Governments around the world should do more to protect journalists, an international umbrella group for the profession claimed on Tuesday as it unveiled figures showing that 2004 was the most dangerous year on record.
The International Federation of Journalists said 129 media workers had been killed in 2004, the most deaths recorded in a 12-month period since records began in the 1980s.
It expects the figure to rise further as more information becomes available.
The IFJ’s secretary general, Aidan White, said the organisation would continue to ”focus on the scandal of impunity and the failure of governments to bring the killers to justice”.
The organisation’s treasurer, Jim Boumelha, claimed that those who murdered journalists had less chance of being caught than a London burglar, with some 94% of cases going unsolved.
Forty-nine media professionals, including support staff, were killed in Iraq during the year. But Boumelha warned that those deaths risked receiving less international attention because most of the victims were Iraqi.
Jim Corrigall, president of the National Union of Journalists, added that some media organisations were increasingly using local freelancers who could not afford insurance, rather than sending their own staff in to dangerous situations.
The number of Iraqis claiming to be journalists has risen from 1 000 to 5 000 since the fall of Saddam Hussein after the US-led invasion.
The IFJ, which claims to represent 500 000 journalists worldwide, is also planning to organise a second international day of protest on April 8, the anniversary of the deaths of two journalists killed when US tanks opened fire on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.
A Pentagon report into the attack, released last November, was described by the IFJ as a ”denial of justice on a shocking scale”. – Guardian Unlimited Â