In a year when newsgathering in the field was reduced to the bare minimum everywhere because of Covid-19, the death toll should have gone down. But it is in fact higher than in 2019 and doesn’t include journalists who died of Covid-19 as we couldn't confirm they contracted the virus on the job. INSI's annual Killing the Messenger report of journalist casualties from around the world found that Mexico was the deadliest country in 2020 with 11 media workers losing their lives, followed by Afghanistan, the Philippines, Syria and Iraq. All but one of those who died were local journalists killed reporting from their own countries and the majority were killed in countries supposedly at peace. Most were shot by unknown assailants. INSI identified only three cases in which the attackers were identified and legal proceedings took place to bring the killers of journalists to justice. Read the 2020 Killing the Messenger report here. Image by AFP
