Odious threats won’t silence newspapers

ALMOST 50 journalists were murdered because of their work last year.

Eight died in France at the hands of religious zealots in the Paris Charlie Hebdo massacre. Six were murdered in Brazil, five in each of three countries — South Sudan, Bangladesh, and Iraq. These are just the official death figures and it’s safe to assume that more have been murdered and many, many more have been dissuaded from important work by threats of violence from those they would expose.

A society where a journalist can be murdered or threatened to prevent them highlighting anti-social wrongdoing is in the grip of anarchy and the kind of criminal terrorism that defines failed states, states where the rule of law is absent.