corruption for national news media.
The institute, which monitors statistics from around the world, said 98 were murdered because of their reporting activities.
“Journalists continue to die because they dare to shine a light on the darkest corners of societies,” institute director Rodney Pinder said in a statement released in Geneva with the body’s annual figures. “This is the shocking price we pay for our news.
“This unacceptable situation will persist as long as the killers of journalists walk free,” he added, saying few of them had been brought to justice.
The 2009 death total, swollen by the 31 reporters the institute said were killed in a politically motivated massacre of 57 people in southern Philippines in November, was 22 up on the group’s figure for 2008.
However it was well below the worst of recent years. In 2007, a record 172 journalists died and 168 were killed in 2006, when media deaths in Iraq were high following the 2003 US-led invasion and when sectarian fighting was at its height.
The Philippines, already high on the death list in 2008, had 37 fatalities last year. Mexico was next with 11 killed, followed by Somalia and Russia with nine each.
The institute said Iraq provided the one encouraging statistic for 2009 with total deaths at five – two targeted and three in crossfire – by far the lowest since the invasion.
The International News Safety Institute, which runs safety courses for journalists around the globe and is supported by many major news organisations and professional unions, includes accidents while reporting as well as killings in its annual totals.
Mr Pinder said that since 2006, when the UN Security Council passed a landmark resolution demanding greater safety for journalists in conflict and called for an end to impunity for their killers, about 400 had died while covering stories. – (Reuters)