Medium-specific threats for journalists: examples from Philippines, Afghanistan and Venezuela

Between 2012 and 2016, UNESCO registered 530 deaths ofjournalists. They also published a statistic showing that televisionjournalists were the most killed, followed by print media, radioand online journalists. Hinted in this statistics is the need tounderstand the relationship between the medium through whichand in which the journalists produce news and the threats anddangers posed to them. In this article, we discuss this interlinkageand call it medium-specific threats. As examples of thisinterlinkage, we describe the cases of community radio journalistsin the Philippines, photojournalists in Afghanistan and onlinejournalists in Venezuela. Based on these examples fromindependently conducted studies from very different parts of theworld, we make the broader case that while recognizing theprevailing political-economic and socio-cultural factors and forcesat work in these media systems-in-flux, investigations of medium-specific threats to journalists are needed for more nuancedunderstanding of and thus mitigation of journalists’insecurities