Pakistan deadliest country for journalists ... again

Committee to Protect Journalists says seven of 46 deaths worldwide reported from Pakistan, more than Iraq and Libya.

NEW YORK: Pakistan was the deadliest country for journalists in 2011 for the second year running, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

According to the group, 46 journalists were killed worldwide last year, of which seven deaths were reported in Pakistan alone. Five deaths each were reported in violence-hit Iraq and Libya. In 2010, 44 journalists were killed.

The group also said that deaths during dangerous assignments, such as covering street protests, reached the highest level on record in 2011 as Arab uprisings dominated headlines.

“Seventeen journalists died while on dangerous assignments, many of them while covering the chaotic and violent confrontations between authorities and protesters during the uprisings that swept the Arab world,” the report reads.

Photojournalists and camera operators accounted for 40% of fatalities, more than twice the proportion that the CPJ has documented since it began keeping records in 1992.

The group also reported an increase in the deaths of Internet journalists, who “rarely appeared on CPJ’s death toll before 2008”.

CPJ said it was still investigating another 35 deaths in 2011 that may have been work-related.