The attack on journalists in Paris today isn’t an isolated incident but part of a broader attempt to muzzle the press. At least 158 reporters and photographers have been killed while doing their jobs since 2011, the worst three-year period on record.
“There is a global battle over the freedom of expression,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which has been tracking press killings since 1992. “Journalists are unquestionably under greater threat than ever.”
Newspapers and magazines across Europe and the Middle East are bracing for violence in the aftermath of today’s shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly, that left 12 dead. Other newspapers in Paris have stepped up security, as did Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen, the publisher of controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2005. InMadrid, the offices of the El Pais newspaper were evacuated after security guards detected a suspicious package. The Financial Times said it was raising security levels.
“After a terrible year in 2014, it’s a terrible start for press freedom in the world,” said Vincent Peyregne, chief executive officer of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, based in Paris.
While the attacks in Paris were unusual because the victims were satirists, they were also typical because they were murdered for their work, Simon said.
Challenging Power
“It is journalistic entities that challenge power structures in their societies that are attacked,” Simon said. Today’s shooting “conforms to that form of attack, but in this case it happened in Paris, so it was shocking.”
If the intent of the Charlie Hebdo shootings was to intimidate, it may have succeeded, said William Horsley, the international director for the Center for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield in the U.K.
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