Danger to journalists on rise, press group says

Attacks by public figures and role of social media are highlighted in report

Jamal Khashoggi was one among many.

The Saudi opinion writer’s killing inside a diplomatic outpost may have been the year’s highest-profile fatal attack on a journalist. But in a report released Tuesday, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders cited the slayings of dozens of people working in the media worldwide in 2018.

The group said at least 63 professional journalists were killed around the world in 2018, a 15 per cent increase from the previous year. That tally increases to 80 when it includes media workers and citizen journalists, according to an annual compilation that the Paris-based nonprofit organization has put together every year since 1995.

Attacks against journalists — in the form of deaths, imprisonment or disappearances — have “risen in all categories,” said the group, which also goes by its French acronym RSF. In addition to those killed, it found 348 journalists were detained by authorities and 60 others held captive by non-state groups.

Seeking to put the threat in context, the report decried more and more vociferous verbal attacks on the profession by public figures, and noted the role of social media in amplifying such incitement.

“Violence against journalists has reached unprecedented levels this year,” RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire said. “The hatred of journalists that is voiced, and sometimes very openly proclaimed, by unscrupulous politicians, religious leaders and businessmen has tragic consequences on the ground, and has been reflected in this disturbing increase in violations against journalists.”

Six in 10 of those journalists who died worldwide were deliberately targeted for their reporting, according to the group’s findings. This year marked a contrast to the previous three years, during which the number of journalists in all categories killed in connection with their work had declined, RSF said.

For the first time, the U.S. in 2018 joined the group’s list of the five deadliest countries for journalists.