JOURNALISTS face unprecedented risk as insurgent and criminal groups spread globally, a New York-based media watchdog said.
The risks include kidnapping for ransom or political gain, and murder by insurgents who see journalists as surrogates of an enemy too powerful to attack directly, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report.
Journalists are caught in crossfire or targeted by drug cartels as a warning to other unwelcome reporters, the report said.
While technological changes enable more people to engage in acts of journalism, those same changes bring new risks, such as surveillance and tracking, it added.
The report said journalists have become increasing targets since the early 2000s, and most notable was the kidnapping and videotaped beheading of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002.
“His death signaled a new era in which violent non-state actors use journalists as pawns in asymmetrical warfare with foreign powers,” it said.
Meanwhile, attacks and threats against journalists in Brazil jumped by 60 percent in 2016, compared to the year before, a report released on Tuesday said.
The figure puts Brazil among the 10 most dangerous countries in the world for reporters, warned the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Networks in a study titled “Violations Against Freedom of Expression”.
At least 174 journalists denounced having been the target of a physical attack or threat last year, compared to 116 in 2015, news agency O Globo reported, citing the study.
The year 2016 was a year of political turmoil in Brazil, where left-leaning President Dilma Rousseff was impeached by a conservative legislature for alleged fiscal wrongdoing.
Most of the violent incidents targeting reporters occurred during clashes between pro-Rousseff supporters and those in favor of impeachment.