Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
December 21, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) -- With murder the leading cause, at least 32 journalists have been killed in Iraq in 2006, the highest one-year toll ever in a single country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
The Middle East nation, torn by war and bloody sectarian violence, was the world's most dangerous country for the news media for the fourth straight year, according to CPJ, a New York-based advocacy group. The committee said its latest yearly count brings to 93 the total killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, with another 37 drivers, messengers and other press ''support staff'' also slain.
Of the 32 reported media casualties to date this year in Iraq, 26 were murdered, the CPJ report said.
''Journalists clearly are being targeted and murdered for doing their work,'' CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in Wednesday's statement. ``The surge in the death toll is chilling.''
The group said it would issue a final report of journalist casualties for the year on Jan. 2. But its count of 32 in Iraq already exceeds the previous high of 24 each in Iraq in 2004 and Algeria in 1995.
No conflict has taken such a toll among journalists as Iraq's. The previous high was 71 killed in the Vietnam War. In World War II, 68 died.
December 21, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) -- With murder the leading cause, at least 32 journalists have been killed in Iraq in 2006, the highest one-year toll ever in a single country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
The Middle East nation, torn by war and bloody sectarian violence, was the world's most dangerous country for the news media for the fourth straight year, according to CPJ, a New York-based advocacy group. The committee said its latest yearly count brings to 93 the total killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, with another 37 drivers, messengers and other press ''support staff'' also slain.
Of the 32 reported media casualties to date this year in Iraq, 26 were murdered, the CPJ report said.
''Journalists clearly are being targeted and murdered for doing their work,'' CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in Wednesday's statement. ``The surge in the death toll is chilling.''
The group said it would issue a final report of journalist casualties for the year on Jan. 2. But its count of 32 in Iraq already exceeds the previous high of 24 each in Iraq in 2004 and Algeria in 1995.
No conflict has taken such a toll among journalists as Iraq's. The previous high was 71 killed in the Vietnam War. In World War II, 68 died.
