Killing the canary: the international epidemiology of the homicide of media workers

Abstract

The homicide of media workers increased substantially in this 5-year period and was found to be particularly concentrated in selected countries such as Iraq. The authors were able to identify specific sociopolitical risk factors for homicide occurrence, and for homicide rates at the country level.

The social and political functioning of states and the homicide of media workers

“…Such analyses understate the variation in homicide mortality rates across countries, but are less explicitly biased by the lack of information on the number of media workers in a country for the years in question. Importantly, the estimated relationships from the logistic and Poisson regression models in table 5 of Riddick et al ’s paper1 are similar in direction and magnitude, despite differences in the level of significance for some of the estimates.…”

“…In this issue Riddick et al 1 find important relationships between the homicide of media workers and several nation-level indices of human development and social and political functioning (see page ) . They combed through five international databases to identify homicides among media workers, and examined seven indices that capture the level of social and economic development (one index), political terror (one index), corruption (one index), and various indicators of the failure of state rule (four indices).…”

Violent deaths of media workers associated with conflict in Iraq, 2003–2012

“…As per a previous study in which two of the authors were involved (NW and GT) ( Riddick et al, 2008 ), we defined media workers as being those who collect or present information for public use (e.g., media presenters and translators), and those who make decisions about what information is collected and presented to the public (e.g., editors). A number of related occupations were excluded, including drivers and security guards associated with media companies.…”

“…More specifically, the violent deaths of media workers is a major issue worldwide, with persistent high levels of impunity—meaning the perpetrators are rarely prosecuted ( Riddick et al, 2008 ). Furthermore, media worker freedom and safety is of particular concern in settings of political and social instability ( Krueger, 2008 ).…”

Peer Review #2 of "Violent deaths of media workers associated with conflict in Iraq, 2003–2012 (v0.1)"

“…Data collection: Data were collected for the ten-year period 2003-2012, from five databases used in a previous study (Riddick et al 2008) that were compiled by: the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) (CPJ 2012) Reporters Without Borders (RSF-Reporters Sans Frontières) (RSF 2012) United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) (UNESCO 2012) the International News Safety Institute (INSI) (INSI 2012) and the International Press Institute (IPI) (IPI 2012).…”