AMN
At least 81 reporters were killed doing their jobs in 2107, while violence and harassment against media persons have increased sharply. However, the number of deaths is the lowest in a decade, down from 93 in 2016.
The world’s biggest newspersons organization, International Federation of Journalists, in its annual report yesterday said the reporters lost their lives in targeted killings, car bomb attacks and crossfire incidents around the world.
More than 250 journalists were jailed this year.
The largest number were killed in Mexico, but many also died in conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Over the past 12 years more than 1.100 journalists and media staff have been killed in the line of duty. They died because someone did not like what they wrote or said, or because they were in the wrong place in the wrong time.
The International Federation of Journalists monitors press freedom violations and campaigns for greater safety and for a focus on the in-country journalists and freelances who are at greatest risk and who have the least protection. This is done in cooperation with the member unions around the world, and with other organizations through IFEX, the International Freedom of Expression Exchange.
The IFJ works for press freedom by trade union development, working for journalists’ rights and social conditions, as there can be no press freedom where journalists exist in conditions of corruption, poverty or fear.
A press freedom violation can be an assassin’s bullet, aimed to kill an investigative journalist, and to intimidate and silence his colleagues.
It can be the knock on the door from the police, bringing in a reporter to question her on her sources, or put her in jail with or without a proper trial.
It can be a restrictive media law, which puts the power over editorial content into the hands of censors and press courts.