Surge in media deaths riles UN chief

general said “countless” reporters “face intimidation, harassment and censorship at the hands of governments, corporations and powerful individuals seeking to preserve their power or hide wrongdoings and misdeeds.”
“Impunity for those who attack or threaten journalists remains disturbingly prevalent — including for assaults carried out in broad daylight, delivering the most brutal of messages.
“Such attacks are outrageous. I call on all concerned to prevent and prosecute such violence,” Ban said.
Reporters Without Borders said that 22 reporters and six bloggers and “citizen journalists” have already been killed since the start of the year.
According to Reporters Without Borders, five journalists have been killed in Somalia this year, four in Syria; two each in Bangladesh, Brazil and India, and one in Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand.
The UN General Assembly held a minute’s silence for journalists killed for their work.
“The first quarter of 2012 has clearly shown that the world’s predators of the freedom to inform, led by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Somalia’s Islamist militias, are capable of behaving like outright butchers,” Reporters Without Borders said.
The press freedom group also said that more than 280 journalists and bloggers have been imprisoned this year, including 32 in Eritrea, 30 in China and 27 in Iran and 14 in Syria. But five have been detained in Azerbaijan, which is the UN Security Council president for May.
Ban and press freedom groups have sought to stress the role of the media, and particularly the new social media, in covering the uprisings in Libya, Egypt and Syria over the past 18 months.
“Those new voices and new modes of communication have helped millions of people gain, for the first time, the chance at democracy and opportunities that had been denied to them for so long,” Ban said.
Several governments also highlighted the role of the press from which they so often come under attack. — AFP.