Abstract
Certain forms of journalism have always been dangerous – warzone reporting perhaps most obviously, but also news reporting in authoritarian regimes or investigation into criminal gangland activities – but in recent times journalism has become steadily more dangerous. Around the world and on average, two journalists per week have lost their lives over the past dozen years or more. In this book, the authors argue for wider responsibility for the protection of independent journalism. They do so because they believe that civil society can only flourish when the ‘responsibility to report’ is firmly upheld. The book includes the accounts and opinions of those in the news industry. The first section gives a broad overview of what is happening to too many journalists around the world, and the huge risks and costs borne by journalists operating in hostile, violent environments. There are detailed cases of individual journalists being killed, intimidated or kidnapped, alongside statistical patterns and trajectories of such experiences. The book then goes into deeper contextualisation of the changing nature as well as increased rate of violence encountered by journalists and of the relationship between journalism and civil society. The third part of the book attends concertedly to the voices of journalists themselves as they describe and assess the dangerous work that they do, while the final section examines, first, the ways in which journalism has been protected and journalism safety improved and, second, the gaps and deficiencies that still exist. The three authors have together produced a valuable contribution to increasing our awareness and understanding of reporting from dangerous places and why this matter.