By Ingrid Bachmann
Pakistan became the most deadly country for journalists in 2010, with eight colleagues killed during the year in connection with their work. In a year when 42 journalists were killed worldwide, Honduras, Mexico and Iraq also ranked high, the Committee to Protect Journalists says in a year-end analysis. See more world news coverage of CPJ’s report.
In Mexico, where crime, violence, and corruption have devastated the country’s journalism, CPJ has confirmed that three journalists were killed in direct relation to their work in 2010, and it continues to investigate several other killings there. In Honduras, CPJ says authorities have been careless about a string of eight journalist killings, at least three of which were related to their work. (See CPJ’s report from July 2010, accusing the government of "fostering a climate of lawlessness that is allowing criminals to kill with impunity.”
At least six journalists killed this year worked mostly online. “Internet journalists rarely appeared in CPJ’s death toll until 2008, when online reporters doing front-line investigative work began to be targeted with violence,” CPJ says in its special report.
CPJ’s analysis reveals that about 90 percent of journalist assassinations go unpunished.
In a column in Mexico’s El Universal, Carlos Lauría of CPJ says, the killing of journalists represents “a frontal and direct attack against all of society.” Lauría urges Mexico’s government to take definitive action against the crisis without further delay.
For more information about threats against journalism in Mexico, please see this Knight Center map.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
