In 2024, the world faces a critical press freedom crisis with a record number of journalist deaths, primarily in conflict zones like Gaza and Ukraine. This article emphasizes the urgent need for safety and ethical media practices.
Credible reporting remains one of the most trusted ways for countering disinformation, misinformation and misleading stories often propagated by governments, social media corporations and influencers. But such media coverage comes at an enormous cost.
This year has witnessed a record number of journalists and other media workers killed with the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine responsible for two thirds of the victims. According to the Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), at least 165 lost their lives to date (December 15, 2024) in 21 countries around the world. This represents an almost 18 percent increase over 2023.
As PEC states, since January 1, 2024, the Middle East conflict has claimed the lives of 82 journalists. At least 74 are believed to have been killed in the Gaza Strip, six in Lebanon and two in Syria. Ever since the Hamas assaults of 7 October 2023 prompting Israeli military intervention in Gaza, an estimated 155 media workers have lost their lives representing an unprecedented toll for any conflict in such a short space of time. (See Global Geneva story on Honouring Those Who Risk Their Lives Reporting – 2024 Rory Peck Awards for Freelance Journalists)
Other leading journalism support organizations such as Reporters sans Frontieres and the Committee to Protect Journalistsrespectively put the 2024 figure at 54 and 95 journalists and media workers to have lost their lives worldwide this year. Much of the discrepancy is the result of ongoing investigations seeking to provide firm evidence as to the circumstances behind their deaths.
Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza in 2024. (Photo provided by PEC)
According to all three international media organizations, the worst killings have proven to be in the Gaza Strip where international and Israeli journalists are prohibited from operating independently by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), apart from occasional monitored sorties. As a result, any form of serious on-the-ground reporting has been conducted at massive risk by freelance local media. And yet, as major international news organizations such as the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeerah, New York Times, Le Monde and others point out, the outside world must rely on such individuals as their principal sources for direct, up-front coverage.
“The targeted or accidental elimination of Palestinian journalists on the ground, the destruction of media facilities, the refusal to allow foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip and the pressure on the Israeli media demonstrate the current Israeli government’s systematic determination to prevent any information on the fate of the Palestinian population,” maintained PEC President Blaise Lempen. As Jodie Ginsberg, head of the New York-based CPJ, added: “Israel is responsible for two thirds of those deaths and yet continues to act with total impunity when it comes to the killing of journalists and its attacks on the media.”
Many international news organizations, including critical Israeli media such as Hareetz, the country’s oldest independent newspaper, have come to similar conclusions despite fervent denials by the IDF. Apart from Hareetz and a few other outspoken Israeli media, many of the country’s leading outlets refuse to highlight independent on-the-ground coverage other than perspectives provided by its own military provoking what some Israeli critics describe as a situation not unlike the Vietnam War. Despite efforts by Washington during the 1960s to stifle criticism of the US position, candid press reporting on the ground played a significant role in prompting eventual peace talks and the US pullout.
Admittedly, until the war in Gaza ends and proper investigations into the deaths of journalists can be undertaken, accurate figures and the circumstances behind them will prove difficult. As PEC and other journalism organizations stipulate, figures for Gaza are provided primarily by the Palestinian Journalists’ Union and the Hamas government’s media office are higher, notably 196 since October 2023.
The difficulty, too, is knowing whether some of the victims meet the usual criteria for the profession of journalist (press card, accreditation by a media outlet) or whether they improvised as bona fide reporters or “citizen journalists.” It is also impossible to know with certainty whether such individuals were deliberately targeted or not, in the absence of independent outside investigators able to operate without constraint.
The war in Ukraine has resulted in similar rising casualties. Based on organizations such as the Institute of Mass Information, 19 Ukrainian journalists reportedly died in 2023 with most operating as members of the Kyiv armed forces. One foreign media advisor, Ryan Evans of Reuters, was killed during a Russian missile attack against the hotel in which he and a team of reporters were staying in the eastern town of Kramatorsk.
Four Russian journalists were killed during this same period, three in Ukrainian territories illegally occupied by Moscow and one in Kursk. On 10 October, arrested Ukrainian journalist Victoria Rochtchina reportedly died while in Russian custody. So far, a total of 25 journalists have died under such circumstances in Russia, some of them believed to have been tortured.
During this same period, Pakistan reported 12 journalists killed, a clear deterioration, while in Bangladesh, seven lost their lives during the unrest of July 2024. The situation remains equally dangerous in Mexico, where seven journalists were reportedly killed, primarily by drug traffickers and corrupt government officials. Most attacks against journalists, however, remain unresolved.
For their part, the war in Sudan caused the death of five journalists, while four succumbed in Colombia, four in India, three in Iraq and three in Burma (Myanmar). A further two media workers were killed in Somalia and two in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Cambodia, Chad, Ecuador, Honduras, Indonesia, and the Philippines each reportedly lost one media worker.
This year’s death toll, argues PEC, is equivalent to three victims a week, while over the past decade an estimated 1,172 victims represented an average of 2.25 journalist deaths per week. Over the last five years, the most dangerous countries for journalists to operate in include Gaza/West Bank (159), Ukraine (59), Mexico (55), Pakistan (36) and India (32).
According to PEC, almost three quarters of the journalists killed this year were the result of operating in a conflict zone (120 out of 165). However, at this stage, until one can fully determine the circumstances into how many journalists died, and whether they were the result of deliberate murders as opposed to accidental deaths (victims of gunfire, bombings), accurate overall figures remain unknown.
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