Transcript
BOB GARFIELD:
As 2007 comes to a close, we are, of course, awash in year-end lists, fun little nuggets most often recapitulating 12 months’ worth of news. One year-end list, though, remains a grim reminder that the gathering of news isn't always in service of entertainment; that the stakes of journalism are sometimes extraordinarily high.
This year saw 64 journalists killed as a direct result of their work, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, while the cause of another 22 deaths is still being investigated.
Nearly half of those deaths occurred in Iraq, which surpassed Vietnam last year as the deadliest conflict ever for journalists. Thirty of the thirty-one killed in Iraq were Iraqi nationals, most in the employ of international media organizations.
There was some encouraging news. For the first time in 15 years, there were no journalists murdered in Colombia, and for the first time in 7 years there were none killed in the Philippines. But Africa saw a dramatic rise in deaths, Mexico saw several high-profile murders related to its increasingly violent drug trade, and the editor of The Oakland Post, Chauncey Bailey, was also murdered for a story he was writing.
The tragic annual accounting doesn't make much for holiday amusement but it bears noting just the same. The truth, they say, will set you free, but the cost is very dear.