Reporters see respite in work-related deaths last year, despite terror, wars

The Miami Herald Posted on Wed, Apr. 02, 2003 BY MARIKA LYNCH Knight Ridder Newspapers

MIAMI - (KRT) - As bombs drop around journalists in Iraq, the following statistic may be of little comfort: 19 journalists died last year on the job, the lowest number since the Committee to Protect Journalists began counting in 1985.

The group, which issues its annual report on press attacks this week, believes a brief respite in global conflicts was the main cause for the decrease.

Most reporters were targeted directly for their work, such as Daniel Pearl, The Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan, accused by his captors of being an Israeli spy and later beheaded. His death made newsrooms reevaluate safety, and send reporters to more training, the report says.

Reporters also began to see themselves differently in hostile environments, where they increasingly understand that they may not always be perceived as neutral observers, said Joel Simon, CPJ's acting director.

As global politics changed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, so did the threats to journalists, the group said. In Israel and Russia, the governments used the cover of national security'' to keep reporters from covering stories. Also, leaders in Eritrea, Russia and Zimbabwe have in instances labeled journalists critical of the regimes as terrorists,'' the group said.

One of the greatest threats in 2002 was prison time. Over the past two years, the number of jailed journalists rose 68 percent, to include 136 people. China was the world's worst offender, with 39 behind bars, trailed by Eritrea and Nepal. But using the law to attack journalists is also a potent force in Panama, where nearly half of the media's workforce is under criminal libel or slander charges.

In the Americas, the roughest places for journalists continued to be Cuba and Colombia.

Independent Cuban journalists continued to be harassed and jailed, and the country's most important independent journalists association was forced to suspend classes after its offices were blocked by the government. Cubans passed around Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, an increasingly popular but banned quarterly magazine produced by exiles in Spain, even though the government has branded it a ``political operation of the U.S. government.''

In Colombia, where reporters are harassed by both leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, the violence inhibited reporters from providing the analysis and context needed to characterize the changing war, the committee found. Three journalists died there in 2002 alone.

In Venezuela, as the country grew more deeply divided after a brief, failed coup to oust President Hugo Chavez and an extended general strike, the media played a more activist role. In fact, the committee found that the ``press abandoned any show of neutrality and became a full-fledged political opposition.''

That ``put a lot of journalists in the middle of the battle, and made it risky for journalists and press freedom,'' said Carlos Lauria, the Americas program coordinator for CPJ.

The report is available on the group's Internet site, www.cpj.org.