The job of a journalist should be a safe one in a free society. Unfortunately, the job so often leads to the questioning of corrupt governments or outing of criminal identities in countries that have little stopping them from of murdering in order to keep journalists quiet. And so journalists get killed.

 Last year was an unprecedented year for journalist deaths, with 70 killed while on the job.

Of those, 32 were killed in the Nov. 23 massacre in the Phillipines. Somalia was behind with nine deaths. Iraq and Pakistan were tied for four. Strangely, Afghanistan only had two journalists killed in 2009, losing out to Russia.

This is compared to last year’s toll of 44 and 2007’s toll of 67.

Those deaths have been confirmed as being motivated by the victims association with the media and the stories they publish which expose corruption and crime. On top of that are another 24 journalists whose murders are being investigated for its intent.

Who are these journalists getting killed?

Are they all war-correspondents getting caught in the line of fire?

While some, like Calgary Herald’s Michelle Lang who was killed south of Kandahar, are correspondents from halfway around the world, for the most part they are just ordinary journalists, usually from the local media outlets in their country, trying to tell a story.

However, the story might be one the government or other organizations do not want exposed.

In Canada, journalists, like all people, expect recourse for those kinds of actions. Ideally, crimes are punished and a message is sent out that there will be problems for those who cause trouble.

In other countries it is very difficult to punish anyone since the crime might be backed by the government as a means to control the media. 

The government may not want reporters to comment on anything that questions the authority or leads to distasteful sentiment from citizens.

Those countries want to keep people in the dark. Journalists therefore become the electricians, trying to screw in the bulbs of the citizen. However, it seems that they keep getting pushed off their ladders.

While there are organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists, who look into the motives of journalists’ deaths and defend those who are living, it will always fall on the government of the country to protect its media.

As long as journalists are being murdered for their work, a country will never recover from its sickness. The cure is feedback from the citizens; a murder cannot go unpunished.

 The gangster can’t have the streets.

Even if the organizations that the punishments are aimed at ignore their consequences, there needs to be solidarity in the understanding that a journalist’s job and life have value.

When the whole country comes together, then the murders will end.