Mazhar Tayyara

Syrian leaders tried to impose a media blackout on the country's civil war. They failed. As CPJ's Dahlia El-Zein reports, foreign journalists responded by smuggling themselves into the country, while Syrians picked up cameras and uploaded videos online. They all did so at extreme risk. (4:13)

Read CPJ's special report on journalists killed in Syria and worldwide in 2012. And visit our interactive database.

New York, February 8, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death of Syrian journalist Mazhar Tayyara, a stringer for Agence France-Presse and other international outlets, who was killed by government forces' fire in the city of Homs early Saturday morning.