A rise in conflicts across the world and failure of states to protect the rights of the press has led to an unprecedented surge in the death of journalists in the last few years. In 2024, a record number of journalists were killed on duty, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a special report published on Wednesday, February 12.
According to CPJ, a total of 124 journalists were killed in 2024 in 18 countries across the world while doing their work. The number is the highest since CPJ started collecting such data over three decades ago, making 2024 “the deadliest year yet” for journalists, the report says.
The previous record was in 2007 when a total of 113 journalists were killed in one single year. That year, more than half of the total casualties were related to the Iraq war which was rooted in the US invasion and occupation which began in 2003.
At least 99 journalists were killed in 2023, according to last year’s CPJ report.
Almost 70% of the journalists killed in 2024 were killed by Israel during the war on Gaza, with 82 of them being in Gaza and three in Lebanon, CPJ reported.
Over 47,000 Palestinians were killed and almost the entire population of Gaza (over 2 million) was displaced during the Israeli war on Gaza which lasted for over 15 months.
The second highest number of journalists killed last year were in Sudan (6) where the war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions in the last two years. Six journalists were also killed in Pakistan. CPJ also registered journalist killings in Mexico (5), Syria (4), Myanmar (3), Iraq (3), and Haiti (2).
Israel is the deadliest threat to journalists in the world
If one combines the figures of 2024 with that of 2023, a total of 163 Palestinian journalists were killed by Israel in the war on Gaza, according to CPJ data.
CPJ also claims that it has verified information that at least 10 of the 85 journalists killed during the war on Gaza last year were victims of deliberate, targeted killings by the Israeli forces which amounts to murder. It says it is investigating 20 more such cases in which Israel “may have specifically targeted journalists.”
Israel’s attempt to justify some of these killings by terming journalists killed as “terrorists” have been denounced by the relatives, employers of the journalists killed, and independent investigations by rights groups.
CPJ calls it a tactic to avoid accountability. “The tactic of smearing journalists as terrorists without providing evidence is one increasingly adopted by” all kinds of regimes, CPJ says, demanding the international community address the issue.
CPJ says that in most of the countries, irrespective of the regime, the justice system has failed to establish accountability in the killing of journalists. Israel has one of the worst records among these countries. CPJ has noted earlier in a report of 2023 how Israel has failed to take any action in the killing of 20 journalists for over two decades.
Israel has been accused of deliberately targeting journalists to shut the flow of information about its human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories. Al-Jazeera, which has lost a large number of its journalists in Israeli attacks, accused Israel in a statement in July of carrying out a “systemic targeting campaign” to kill the network’s journalists and their families since the beginning of the war on Gaza.
CPJ underlines that “persistent impunity emboldens those who seek to target the press, resulting in more journalist victims and less information for the citizens seeking the truth.”
Killing journalists during a conflict amounts to a war crime as per international law.
