Death Tends To Quiet A Reporter, No Arrests Keep Others Silent

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"Every time a journalist is murdered and the killer is allowed to walk free, it sends a terrible signal to the press and to others who would harm journalists," said Joel Simon, executive director of New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Censorship is alive and well in many parts of the world. Silence is achieved by a bullet into one who doesn't conform and gets the truth out. In 2007 alone there were 65 journalists silenced. According to CPJ governments either don't have the means available to prosecute those who quiet reporters or have no desire to even bother with the case.

Last November the Global Initiative to Combat Impunity was launched by CPJ. They just released the "Impunity Index" to coincide with World Press Freedom Day. That was on Sunday, it barely made a blip in the world of media.

This year the list detailed journalists who were killed in the line of duty whose cases have had no convictions. For a country to be included in the list it had to have had more than five unsolved murders between 1998 to 2007.

Cases where a journalist was killed in combat zones were not included on this year's list for the sake of objectivity. Cases that included a conviction of the murder but not the mastermind behind such assassins were also not included on the list.

Not surprisingly the countries with the most unsolved murders of journalists were Iraq, Sierra Leone and Somalia. These three countries have high levels of internal conflicts. What is surprising is that other countries listed have stable governments and are considered democracies such as India, Russia and Mexico yet the murder of journalists still go unannounced.

In some incidents journalists have been killed because they uncovered and expose government corruptions. Such was a case in the Philippines where a journalist was murdered after using the media to highlight that a mayor had stolen steel beams from a public construction site for his own use. Other local journalists may cease to write about such corruptions for fear they will be the next target of a gunman. When these murders go without arrests it tells those who wish to quiet the press that they are in the clear.

Censorship doesn't just take place with the loss of life. Threats, intimidation all play a part in quieting reporters. When it's life and death rules sometimes a journalist will opt to play by the 'rules' and survive.

Generally if a conviction does take place in the worst offending countries it is because a foreign journalist was the target of an assassin's bullet.

"We are calling for action, thorough investigations and vigorous prosecutions in all journalist homicides," Simon said