Its tally of journalists and
media workers killed in connection with their work by mid-December was just
slightly lower than in 2019, when the press freedom group counted 53 dead, even
though many journalists reported less from the field in 2020 because of the
coronavirus pandemic.
The group said 68% were killed
outside of war zones this year. That confirms a trend noted by the group since
2016, when only four out of 10 deaths were in countries not at war.
Targeted killings of journalists
surged in 2020, accounting for 84% of deaths, sharply up from 63% in 2019, the
group said.
It again listed Mexico as the
deadliest country for media workers, counting at least eight journalists killed
there in connection with their work in 2020. Among them was Julio Valdivia, a
newspaper reporter whose decapitated body was found in September in an area
ridden with organized crime.
Among six media deaths that the
group counted in Iraq was the killing in July of Hisham al-Hashimi, a leading
expert on the Islamic State and other armed groups, who was shot dead outside
his Baghdad home.
Reporters Without Borders also
noted an increase in the killings of investigative journalists, including four
who were looking into organized crime groups, 10 who were reporting on
corruption and the misuse of public funds and three who were working on
environmental issues including illegal mining and land grabs.
Reporting on civil unrest also
proved particularly deadly, the group said, with seven journalists killed while
covering protests — four of them in Iraq, two in Nigeria and one in Colombia.
Reporters Without Borders report:
https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/rsf_round-up_killed.pdf