Vikas Ranjan

CPJ’s Impunity Index spotlights countries
where journalists are slain and killers go free

New York, March 23, 2009 -- The already murderous conditions for the press in Sri Lanka and Pakistan deteriorated further in the past year, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Colombia, historically one of the world’s deadliest nations for the press, improved as the rate of murders declined and prosecutors won important recent convictions.

A series of coordinated terrorist attacks that struck more than a dozen locations in the commercial capital, Mumbai, killing more than 170 and wounding hundreds, shocked the world and punctuated a year of growing tension and risk. Witnesses became journalists as they Twittered up to 100 messages a minute, posted photos to Flickr, and transmitted cell-phone video to television networks, all of which provided a hectic yet compelling real-time account of the horrific three-day siege in late November. The instantaneous spread of information on the assault—which hit two lavish hotels, a top restaurant, a rail station, a Jewish center, and a hospital, among other sites—illustrated as much as any recent event the extraordinary revolution in media and communication.

New York, December 1, 2008--The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death of Hindu-language daily Hindustan correspondent Vikas Ranjan in the northern Indian state of Bihar on November 25.