More journalists were killed doing their job in 2012 than in any year since monitoring started, said the International Press Institute on December 31. The Vienna-based institute began tracking deaths in 1997.
The year had “been marked by an appalling and disturbing truth: an unprecedented 132 journalists were killed in the line of duty or as a consequence of their reporting in 2012″, the IPI said in a statement.
The previous highest number had been 110 deaths in 2009. Last year, 102 journalists were killed.
“It is almost unbelievable that so many journalists have died this year,” IPI executive director Alison Bethel McKenzie said.
The worst incidents of this brutality against journalists happened in conflict-torn countries such as Syria and Somalia; and as a result of Taliban violence in Pakistan.
In Syria, the deadliest place for journalists in 2012, at least 31 journalists and eight citizen reporters died. Because of the difficulties faced by foreign journalists, citizen reporters have played an important role in coverage of the conflict, particularly from the civilian and rebel point of view.
In Somalia, the second most dangerous place for journalists, 16 journalists have died. Somalia’s instability ensured that impunity for the killers of journalists continued this year, prompting even more attacks.
The IPI also singled out Pakistan (8), Mexico (seven deaths, mostly by organized criminals), Brazil (5), Honduras, Gaza and southern Israel and the Philippines as dangerous places for the media.
While the high global death toll – which included 13 women, at least a dozen junior reporters and an unusually high number of photographers – has attracted the attention of press freedom organisations around the world this year, it is not the only source of outrage. IPI has also expressed concern over increasing hostility against the media in the form of repressive media laws.
The IPI also singled out a host of countries for restricting press freedom to varying degrees, including China, Ethiopia, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Cuba, Nepal and the US among others.
Journalists in prison also reach record highs with Turkey, Iran, and China among leading jailers. Turkey was criticised for having the highest number of journalists in prison, with the tally at 70 people.
Violence against journalists continued to affect multiple Latin American countries this year, reflecting a lack of tolerance for independent, critical reporting as well as verbal and legal harassment of journalists and media outlets by government representatives at the highest levels and also the ongoing armed conflict between rival drug cartels.
In positive developments, the IPI noted that Grenada had decriminalised libel and Myanmar abolished pre-publication censorship.
Grenada this year become the first Caribbean country to partially repeal criminal defamation after legislators removed sections 252 and 253 from the Criminal Code in July. In welcoming the decision, IPI encouraged the government to also repeal seditious libel provisions contained in the Code. The decriminalisation of libel in Grenada is particularly significant, given that the country was one of the few in the Caribbean to have applied the law in recent years.
In welcoming Grenada’s decision on behalf of the IPI Executive Board, IPI Board Chair and head of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism – Foundation 19/29 (Russia) Galina Sidorova said the legislative changes would ”strengthen Grenadian democracy for generations to come” and that they established the country as a ”clear leader in freedom of expression guarantees in the Caribbean”.
She added: “Our view, which is supported by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, is that defamation allegations are best handled by civil courts, provided that any punitive measures are proportionate and designed to restore the reputation of the plaintiff and not to punish the media.”
IPI has been campaigning for the repeal of criminal defamation laws in the Caribbean and welcomed the stated intention of government officials in the Dominican Republic Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago to decriminalise defamation, following an IPI mission to those countries in June.
In North America, the United States saw a drop in the number of journalists arrested as protests associated with the Occupy movement came to an end. However, congressional efforts to enact unprecedented federal anti-leak legislation as well as Congress’ continued failure to enact legislation protecting the confidentiality of journalists’ sources remained causes of deep concern.
