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Local takes, larger issues
In its annual report for 2006, the media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders announced that at least 81 journalists died in 2006. The toll is the highest reported since 1994, a year that saw the death of more than 100 journalists, many of whom died in the genocide in Rwanda. Below are responses from campus faculty members about what the report means for journalism, journalists and the state of affairs in the world today.

"Journalism can be a dangerous profession, especially in foreign countries where journalists don’t have the same freedoms that we do here in the United States. I really admire the professionals who work around the globe despite the dangers to bring information to people in specific countries and throughout the world. Without these brave journalists, others would not know about the corruption and the atrocities happening elsewhere.

I don’t believe the Reporters Without Borders report has much specific effect on journalism students here at Metro State, since most students will get their first jobs close to home here in Colorado. However, we do have students who aspire to work in other countries. Metro State has journalism grads who have covered the war in Iraq and Afghanistan."
- Deborah Hurley-Brobst, Metro journalism professor

"I do wonder if the image of Western journalists has been eroded in the last five to ten years with the increasing hegemony of the United States.

Journalists are not seen anymore as independent and unbiased, but are actually seen to some extent more as infiltrators. And I wonder too about this tendency of the United States military to embed journalists, in which journalists have actually accepted right away as a good thing because that puts them right there on the front line.

The problem with that is, of course, that not only are they more vulnerable or exposed, but they’re also more likely to be targeted because they’re actually being seen as part of the military, they’re not different from it anymore. I wonder if all these together play a role in why journalists are beginning to be less safe."
- Thorsten Spehn, UCD political science professor