A Paris-based international press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders（RSF), published its 2024 round-up only to lament a year marked by an intolerable escalation in violence and aggressions against journalists, mainly in conflict regions and authoritarianism.
Gaza classified as the most dangerous zone for media professionals, with over half of the fifty-four journalists killed this year failing in conflict torn areas. After tragic fatalities, these emphasise how the risks appeared to be getting worse for journalists in such war areas.
Since 1 October 2023, the Gaza Strip has become the epicentre of press persecution, as over 145 male journalists have been slaughtered since October 2023, none of whom did they are specifically targeted related to their news coverage. It is the most serious location for journalists in five years, RSF says, and it blames Israel's military for its role in these deaths of journalists. A focus on the most recent data underscores how many — almost 30 percent — of all journalist fatalities this year came this year in Gaza, a territory gripped by conflict that is hardly an outlier in that it places journalists at significant risk. "Journalists die, not because they died, they are killed, they are not in prison, they are imprisoned regimes, they do not disappear, they are kidnapped," said RSF’s Director General, Thibaut Bruttin. "This is orchestrated with total impunity, and it violates international law."
A fatality rate for journalists in conflict zones reached a five-year high in 2024, and important casualties were recorded in Iraq, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine and Palestine, indicating the precarious conditions journalists face in those areas. Of those listed, Gaza has by far the highest number of media workers killed, with the frequency and brutality of attacks outstripping elsewhere in the region. 'I'm sure international community would agree that these targeted killings of journalists should be investigated seriously, and we'll continue to do so,' RSF said, pointing to the fact that RSF submitted complaints to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on war crimes against journalists.
RSF reported, meanwhile, that 550 journalists are behind bars around the world, a 7 per cent increase on the previous year, and that the worsening media conditions for journalists worldwide includes a troubling spike in the number of incidents of suppression of press freedom. It is linked to systematic repression of independent reporting, with an ever-growing number of journalists detained on the pretext of national security in countries, including Russia, where press freedom has deteriorated and where the media are prevented from playing their role as a check on the power of governments. Since the start of the Gaza conflict, Israel – already the world’s third largest incarceration hub for journalists – has seen a rapidly increasing number of journalist detentions, a worrying trend which has seen media activity increasingly criminalised and press freedoms under mounting pressure. The current crackdown on press freedoms is part of a worrying trend for countries to imprison citizens and continue using the practice to suppress the free speech. For instance, currently forty-one journalists are detained in the country.
The second most perilous region for journalists is Asia, where unrest is taking a toll in Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the volatile security situation and the mounting problems journalists have in conflict areas. The seven journalists who died this year were seven in total, Pakistan alone accounting for them, as did five out of those fatalities in Bangladesh stemming from disruptive protests. Syria continues to be the largest confinement site in terms of hostage cases worldwide, with fifty-five journalists still captured, representing 70 per cent of all hostage cases globally, underscoring the systematic nature of such abductions, and the high risks to journalists in conflict zones. Hardly any optimism does exist for releasing media personals in conflict zones like Yemen but too many remain at risk of getting lost in the despair.
Equally alarming: the situation for missing journalists is dire, with ninety-five still unresolved in thirty-four countries, the vast number of disappearances coupled with continued threats against media professionals in dangerous regions. More than a quarter of the total disappeared since the start of the decade, and Mexico became the country with the most missing reporters, highlighting the increasing dangers to reporters in conflict torn and lawless areas. Causing heightened international accountability and protective measures for journalists in Hazardous environments is the widespread disappearances, which are often attributed to authoritarian regimes.
It has urged the international community to take swift and decisive measures to protect journalists, and in high-risk environments. "Fatalism should never win. ‘We want to protect those who inform us because, at the end of the day, that’s protecting the truth,’ Bruttin added. The organisation also called upon countries to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, saying only seventy-five countries still haven’t done so, leaving a low number in terms of global commitment in defence of journalists.
RSF continues its fight to prevent the names and stories of fallen journalists from being forgotten and to demand governments do more to guarantee journalists' protection through solid legal framework and to bring those responsible before justice. RSF’s online barometer of the real time status of journalists who suffer abuse (that is, ours through killings, detentions and disappearances) shows the urgent need for solidarity and action on a global scale.
In addition, RSF 2024 round-up also harshly criticizes the growing scope of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes' intimidating tools worldwide. These regimes have developed in which these extreme methods of rat making, cutting through draconian laws, and complete media environments control have created an arena where journalists are made to be vulnerable as systematic silencers. The systematic repression of press freedoms is highlighted by ill treatment and capricious detention of journalists only in order to discharge their journalistic duties, as well as by merciless punishments. Now, however, authorities have increasingly relied on lengthy, unjust imprisonments that typically involve politically charged nonspecific national security or ideological dissent charges against media workers.
Undeniably, in several countries such as authoritarian regimes, journalists are blocked from freely reporting, and their work is rigidly censored or simply forbidden on the airtight basis of national secrecy or the state’s security - enhancing the systematic attack on press freedoms. These actions are not only a blatant attack on the cornerstone of press freedom, but they directly and seriously police the free flow of truth itself, as governments take away the power to dissent by abusing their government to suppress and corrupt the flow of information critical to our humanity. These regimes urgently have to be made fully accountable internationally and journalists should no longer be subjected to such egregious, unchecked repression, this systemic violation of press freedom that continues to undermine the core principles of democracy as well as basic rights.
