More than a thousand journalists have been murdered since 1992. This is a modest tribute to them
One tweet, every day, to remember those who were killed in the line of duty.
For the past couple of weeks the Twitter account Journos Killed has been tweeting the names of reporters, communicators and people related to media organizations that have been killed around the world. We are using the database from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a reliable compilation on journalist fatalities since 1992.
Journos Killed is a Puroperiodismo project. Puroperiodismo is a digital media magazine based in Chile and part of the digital publications from Periodismo UAH. We mostly produce content in Spanish but we thought that this problem — journalists being killed around the world, in many different places — had to be addressed in a common language: English. This has helped us to reach a wider audience, but we still have a long way to go.
The CPJ database is huge: more than a thousand names. Most of them have clear information: date, country, news organization, impunity. A few still remain unclear. But the work the Committee has done so far is exceptional.
This idea was motivated by the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) campaign for the creation of the position of special representative of the UN secretary-general for the safety of journalists. According to RSF, 67 journalists were killed in 2005. The database from CPJ reflects a larger number: 76 in the same period.
RSF has been using the hashtag #ProtectJournalists to make this problem visible. Every tweet from the Journos Killed account ends with that message too.
This project is a modest tribute. The murder of a journalist brings silence and fear. We want to break that silence, even with a little whisper. We want to remember those who gave their lives in the fulfillment of their duty.
Our goal? To stop tweeting in the future.
Follow Journos Killed on Twitter and spread the word.
