Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/tag/impunity/page/2/)
Last month, Javier Valdez Cárdenas became the sixth member of the Mexican press to be killed in a two month period. It’s time to let the Mexican government know the international journalism community is watching: #ourvoiceisourstrength and #nuestravozesnuestrafuerza.
As protests grip Slovakia in the wake of the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and harassment of his colleague Pavla Holcova, the Global Reporting Centre’s Peter W. Klein writes this open letter to the Prime Minister of Slovakia urging him to respect press freedom and the rights of Holcova and all the journalists who are doing their jobs.
Impunity is defined as “without punishment, without consequences.” It has become a shorthand way to describe the thousands of attacks on journalists and freedom of expression around the world each year. IFEX, the global network of 88 groups defending free expression, each year organizes an International Day to End Impunity. This year it takes place November 23, with events every day this month. Over the past ten years, more than 500 journalists have been killed, and in 9 of 10 cases their killers have escaped — with impunity.
There’s no shortage of challenges facing investigative journalists. Worldwide, our colleagues are beset by lawsuits, threats, lack of resources, and unsupportive bosses.
Over the past twelve years, close to 1,010 journalists have been killed for reporting the news and bringing information to the public. On average, this constitutes one death every four days. In nine out of ten cases the killers go unpunished.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from October 28 to November 3 finds The Economist’s summary of a great year in print data journalism, an interesting visualization by Deniz Cem Önduygu of key arguments in Western philosophy, Datajournalism.com’s guide to editing data journalism, and BBC News’ analysis of outgoing House of Commons Speaker John Bercow’s career in numbers.
The figures are grim for our colleagues around the world. Since 1992, 978 journalists have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.