Thursday, January 13, 2011

WORLD Still dying to tell the story - two journalists killed every week again in 2010

From YubaNet.com

WORLD
Still dying to tell the story - two journalists killed every week again in 2010
Author: International News Safety Institute
Published on Jan 12, 2011 - 10:00:31 AM

LONDON, Jan. 12, 2011 - Two journalists were killed every week in 2010 in a sustained effort to silence free reporting in many parts of the globe, the International News Safety Institute reported.

INSI recorded 97 dead in 30 countries, including 85 murders. Most of the victims were not foreign correspondents assigned to war zones but reporters working in their own countries, seeking to expose criminality and corruption.

The total was down from 133 in 2009, but that figure had been swollen by 32 news media killed in one incident in the Philippines, the worst single act of boodshed ever suffered by the news industry.

"While we welcome a fall in fatalities overall, the sustained underlying level of casualties remains unacceptably high," said INSI Director Rodney Pinder. "It is a terrible price to pay for our news."

More than 1,600 journalists and support staff have been killed trying to cover the news since 1996, the base year of INSI's landmark Killing The Messenger report on casualties worldwide. http://www.newssafety.org/images/pdf/KillingtheMessenger.pdf

The most murderous country in 2010 was Pakistan where 16 journalists were killed in a spate of violence that has continued into the new year. The first casualty of 2011 was a young Balochistan reporter, Ilyas Nazar, 22, whose bullet-riddled body was found by a roadside on 5 January. http://tinyurl.com/3yxnawq.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has warned that the assassination of Salmaan Taseer, governor of the Punjab province in Pakistan, may open the door to a new wave of political intolerance and pressure on journalists across the country. It said that unless media and journalists isolate extremists and challenge incitement to violence the killing will lead to fresh attacks and the targeting of journalists who defend the right to free expression.

Mexico and Honduras, with 10 deaths each, have emerged as the most dangerous countries in the Western Hemisphere. Mexico's raging drug wars appeared to be behind most of the killings there. In Honduras, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists points to a climate of violence and lawlessness encouraged by the government's failure to bring killers to justice.

Fewer than two out of ten killers of journalists around the world are ever brought to justice, according to Killing The Messenger Iraq, with six dead, and the Philippines and India, with five each, were the next deadliest countries in 2010.

The global death tolls includes only 12 journalists who were not targeted for their work -- eight who died in crossfire and four in accidents, including a cameraman in Guatemala hit by lava and rocks as he tried to film a volcanic eruption.

Almost 500 news media have died because of their work since the end of 2006 when the UN Security Council unanimously passed landmark Resolution 1738, which demanded greater safety for journalists in conflict zones and called for an end to impunity. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8929.doc.htm

Similar appeals have been made by the Council of Europe and UNESCO.

"We have yet to see these global expressions of concern translate into effective action," said Pinder. "We await with increasing impatience real moves to stem the bloodshed and to end the impunity that fuels it."

INSI raises money internationally to provide safety training free of charge to journalists who are in acute danger and unable to afford their own protection. More than 1,600 have been trained so far in 21 countries."Journalists need to be able to look after themselves, especially where their states do not live up to their responsibilities for the care and protection of their citizens," Pinder said. "Our training works, but regrettably it is not enough where nations shrug off murder."

INSI compiles its casualties data in liaison with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) http://www.ifj.org and Cardiff University's Centre for Journalism Studieshttp://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/.

As a safety organisation, INSI records all deaths, whether deliberate, accidental or health-related, of all news media staff and freelancers while on assignment or as a result of their news organisation being attacked because of its work.

Other journalist support groups that are members of INSI maintain separate records based on their own criterIa. They are:
The Committee to Protect Journalists http://www.cpj.org
The International Press Institute http://www.freemedia.at
The World Association of Newspapers http://www.wan-press.org/index.php3

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