PARIS: Nearly 1,700 journalists have been killed worldwide over the past 20 years, an average of more than 80 a year, according to an analysis published by Reporters Without Borders.
The two decades between 2003 and 2022 were “especially deadly decades for those in the service of the right to inform,” said the Paris-based media rights campaigners.
“Behind the figures, there are the faces, personalities, talent and commitment of those who have paid with their lives for their information gathering, their search for the truth and their passion for journalism,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
Iraq and Syria were the most dangerous countries to work as a journalist, accounting for “a combined total of 578 journalists killed in the past 20 years, or more than a third of the worldwide total,” RSF said.
They are followed by Mexico (125 killed), the Philippines (107), Pakistan (93), Afghanistan (81) and Somalia (78).
The “darkest years” were 2012 and 2013, “due in large measure to the war in Syria.” There were 144 killings in 2012 and 142 the year after, the report said.
This peak was “followed by a gradual fall and then historically low figures from 2019 onwards.”
But deaths increased again in 2022, in part because of the war in Ukraine. So far this year, 58 journalists have been killed doing their jobs, up from 51 in 2021.
Eight journalists have been killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February. This compares to a total of 12 media deaths there over the preceding 19 years.
Ukraine is currently the most dangerous country in Europe for the media, after Russia itself, where 25 journalists have been killed over the past 20 years.
“Since Vladimir Putin took over, Russia has seen systematic attacks on press freedom — including deadly ones — as RSF has repeatedly reported.
“They include Anna Politkovskaya’s high-profile murder on 7 October 2006,” the rights group said.
Elsewhere in Europe, Turkiye was ranked third most dangerous, followed by France “as a result of the massacre at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015.”
Reporters run the greatest risks worldwide in areas where armed conflict has occurred.
But, RSF stressed, “countries where no war is officially taking place are not necessarily safe for reporters and some of them are near the top of the list of those where killings have occurred.
“In fact, more journalists have been killed in ‘zones at peace’ than in ‘zones at war’ during the past two decades, in most cases because they were investigating organized crime and corruption.”
The Americas accounted for almost half of journalist murders, many in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Honduras.
“America is nowadays clearly the world’s most dangerous continent for the media,” RSF said.
Nearly 1,700 journalists killed over past 20 years: RSF
https://arab.news/g3ct6
Nearly 1,700 journalists killed over past 20 years: RSF
- So far this year 58 journalists have been killed doing their jobs, up from 51 in 2021
- Ukraine is currently the most dangerous country in Europe for the media
Jailed Italian reporter in Tehran freed, says Italy
ROME: An Italian journalist arrested in Iran and jailed for three weeks has been freed and is returning to Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said on Wednesday.
“The plane taking journalist Cecilia Sala home took off from Tehran a few minutes ago” following “intense work through diplomatic and intelligence channels,” Meloni’s office said in a statement.
“Our compatriot has been released by the Iranian authorities and is on her way back to Italy. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expresses her gratitude to all those who helped make Cecilia’s return possible, allowing her to re-embrace her family and colleagues,” her office said.
Meloni personally informed Sala’s parents of her release by telephone, it added.
Sala, 29, was arrested on December 19, soon after the United States and Italy arrested two Iranian nationals over export violations linked to a deadly attack on American servicemen.
The journalist, who writes for the Italian daily Il Foglio and is the host of a news podcast produced by Chora Media, was kept in isolation in Tehran’s Evin prison.
Sala told her family she was forced to sleep on the floor in a cell with the lights permanently on.
Italy and Iran summoned each other’s ambassadors last week after Rome warned that efforts to secure her release were complicated.
Sala traveled to Iran on December 13 on a journalist’s visa. She was arrested six days later for “violating the law of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said the country’s culture ministry, which oversees and accredits foreign journalists.
She had been due to return home the following day.
On Monday, Iran denied any link between Sala’s arrest and that of Iranian national Mohammad Abedini, detained in Italy in December at the behest of the United States over export violations linked to a deadly attack on US servicemen.
Surge in Telegram user data passed to French authorities
- Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris in August, where he was held for four days before being charged with various crimes, mostly linked to control of criminal content on Telegram
PARIS: Messaging service Telegram passed vastly more data on its users to French authorities in the second half of 2024 following founder Pavel Durov’s arrest in Paris, figures published by the platform showed.
The company said it handed over IP addresses or telephone numbers that Paris asked for in 210 cases in July-September and 673 in October-December.
That was up from just four in the first quarter and six in the second.
Some 2,072 users were affected by French requests for user data — again massively weighted toward the second half of 2024, with more than half in the fourth quarter alone.
Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris in August, where he was held for four days before being charged with various crimes, mostly linked to control of criminal content on Telegram.
He and his supporters have claimed that most French and European authorities’ requests for user data were simply not being sent to the right department at the company and therefore received no response.
Durov, who holds Russian, French and United Arab Emirates passports, has been barred from leaving French soil since he was charged.
That has not stopped Telegram from issuing updates to its moderation rules supposed to boost cooperation with investigators.
A source familiar with Durov’s case told AFP in December that the platform was responding more frequently to requests from the judicial system from both France and other countries.
Getty Images, Shutterstock gear up for AI challenge with $3.7bn merger
- Deal faces potential antitrust scrutiny
- Merger aims to cut costs and unlock new revenue streams as companies grapple with the rise of generative AI tools
LONDON: Getty Images said on Tuesday it would merge with rival Shutterstock to create a $3.7 billion stock-image powerhouse geared for the artificial intelligence era, in a deal likely to draw antitrust scrutiny.
The companies, two of the largest players in the licensed visual content industry, are betting that the combination will help them cut costs and grow their business by unlocking more revenue opportunities at a time when the growing use of generative AI tools such as Midjourney poses a threat to the industry.
Shutterstock shareholders can opt to receive either $28.80 per share in cash, or 13.67 shares of Getty, or a combination of 9.17 shares of Getty and $9.50 in cash for each Shutterstock share they own. The offer represents a deal value of more than $1 billion, according to Reuters calculations.
Shutterstock’s shares jumped 22.7 percent, while Getty was up 39.7 percent. Stocks of both companies have declined for at least the past four years, as the rising use of mobile cameras drives down demand for stock photography.
Getty CEO Craig Peters will lead the combined company, which will have annual revenues of nearly $2 billion and stands to benefit from Getty’s large library of visual content and the strong community on Shutterstock’s platform.
Peters downplayed the impact of AI on Tuesday and said that he was confident the merger would receive antitrust approval both in the United States and Europe.
“We don’t control the timing of (the approval), but we have a high confidence. This has been a situation where customers have not had choice. They’ve always had choice,” he said.
Some experts say US President-elect Donald Trump’s recent appointments to the Department of Justice Antitrust Division signal that there would be little change to the tough scrutiny that has come to define the regulator in recent years.
“With Gail Slater at the helm, the antitrust division is going to be a lot more aggressive under this Trump administration than it was under the first one,” said John Newman, professor of law at the University of Miami.
Regulators will examine how the deal impacts the old-school business model of selling images to legacy media customers, as well as the new business model of offering copyright-compliant generative-AI applications to the public.
The deal is expected to generate up to $200 million in cost savings three years after its close. Getty investors will own about 54.7 percent of the combined company, while Shutterstock stockholders will own the rest.
Getty competes with Reuters and the Associated Press in providing photos and videos for editorial use.
Israel extends closure of Al Jazeera’s West Bank office
- Israel suspended Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office for 45 days in September on charges of “incitement to and support for terrorism”
- Announcement comes days after Palestinian Authority also suspended the network’s broadcasts for four months
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli authorities renewed a closure order for Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, days after the Palestinian Authority suspended the network’s broadcasts for four months.
An AFP journalist reported that Israeli soldiers posted the extension order Tuesday morning on the entrance of the building housing Al Jazeera’s offices in central Ramallah, a city under full Palestinian Authority security control.
The extension applies from December 22 and lasts 45 days.
In September, Israeli forces raided the Ramallah office and issued an initial 45-day closure order.
At the time, staff were instructed to leave the premises and take their personal belongings.
The move came months after Israel’s government approved a decision in May to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel, also closing its offices for an initial 45-day period, which was extended for a fourth time by a Tel Aviv court in September.
Later in September, Israel’s government announced it was revoking the press credentials of Al Jazeera journalists in the country.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has long been at odds with Al Jazeera, a dispute that has escalated since the Gaza war began following Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The Israeli army has repeatedly accused the network’s reporters in Gaza of being “terrorist operatives” affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
The Qatari channel denies the accusations, and says Israel systematically targets its staff in Gaza.
Meta replaces fact-checking with X-style community notes
- Meta cited bias and excessive content reviews as key factor in ending fact-checking program
- The social media company also announced plans to allow “more speech” by easing restrictions on discussions of mainstream topics like immigration and gender
LONDON: Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Tuesday it’s scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
Starting in the US, Meta will end its fact-checking program with independent third parties. The company said it decided to end the program because expert fact checkers had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact checked.
Instead, it will pivot to a Community Notes model that uses crowdsourced fact-checking contributions from users.
“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context,” Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a blog post.
The social media company also said it plans to allow “more speech” by lifting some restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discussion in order to focus on illegal and “high severity violations” like terrorism, child sexual exploitation and drugs.
Meta said that its approach of building complex systems to manage content on its platforms has “gone too far” and has made “too many mistakes” by censoring too much content.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the changes are in part sparked by political events including Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
Meta’s quasi-independent Oversight Board, which was set up to act as a referee on controversial content decisions, said it welcomed the changes and looked forward to working with the company “to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible.”
