A record number of journalists were killed in 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report released Wednesday.
At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide, and about two-thirds of them were Palestinians who were killed by Israel during its war against Hamas in Gaza, the CPJ said.
The previous record was 113 journalists killed, in 2007, during the Iraq War.
Other countries including Sudan, Pakistan, Mexico and Syria also had multiple cases of journalists killed last year, the report found.
The CPJ considers a journalist or media worker someone who covered news or commented on public affairs, in any medium. To be included on its list, the person’s death must have been work-related. The deaths can be deliberate or accidental, such as if a journalist is killed in a conflict zone. A journalist’s death would not be included if there is evidence they were “inciting violence with imminent effect or directly participating as combatants in armed conflict at the time of their deaths,” the CPJ said.
The CPJ says it only includes confirmed cases in its report, meaning it found evidence indicating the journalist was killed in connection with their work; it says it considers all war-zone cases as confirmed.
Increased global conflict leads to record deaths
Of the 124 journalists who were killed in 2024, the CPJ report said 82 were killed amid the war in Gaza and three were killed in Lebanon, where Israel was fighting Hezbollah. In at least 10 cases, CPJ says its investigation determined they were “deliberately targeted.” The group says it continues investigating whether at least 20 other cases may have been deliberate.
Thirty-one of the journalists killed in Gaza were Palestinian freelancers who the CPJ said “stepped in to fill the information void after many news outlets ceased to operate” in the territory.
CBS News has reached out to Israeli officials for comment on the report. In a statement to Reuters, the Israel Defense Forces said it takes measures to mitigate harm to civilians and reporters, and said, “The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists.”
The IDF has previously denied accusations of targeting reporters, telling “60 Minutes” in a statement last month: “The IDF directs its strikes only towards military targets and military operatives, and does not target civilian objects and civilians, including media organizations and journalists as such.”
Israel’s military went on to allege that “terror operatives” in Gaza have doubled as journalists and might therefore become “legitimate military targets,” including some who work for Al Jazeera. The Qatari network has strongly denied this allegation.
The uptick in journalist deaths comes amid a rising number of conflicts globally, the CPJ said. The other journalist killings in 2024 occurred in over a dozen countries, including Sudan, Pakistan and Mexico. Sudan and Pakistan saw six journalist killings each, while Mexico had five. Four journalists were killed in Syria. Three died in Myanmar, where underground reporters are “increasingly treated as enemy combatants,” according to the CPJ. Another three journalist deaths were recorded in Iraq, marking the first journalist deaths there since 2020. Two journalists were killed in Haiti, where “gangs now openly claim responsibility for journalist killings,” the CPJ said.
The CPJ said that it found countries where journalists are deliberately killed often try to “bury evidence of killings, shift blame, and avoid accountability.” Such actions put surviving journalists in even more danger, the group said, and remove “the possibility of justice” for those who have died.
Around the world, journalists have also been intimidated, censored and arrested or assaulted. Such incidents were reported in Cameroon, Somalia and Afghanistan, even though there were no journalists killed in those countries. There were also no journalist deaths in the war between Ukraine and Russia, though several possibly targeted attacks left reporters injured, the CPJ said. A Ukrainian journalist who was detained in August 2023 died in Russian custody last year.
“Conditions can grow more lethal for the press when those who kill journalists are not held to account. And fewer journalists means less information for citizens seeking the truth,” the CPJ said.
