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Press freedom at a glance
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A deadly trend
According to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the International Press Institute (IPI), 87 journalists and media staff were killed or murdered in the course of their work during 1999. Conflicts in the Balkans, Sierra Leone and Colombia claimed most of the victims. But many of the deaths were also due to unexplained assassinations or kidnappings. Even if statistics compiled by different press associations may differ in absolute terms, they all show a considerable rise in the number of journalists killed last year. The 1999 total is second only to the tragic toll of 1994, when wars in Bosnia and Rwanda provoked a surge in killings of journalists, making it the worst year of the decade in terms of deaths among media workers: 115 of them died while covering the news. See the graph
Brave New World?
In its latest report on press freedom worldwide, Reporters sans frontières (RSF) estimates that the media is in'critical' situation in at least 28 countries, and in a "difficult" position in another 65. According to the Paris-based NGO, only half of the world's governments allow their people a degree of freedom of the press that can be qualified as "correct".
More than half of the world's population does not enjoy freedom of the press. See the graph
Expression vs. Repression
Threats to freedom of expression are not the sad privilege of some cultures or certain regions. Between 1995 and 1998, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) recorded more than 3.000 cases of assault, imprisonment, kidnapings, censorhip and other violations of the right to a free and pluralistic information. The picture shows an approximate distribution of these violations, by geographical area.
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