In contrast to previous years where the amount of journalists being specifically targeted and murdered for their work had been declining, in 2022 the amount of journalists murdered increased by 50%. Eighty Six Journalists were targeted and killed as a result of their work. This high amount of deaths highlights the grave risks and vulnerabilities that journalists continue to suffer and face in their line of work. 

This large death toll could be seen as an example of the growing fissures and issues with law systems worldwide, and governments/states’ failures to fulfill their obligations to journalists, and to protect and prevent prosecution of journalists themselves. Multiple worldwide governments do not grant much protection for journalists who seek to bring news on those nations to the wider world, allowing unsavory groups to try and strike against the journalists.

Such is simply evident in the regions and nations in which the killings were most common, that being Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin American nations are traditionally very bad at keeping journalists safe, especially in nations like Mexico, where the cartels have influenced the government to the point where those who stand against those nefarious organizations, such as journalists, suffer the consequences for exposing these criminals.In Ukraine, 10 journalists died, but that can be attributed to the war, rather than the government of Ukraine itself.

UNESCO, a United Nations organization, noted that nearly half of the journalists were killed/targeted while off duty, with many attacked while traveling. Many were in public places or parking lots, with others being at their residences and homes when they were targeted by their assailants.Journalists were also subjected to other crimes besides murder, including but limited to, enforced disappearance, kidnapping, legal harassment, and digital violence, with women in particular being targeted.

Many of the reasons journalists were killed were reprisals for reporting on organized crime, armed conflict, the local rise of extremism in the nations in which they were killed. Others met their end as a result of reporting on issues such as state corruption, environmental crime, and abuse of power and protests.