A free and fair press has always been a target for tyrants and
criminals. As a result, reporters, photographers, and bloggers can find
themselves in harm’s way while informing us of world and local events.
Sadly, this situation has not improved much with time: as of this
writing, 960 journalists have been murdered in the last 10 years.
The following are the “10 Deadliest Countries for Journalists”, as
ranked by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). To humanize the
grim statistics, each entry includes a passage describing a late
journalist, randomly selected from victim rolls that are entirely too
long.
NOTE: CPJ confirms a case only if it’s reasonably sure a journalist was
murdered “in direct reprisal for his or her work, killed in
combat/crossfire, or killed while carrying out a dangerous assignment.”
Should you wish to contribute to its efforts, you may donate to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
10. Mexico
Total Murders since 1992: 28
Since 1992, 89% of Mexico’s killed journalists were murdered, mostly by drug cartels and criminal gangs operating with near-total impunity. As could be expected from the failing drug war in Mexico, the victims’ beats typically focused on crime, with some overlap for covering government corruption.
One such victim was Luis Emanuel Ruiz Carrillo, a 21 year old
photographer working for La Prensa. He was kidnapped along with his
cousin (Juan Gomez Melendez) and a popular TV show host (Jose Luis Cerds
Melendez). All three were later found dead with gunshot wounds to the
head, next to fresh graffiti warning “Stop cooperating with the Zetas”.
The Zetas are a major drug cartel, and operate with such freedom in
Mexico that an armed Zeta walked into the police’s active crime scene
and moved the bodies to a different location.
Ruiz was still in college, and winner of a journalism award the previous year. He had been on the job eight months. 09 more countries after the break...
