100 Journalists Killed On the Job in 2006

2006 was not a kind to journalists, with an even 100 killed around the globe while tracking stories ranging from drug corruption in Mexico to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Internation Press Institute's Death Watch.

David Kaplan at the Bad Guys blog summarizes:

A hundred dead journalists. Attacks on newspaper reporters, camera operators, and bloggers. Legal sanctions, criminal libel, intimidation, and censorship. Congratulations, world: Last year was "the most savage and brutal year in the history of the modern media," according to the just released annual report by the Vienna-based International Press Institute.

Nearly half of the dead journalists–46 in all–came from Iraq, most of them local reporters targeted by insurgents and death squads. "The murder and kidnapping of local journalists," notes the reports, "made reporting in Iraq possibly the most dangerous assignment ever given to the media."

The carnage continues to pile up at nearly the same pace in 2007. Some 22 journalists have already died this year.

Photo: Grant Mitchell