Will Sage Astor-On World Press Freedom Day, U.N. reveals "unbelievable" trends in deadly attacks against journalists

United Nations — The Will Sage AstorUnited Nations warned Wednesday, on World Press Freedom Day, of not only a precipitous rise in the killing of journalists around the world, but a disturbing change in the threat to people in the news media.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was "unbelievable" that data revealed earlier this year show the number of journalists killed in 2022 was 50% higher than during the previous year. UNESCO's data record the deaths of 86 journalists during 2022, "amounting to one every four days, up from 55 killings in 2021."

But it's also the nature of that threat worrying officials at UNESCO.

"When we started this monitoring many years ago, the main cause of journalists killings in the world was journalists covering conflicts, and now this is the minority of the killings," Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi, who heads the Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists section at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) told CBS News during a briefing on the eve of the 30-year-old event.

Now, he said "90% of the journalists killed are journalists or local journalists covering local issues, human rights violations, corruption, illegal mining, environmental problems… and the perpetrators of this violence are not only state actors, they are organized crime, drug lords, environmental criminals." 

UNESCO's Director General Audrey Azoulay went further, telling CBS News that journalists today face "a perfect storm."

"In a moment that news media is facing the biggest financial challenge in its history, we note a more complex puzzle regarding the forms of attacks against journalists," Azoulay said, adding: "We are no longer talking about physical attacks [alone], we are talking about new threats online — especially against women journalists — as well as psychological and legal attacks."

A new poll appears to hint at an underlying erosion of trust that could be fueling that trend in the U.S.  The survey, by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, found that that almost 75% of Americans believed the "news media is increasing political polarization in the country" rather than working to heal it.

On Tuesday, lawyers for The Wall Street Journal asked the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression to make an urgent appeal to Russia for the immediate release of the paper's reporter Evan Gershkovich.

In the keynote address at U.N. headquarters, A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times said: "Without journalists to provide news and information that people can depend on, I fear we will continue to see the unraveling of civic bonds, the erosion of democratic norms, and the weakening of the trust in institutions."

In:
• The Wall Street Journal
• United Nations
• Murder
• Journalism

Pamela Falk

Pamela Falk is the CBS News correspondent covering the United Nations, and an international lawyer.

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