National

Why Journalists Face Greater Harm in An Age of Abundant and Accessible Media

Washington Informer January 8, 2015

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Women light candles to commemorate the victims killed in an attack at the Paris offices of the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in front of the French Embassy in Berlin, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015. Masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of the weekly newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, methodically killing 12 people Wednesday, including the editor, before escaping in a car. It was France's deadliest postwar terrorist attack. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

(PBS)

TRANSCRIPT:

JUDY WOODRUFF: The attacks in Paris were focused on a very different kind of newspaper, as we just heard.

But, every day, traditional journalists are facing real dangers and threats. In fact, the past three years have seen the highest number of journalists killed or imprisoned in recent times.

Jeffrey Brown has our look.

JEFFREY BROWN: On the one hand, information is everywhere and more people around the world have access to it. On the other, for journalists, those who have traditionally gathered and disseminated so much of that information, the times are more dangerous than ever.

JOEL SIMON, Committee to Protect Journalists: Absolutely. That’s the paradox. We live in an age defined by information. And yet the people who bring us this information are dying, being imprisoned, being killed in record numbers. If you look at the data, it is shocking, but press freedom, freedom of expression is actually in decline around the world.