Iraq deadliest country for media staff-CPJ

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Iraq remains the deadliest country in the world for media personnel for the sixth year in a row despite a significant drop in the number of media workers’ deaths there, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a report. “The 11 deaths recorded in Iraq in 2008, while a sharp drop from prior years, remained among the highest annual tolls in CPJ history,” according to the report. “Worldwide, CPJ found that 41 journalists were killed in direct connection to their work in 2008, down from 65 last year. It is investigating another 22 deaths to determine whether they were work-related. “The decline in the worldwide death toll was largely attributable to Iraq, where deaths dropped from a record 32 in both 2007 and 2006. The decline in media deaths is consistent with an overall improvement in security conditions in Iraq, journalists told CPJ.” “In interviews with CPJ, journalists and analysts pointed to a variety of factors: the increase in U.S. troop levels that began in 2007; the turning of Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters in Anbar province and elsewhere in western Iraq; a cease-fire declared by independent Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr against U.S.-led coalition forces; and the consolidation of sectarian control of neighborhoods. A declining Western media presence also contributed to the drop in deaths in Iraq, journalists told CPJ,” the report explained. “Two media support workers also died in Iraq during the year. Since the beginning of the war in March 2003, 136 journalists and 51 media workers have been killed, making it the deadliest conflict for the press in recent history,” it added. The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization based in New York, United States, that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists, similar to Reporters Without Borders. A group of U.S. foreign correspondents founded CPJ in 1981 in response to harassment from authoritarian governments. SS (S) 2