CPJ: 2004 Was Deadliest Year for Journos in a Decade

By: Joe Strupp The number of journalists killed worldwide increased significantly during the past year, with 56 newspeople dying on the job in 2004, up from 38 in 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has tracked such statistics since 1992. Murder, not warfare, was the leading cause.

The 2004 death rate is the highest since 1994, when 66 journalists died on the job, according to CPJ.

Thirty-six lost their lives in 2004 due to homicides.

CPJ's annual year-end analysis reinforced another trend -- the killers usually go unpunished. In all but nine cases in 2004, CPJ found, the murders were carried out with impunity.

"The sheer number of journalists killed in 2004 is cause for deep concern," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said in a statement issued today. "But the fact that so many were murdered with impunity is shameful and debilitating. Governments have an obligation to pursue and prosecute those responsible. By failing to do so, they let criminals set the limits on the news that citizens see and read."

The deaths ranged from the Philippines, where eight journalists were slain in a series of attacks, to Mexico, where drug-fueled violence claimed the lives of two journalists. In Iraq, where crossfire was the leading cause of death among journalists, at least nine of the 23 journalists killed were deliberately targeted, CPJ reported.

Some of the most dangerous locations shifted in 2004. While eight journalists were killed in Latin America-including two on the U.S./Mexico border and two in Nicaragua, no journalist was killed for his or her work in Colombia for the first time in at least a decade, CPJ reported.

CPJ considers a journalist to be killed on duty if the person died as a result of a hostile action, including retaliation for his or her work, in crossfire while covering a conflict, or while reporting in dangerous circumstances such as a violent street demonstration. It does not include journalists killed in accidents or those who died of ailments.