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The five most dangerous countries for journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists tracks journalists’ deaths, imprisonments, and other forms of intimidation. Here are some of the world’s most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist, according to CPJ.

1. Iraq

Yahya Ahmed/AP/File
A man wears tape over his mouth to protest the killing of 23-year-old journalist Sardasht Othman in Sulaimaniyah, northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, on May 12. The man holds a sign that reads, in Kurdish, 'Where is the law of writing?'

  • By Ariel Zirulnick Correspondent

All but six of the 145 journalists killed in Iraq since 1992 have died since the US invasion in 2003. Of those, 89 were murdered and 50 were killed in crossfire. Of those, 117 were Iraqi. One hundred and five of the deaths are attributed to insurgent groups.

The number of journalist deaths in Iraq peaked in 2006 and 2007 at 32 each year and has declined since then, hitting a post-invasion low of four in 2009. According to CPJ, more journalists have died in the Iraq war than in any other conflict since CPJ began keeping track in 1981.

Fifty-four media workers have been killed since 1992, 51 of those since the invasion, and there have been 21 journalist deaths with an unconfirmed motive.

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