The Daily Background

The Independent reports on the growing death toll among journalists:

[O]ne landmark which passed virtually unnoticed was that the Iraq conflict has become the deadliest by far for the media trying to cover it, with more than 200 journalists killed to date. To put this in perspective, two were killed in the First World War, 68 in the Second, 77 in Vietnam and 36 in the Balkans. And the toll in Iraq shows no sign of declining. It is, if anything, rising. Five journalists were killed in separate attacks in just one day last month. “Covering Iraq,” says Chris Cramer, the president of CNN International, ” is the single most dangerous assignment in the history of journalism.”

[…] what makes Iraq more dangerous than the others is that the deaths are not accidental collateral damage from stray shells or from reporters being caught up in the fighting. Instead, many have been specifically targeted because of what they had reported or because they came from the wrong side of the sectarian divide. They are killed in drive-by shootings or abducted and executed, often after being tortured. There are little or no investigations into the attacks, creating impunity for the killers from the Shia or Sunni militant groups or government run death squads. The deaths have not come just from those quarters, about 15 reporters have been killed by US troops, six from Reuters alone.

Phew.

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