Organized crime represents media's leading predator, says new Reporters Without Borders report

• By Summer Harlow
• February 24, 2011

Organized crime, whether drug cartels, mafias or paramilitary forces, poses the greatest threat to journalists today, according to a new report released Thursday, Feb. 24, from Reporters Without Borders. In the last 10 years, 141 journalists have been killed for reporting on organized crime, the report said.

“Muscling in on the Media” is in part based off material gathered from the Austin Forum on Journalism on the Americas that the Knight Center hosted in September. From that gathering, journalists issued a declaration condemning violence against the media.

Noting the challenges and dangers of reporting on organized crime -- coverage of which often amounts to no more than a body count -- the report makes it clear that "the media are not united against organized crime, their correspondents are isolated and lack resources, and their capacity for investigative reporting is eclipsed by the race for breaking news."

As such, the report concludes with several recommendations, including:

• • Make better use of the Internet to improve coverage.
  • Reporters covering the same "conflict zone" should share sources and information.
  • Media organizations should create an alert/support system for journalists in high-risk areas.
  • The news media and universities should provide training specific to covering organized crime.
  • Journalist associations should be created in some countries to "monitor the assets and capital of media companies with the aim of containing or limiting any ques- tionable financing that is liable to undermine their independence."
  • Major international and national media should pay more attention to and appreciate the dangers journalists covering organized crime are confronting.

"A transnational phenomenon, organized crime is more than the occasional bloody shoot-out or colourful crime story in the local paper," the report says. "It is a powerful parallel economy with enormous influence over the legal economy, one the media have a great deal of difficulty in covering. Its elusiveness and inaccessibility to the media make it an even greater threat, both to the safety of journalists and to the fourth estate’s investigative ability."

See the videos below from Álvaro SIerra, who instructs a Knight Center course on covering drug trafficking, and Maria Teresa Ronderos, who is teaching a new Knight Center course, "Editors in Times of Internet." (Applications for that course are being accepted until Feb. 28).

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.