Journalist killings nearly doubled in 2018: watchdog
A New York-based media watchdog group said Wednesday that the number of journalists killed worldwide for their work nearly doubled in 2018 — up to 34 from last year’s 18.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said the 34 out of 53 journalists killed on duty this year, as of Friday, were “singled out for murder.”
“The number of journalists targeted for murder in reprisal for their reporting nearly doubled in 2018 from a year earlier, driving up the overall count of journalists killed on the job,” the group said in a report.
In 2017, 18 journalists lost their lives in retaliation killings while 47 were killed overall, according to the findings.
The report echoed concerns in findings from Reporters Without Borders, which earlier this week pegged the death toll at 80. In its report, the Paris-based group included bloggers, citizen journalists and media workers.
The US was tied with India as the fifth-deadliest country for journalists this year — after Afghanistan, Syria, Mexico and Yemen, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Six reporters died in the US, including four who were among five people killed by a gunman who opened fire in the offices of Maryland newspaper Capital Gazette on June 28. Another two died while covering extreme weather.
Both reports cited an alarming increase in reprisals against reporters, highlighted by what CPJ called the “brazen murder” of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was killed by a Saudi hit team inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
“The most vocal head of state in Khashoggi’s case has been Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has effectively shut down the independent media and is jailing more journalists than any other around the world for the third consecutive year,” said the report by CPJ’s Elana Beiser.
“The White House, traditionally a strong defender of global press freedom, has equivocated on the blame for Khashoggi’s murder … Essentially, (President) Trump signaled that countries that do enough business with the United States are free to murder journalists without consequence.”
Asked whether he believed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman had ordered Khashoggi’s murder, Trump last month said, “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.”
While Trump has condemned violence against journalists, the committee noted that he also has called them “enemies of the people.”
The president has maintained that he refers to the “fake news media” as the “enemy of the people.”
In addition to retaliation killings, journalists have been killed in combat or crossfire, or on other dangerous assignments.
The deadliest country for journalists this year has been Afghanistan, where 13 were killed, some in back-to-back explosions set off by suicide bombers and claimed by ISIS, according to the CPJ report.
In addition, the committee said the imprisonment of journalists has been on the rise.
“The context for the crisis is varied and complex, and closely tied to changes in technology that have allowed more people to practice journalism even as it has made journalists expendable to the political and criminal groups who once needed the news media to spread their message,” the committee said.
Last week, Time magazine recognized jailed and killed journalists as its “person of the year,” including Khashoggi; Maria Ressa, imprisoned in the Philippines; Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, imprisoned in Myanmar; and staffers at the Capital Gazette.
The CPJ report noted that while the total number of journalists killed on duty hit its highest level in three years, the number killed in conflict fell to its lowest since 2011.
With Post wires