by Ezra Ijioma, allAfrica
Photo: Daily Nation. Journalists in Nairobi take part in a demonstration to protests against a gag on press freedoms.
A total of 102 journalists were killed in 2010, eight fewer than the year before, a media watchdog said yesterday. The year was the second bloodiest since International Press Institute’s Death Watch records began in 1997, behind only 2009, which saw 110 deaths. In Asia, 40 reporters were slain, making it the most dangerous region in the world for journalists. Latin America was next with 32 journalists killed according to the International Press Institute in its yearly World Press Freedom Review.
With respects to countries, Pakistan, with 16 deaths, was the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist.
However, the Latin American countries of Honduras, with 10 deaths, and Mexico, with 12, accounted for almost one quarter of all the deaths last year.
Almost all of the 12 journalists who died in Mexico in 2010 were murdered, with all but one – whose throat was slit – shot. One was killed in a shootout between members of the military and cartel gunmen, leaving it unclear whether he was specifically targeted.
World Press Freedom Review Managing Editor, Anthony Mills, said, “Although popular consciousness is attuned to war correspondents dying in conflict zones that are in the international eye such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and, more recently, Libya, in Mexico there’s another no-less-deadly front line.
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