Safety of journalists

Safety of journalists is the ability of journalists and media professionals to receive, produce and share information without facing physical or moral threats.

Journalists can face violence and intimidation for exercising their fundamental right to freedom of expression. The range of threats they are confronted with include murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking, offline and online harassment, intimidation, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and torture. Women journalists also face specific dangers and are specially vulnerable to sexual assault, whether in the form of a targeted sexual violation, often in reprisal for their work; mob-related sexual violence aimed against journalists covering public events; or the sexual abuse of journalists in detention or captivity. Many of these crimes are not reported as a result of powerful cultural and professional stigmas."

Increasingly, journalists, and particularly women journalists, are facing abuse and harassment online, such as hate speech, cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking, doxing, trolling, public shaming, intimidation and threats.

From 2016 to 2020, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay condemned the deaths of 400 journalists. A downward trend is observed compared to the period from 2012 to 2016, when the Director-General of UNESCO condemned the death of 530 journalists, which is equivalent to an average of two death per week. In 2021, 55 killings of journalists were recorded, this is the lowest number recorded by the Director-General of UNESCO in 14 years. In 2020, most of the murders committed against journalists took place in a context other than that of an armed conflict, representing 61% of the murders of journalists of the year. The opposite trend was observed for the year 2016, where 50% of killings took place in countries in countries experiencing armed conflict.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), nearly 50 per cent of those whose death was confirmed to be related to their work as journalist were murdered, while 36 per cent were caught in the crossfire and 14% killed while on dangerous assignment. According to the NGO, political groups were the most likely source of violence (36%) in these killings, followed by military officials (22%) and unknown sources (20%).

The UNESCO's study World Trend Report in Freedom of Expression and media development: Global Report 2017/2018, has found that over the past five years, 113 freelance journalists were killed, representing 21% of the total of the journalist killed. It has been considered that freelance journalists are particularly vulnerable, often working alone on stories, in dangerous environments, and without the same level of assistance and protection as staff-journalists. The past few years, the trend has been confirmed, in fact the Report of the Organization's Director-General on the safety of journalists and the dangers of impunity of 2022 has found that for the period 2020–2021, around 1/5 of all journalist killings were freelance journalists. The study establishes that 11 freelance journalist killings were recorded in 2020, representing 18% of all killings and 11 in 2021 representing 20% of the killings.

From 2016 to 2020, television journalists have been by far the most attacked group among journalists, accounting for 134 journalist fatalities, or 34%, in the past five years. Indeed, the journalists covering conflict were considered particularly vulnerable and at high risk of being either killed in crossfire or directly targeted, they have been followed by journalists working mainly for print (86), radio (79), online (55) and those working cross platforms. Nonetheless, in the last report of the Director-General of the UNESCO about the safety of journalists and the danger of the impunity of 2022, a new trend has been observed: during the 2020–2021 biennium cross-platform  journalists have become the most vulnerable to fatal attacks. By 2021, they constituted 41% of the total number of fatalities for that year.

In 2018, Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi was ambushed, suffocated, and dismembered by agents of the Saudi government.