Journalists faced ever increasing danger in 2004, with 53 killed on the job worldwide, media watchdog group Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) said today in its annual report, naming Iraq as the most perilous country. ‘‘Press freedom is having a hard time. It’s being attacked, trampled on, disdained or ignored everywhere in the world,’’ RSF said in its report on 2004, released on World Press Freedom Day. The number of journalists killed in 2004 was the highest recorded since 1995, RSF said, adding that 107 journalists were in prison around the world for doing their jobs as of January 1, 2005.For the second year in a row, Iraq remained the world’s most hazardous country for journalists, with 19 killed in 2004 and more than a dozen kidnapped. Sixteen others were killed in Asia, most for their beliefs.Journalists also faced the threat of physical harm in parts of Africa and the Americas, but RSF hailed cracks across the globe in what it called a nearly ‘‘solid wall of impunity’’ for those accused of killing reporters on the job.The group praised the fact that suspects in Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines were either convicted or at least arrested and charged in courts of law. China retained RSF’s dubious distinction as the ‘‘world’s biggest prison for journalists’’, detaining 27 of the 107 reporters behind bars worldwide. —PTI
