Journalism remains a ‘dangerous profession’

In 2012, a United Nations report was headlined, “Journalism — one of the world’s most dangerous professions.”

It still is. Remember that when a certain president denounces the news media as “the enemy of the people.”

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 53 journalists around the world were killed on the job or in retaliation between Jan. 1 and Dec. 14, 2018.

Forty-seven journalists were killed in 2017 and 56 in 2016.

Especially troubling was that 34 were targeted for murder in retaliation for their reporting. This was up from 18 in 2017.

The most prominent retaliation case was the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a writer who had harshly criticized Saudi Arabia’s royal regime in opinion pieces published by The Washington Post and other outlets.

In what police called a crime of retaliation, four journalists and a sales associate were fatally shot at the Capital Gazette newspapers in Annapolis, Md.

Charged with murder was a man with a grudge against The Capital for reporting his guilty plea to criminal harassment, not someone tied to a repressive government, an extremist group or a drug cartel.

The killing of the four news staffers in Annapolis made the U.S. one of the five deadliest countries for journalists, as determined by Reporters Without Borders. The deaths of two covering a storm in North Carolina raised the total to six.

In 2018, the deadliest countries were, 1. Afghanistan, 2. Syria, 3. Mexico, 4. Yemen and 5. India and the U.S. tied.

In strife-torn Afghanistan, 13 journalists lost their lives. Nine were killed in an attack claimed by the Islamic State. A suicide bomber pretending to be a media worker set off an explosive device amid journalists rushing to the scene of another explosion intended to attract them.

In 2018, almost five times more journalists were imprisoned than were killed. CPJ reported that by Dec. 1, 251 had been put behind bars by authoritarian regimes to stifle independent reporting.

In the U.S., no journalists were imprisoned for their work. But CPJ said that in the past 18 months at least seven foreign journalists seeking asylum were held in prolonged detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

They had fled their home countries after receiving threats and came to the U.S. to be safe.