MANILA, Philippines — On average over the past decade, one journalist is killed every four days, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
UNESCO said press freedom is more important than ever, as it condemned the killing of 59 media workers this year, four of them women. It emphasized the importance of access to information and factual reporting “as a public good.”
UNESCO director general Audrey Azoulay said that rarely, if ever, had journalism been so relevant to democracy and to the protection of human rights, as the world continues battling the coronavirus and the “infodemic” that surrounds it.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a “perfect storm” that has affected press freedom worldwide, she said, insisting that “protecting journalism is protecting the truth.”
Latin America and the Caribbean, together with Asia and the Pacific, registered the highest number of fatalities among journalists.
“Impunity for crimes against journalists has continued to prevail in nearly nine of 10 cases, despite a small improvement in 2020,” UNESCO said in a statement.
It said the safety of women journalists remains a major source of concern: “Targeted for their profession and gender, women journalists are particularly affected by online harassment and gender-based violence.”
Challenges to the safety of journalists were exacerbated by COVID-19.
“The crisis it unleashed has threatened the very viability and survival of professional media outlets,” the UNESCO said.
More than double
The number of journalists killed due to their work more than doubled this year, leading to a rise in overall work-related killings, according to the New York-based press freedom watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Globally, at least 30 journalists were killed on duty in 2020, including 21 reprisal murders, up from 10 murders last year, the CPJ said, although noting that the number of deaths in combat or crossfire fell to a 20-year low this year.
CPJ executive director Joel Simon is appalled that the murders of journalists have more than doubled in the last year, saying this escalation represents a failure of the international community to confront the scourge of impunity.
But not in the Philippines, said Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS) executive director Joel Egco said.
Only one work-related killing was recorded, that of dyMD Energy FM broadcaster Cornelio Rex Pepino in Dumaguete on May 5. There were only two last year, Egco said.
National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) chairman Nonoy Espina said there were four journalist killed this year, all during the pandemic - Jobert Bercasio of Balangibog TV in Sorsogon City on Sept. 14, Virgilio Maganes of dwPR and Northern Watch in Pangasinan on Nov. 10, Ronnie Villamor of Dos Kantos Balita in Masbate on Nov. 14 and Pepino.
Espina said the killers were all unknown except for Villamor, who was killed by soldiers in what authorities claim was a rebel “encounter.”
“We are not disputing the PTFoMS. They may have (their) own criteria,” Espina said as he claimed there were three journalists killed in 2019, four in 2018, six in 2017 and two in 2016.
Countries with high numbers of murdered journalists included Mexico and Afghanistan, the CPJ said.
It said Mexico has long been the most dangerous country for journalists in the Western hemisphere.
This year, at least five journalists were killed in Mexico including four retaliatory murders.
Journalists covering Mexico work in an environment of violent drug traffickers and entrenched corruption.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not shown any political will to combat impunity.
Most recently, a murder and a series of threats to the media by a suspected criminal gang decimated reporting in the city of Iguala, Guerrero state, the CPJ said.
While criminal groups were the most frequently suspected killers of journalists around the world, CPJ found out one particularly appalling case, wherein government officials in Iran executed journalist Roohallah Zam on Dec. 12 after he was sentenced to death for his reporting on 2017 anti-government protests.
Because he was jailed as of Dec. 1, Zam was also listed on CPJ’s annual census of imprisoned journalists, which is a global snapshot of those behind bars on that date, and which this year hit a record high.
According to the CPJ, it is still investigating the deaths of at least 15 other journalists this year to determine whether journalism was the motive.
CPJ’s analysis of journalists killed for their work is based on data as of Dec. 15 this year. – Artemio Dumlao