m Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The dangers to journalists in Russia have been well known since the early 1990s but concern over the number of unsolved killings soared after Anna Politkovskaya's murder in Moscow on 7 October 2006. While international monitors mentioned a dozen deaths, some sources within Russia talked of over two hundred fatalities.[1] The evidence has since been examined and documented in two reports, published in Russian and English, by international organizations. These revealed a basic confusion in terminology that explained the seemingly enormous numerical discrepancy: statistics of premature death among journalists (from work accidents, crossfire incidents, and purely criminal or domestic cases of manslaughter) were repeatedly equated with the much smaller number of targeted (contract) killings or work-related murders. The Remembrance Day of Journalists Killed in the Line of Duty in Russia is observed on 15 December every year.
Methodology
Among international monitors, the figures quoted for deaths of journalists in Russia have varied, sometimes considerably. There are several explanations. Firstly, certain organisations are concerned with all aspects of safety in news gathering so the International Federation of Journalists and the International News Safety Institute also record accidents that have occurred at work.[2] Secondly, some monitoring bodies include only fatalities in crossfire and dangerous assignments and those murders where they feel sure of the motive behind the lethal attack and can with confidence lobby the appropriate government; the CPJ adopts this approach. Thirdly, the term "journalist" is used by monitors as a general term to cover many different occupations within the media. Some include support staff, others do not.
In any list of deaths, compiled by monitors inside or outside the country, Russia ranks near the top for deaths. When the killing began, the brief First Chechen War took numerous journalists' lives from within Chechnya and abroad. There were also increased peacetime deaths of journalists elsewhere in the Russian Federation.
Those deliberately targeted for their work tended to be reporters, correspondents, and editors. In Russia many directors of new regional TV and radio stations have been murdered[3][4] but some of these deaths are thought to relate to conflicting business interests. Photographers and cameramen are vulnerable in crossfire situations, such as the October 1993 days in Moscow and the armed conflict in the North Caucasus.
2009 reports on deaths of journalists in Russia
In June 2009 a wide-ranging investigation by the International Federation of Journalists into the deaths of journalists in Russia was published. At the same time, the IFJ launched an online database[5][6] which documents over three hundred deaths and disappearances since 1993. Both the report Partial Justice[7] (Russian version: Частичное правосудие[8]) and the database depend on the information gathered in Russia over the last 16 years by the country's own media monitors: the Glasnost Defense Foundation and the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
In September, in the report Justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists repeated its conclusion that Russia was one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists and added that it remains among the worst at solving their murders. Journalists died or were killed, the CPJ argued, because of the work they were doing and only one case has led to a partially successful prosecution.
Following Russia's media monitors, the IFJ database of deaths and disappearances in Russia takes into account the entire range of media occupations and every degree of uncertainty as to the motive for many of the attacks. It also allows for selection and analysis. It classifies the way in which a journalist died (homicide, accident, crossfire, terrorist act, or not confirmed) and it assesses each death as certainly, possibly,[9] or most probably not, linked to the journalist's work.
Since the early 1990s, Russia's media monitors have recorded every violent or suspicious death that came to their attention. Determining which were linked to the journalist's work has not always been easy since law enforcement agencies in Russia were struggling to cope with a wave of murders and the number of unsolved killings of journalists steadily mounted. In the last few years,[when?] the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations has gathered all available information about these deaths on its Memoriam site.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...lled_in_Russia
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