Journalists' death toll 57
A TOTAL of 57 journalists worldwide were killed this year, media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said, adding that fewer reporters were being killed in war zones while more were targeted by criminals or traffickers.
The toll was down 25 per cent from 2009, when 76 journalists were killed in connection with their jobs. Last year's number was a record because of a massacre in the Philippines that saw more than two dozen journalists and their staff gunned down. In its annual report, the media advocacy group said organised crime groups and militias had become the biggest danger for journalists.
"If governments do not make every effort to punish the murderers, they become their accomplices," Jean-Franois Julliard, the group's secretary general, said.