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Bad Decade for the Media

And journalists are those who write the first draft of history. So the next time you look at a newspaper, open a news magazine, click on your television set to watch the news, listen to the radio in your car or read your news on the Internet, pause for a brief moment and think of the 110 men and women who died in 2009 to bring you this news.

This drastic figure makes 2009 the most lethal in the past decade, according to the Vienna-based International Press Institute. The continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the escalating violence in Somalia and Pakistan are basically the cause for this unusually high number of deaths among members of the media. The previous record was set in 2006 during which 46 journalists were killed while performing their duty, many of whom fell in Iraq where the conflict had escalated and the violence was at its worst since the United States invaded the country in 2003. What is particularly worrying is that unlike in previous conflicts, particularly in the Middle East, where combatants tried to safeguard the lives of journalists, today journalists are being targeted.

‘This decade is unlike any other, because, in conflict countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan, it has seen the deliberate targetting of journalists. Such a departure has changed the face of conflict reporting, leading to less coverage and therefore a worrying vacuum in the understanding of these complex events.’

Asia, the Middle East and the Americas are, in that order, the most dangerous places to work if you are a journalist. Europe comes in fourth place, thought the IPI report included Russia where most of the deaths occurred.

Iraq still remains the most dangerous place to work if you are a journalist with 170 members of the media killed in the past decade, out of a total of 735. In second place, after Iraq comes the Philippines, where 93 journalists died in the ten-year period between 2000 and 2009. The worst case happened last November 23 when 32 journalists were killed in a massacre. The number three most-dangerous country in the world if you are a reporter is Columbia where 58 media members were killed during the last 10 years, many of them in drug-cartel related violence. Six were killed in 2009. Mexico ranks behind Colombia as the fourth most dangerous country for journalists over the last 10 years, with 38 killed. Russia lies in fifth position, with 35 journalists murdered between 2000 and 2009—five of them this year.

In terms of the most dangerous continent, Asia ranked as the most dangerous region of the world for journalists this decade: 238 journalists, or 33 per cent of all the decade’s victims, were murdered in Asia. Thirty-one died in Pakistan this decade, eight of them in 2009, making this year the most lethal for journalists there in the last 10 years. Many of these deaths are due to a violent standoff between the Pakistan army and Pakistan Taleban militants.

The second most lethal region for journalists this decade was the Middle East & North Africa. A total of 202 journalists were killed there this decade—27 per cent of the global total for 2000 to 2009. In the Middle East and North Africa, as elsewhere across the world, impunity for those who murder, assault, harass and intimidate journalists remained the unacceptable norm.

Here’s to hoping the next ten years will be kinder to the media.

Claude Salhani is Editor of the Middle East Times. He is currently on assignment in Kazakhstan