The International Press Institute has said that fewer journalists lost their lives as a result of their jobs in the first eight months this year than in the same period last year.
The IPI said 52 died from January to the end of August this year, four fewer than last year.
Twenty journalists were killed in the Americas over the period. Mexico is currently the most dangerous country for journalists in the world with 10 having lost their lives since January.
Though the number seems to have dropped in comparison to the same period last year, Alison Bethel McKenzie, interim director of the Vienna-based institute, warned that this amount was still unacceptable.
‘Last year 110 journalists lost their lives because of their work and now in 2010 we’re well on our way towards a similarly grim toll,’McKenzie said.
‘The threat to peace and understanding among nations and peoples is today as great as it was upon IPI’s founding and the threat to press freedom around the world is undiminished.”
The institute released the figures during the opening ceremony of the IPI World Congress in Vienna where over 360 journalists, academics and media experts from more than 60 countries will discuss the state of press freedom across the world.
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