Dave Molloy

There’s an excellent piece published on The Guardian today, titled “Waking up to press slaughter”. In it, Jim Boumelha, President of the International Federation of Journalists, argues that the press need to take more responsibility for publicising the plight of their own kind, and mount pressure on the international community to combat the targeted assassination of journalists. There’s an interesting point to be made here. From the above-linked article:

For many years the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has been publishing on the first of January the list of journalists killed in the past year, but it’s rare for commentators to show the slightest interest. Last year was one of the deadliest years on record, with the IFJ listing 137 journalists and media workers killed across the world. Only a few newspapers, among them the Guardian, bothered to report it. Imagine if these were killed politicians or killed policemen. In almost every corner of the globe, journalists continue to be targeted, brutalised and killed. Some say they may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But journalists have a duty to be on the spot when news is in the making.

On a day when most media headlines and blogs will be devoted to the decision by Google to stop censoring its search results in China, I thought I’d encourage you to read the piece and think about the genuine dangers of a career in serious investigative journalism.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Journalism
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