60 media workers killed in first half of this year for doing their job

A total of 60 media workers were killed in the first half of 2015, according to the biannual report by the International News Safety Institute (INSI).

Its report, Killing the Messenger, details the number of journalists killed for simply doing their job, how they died and where they worked.

For the first time since INSI began to compile its reports, a western democracy (France) was listed as the deadliest country in the world to be a journalist.

That follows the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January in which eight journalists (plus four others) were killed.

South Sudan and Yemen were the second bloodiest countries for journalists in the first half of 2015, with six members of the news media killed in each, while Iraq and Libya were close behind in joint fourth place with five journalists losing their lives.

INSI’s president, Richard Sambrook, said: “This year is shaping up to be worse than last year for journalists’ deaths.

“Again local journalists are under most threat – from investigating crime and corruption – and account for more than 90% of those killed”.

He pointed out that seven journalists have been decapitated by jihadist groups so ar this year. “The consequence of all this is that the public know less about the world than they should, and the killing of journalists is increasingly seen as a political act or means of censorship,” he said.

Syria, which has topped the list for the past three years, saw a decline in the number of media killed - down from 11 in 2014 to two during the first six months of 2015.

But that’s because the country has become a no-go zone for most reporters since the beheadings of Japanese and American freelancers.

A Libyan journalist gave an insight into the situation for the press in his country. He told INSI:

“I started receiving threats, which I ignored, because I did not expect my country to become a hostage to, and to be ruled by, armed militias.

I was away at a workshop in Paris when gangs, which is a correct description of these militias, broke into my house by force.

They threatened my 80-year-old mother, my wife and my five-year-old son with automatic weapons and took them to one of their camps, though they were released later that evening”.

His house was later burnt down and he was forced to flee to Tunisia.

The report found that more than half of the journalists who were killed had died during peacetime and their murderers enjoyed near total impunity. 

Sambrook said: “Impunity remains an overarching issue for the international community”.