US Named One of the Five Deadliest Countries for Journalists

[LDAHL]

Time and NBC are making much of a recent report to that effect. The death count was six. This included four reporters killed in a mass shooting at a local paper in Annapolis. The deranged shooter’s grievances against the paper apparently predated Trump, for you contagion theory fans. The other two were killed by a falling tree branch.

These facts have not precluded much sanctimony directed at people who say unkind things about journalists, of course. My take was that if only six were killed on the job in the course of a year, it must be a remarkably safe profession.

[bae]

Firefighter line of duty deaths, 2017: 93.

"Vehicle wrecks marked the second highest cause of on-duty deaths last year with 23, and roadside safety remains a big concern with several of those deaths caused by drivers striking firefighters who were outside their vehicles at the scene of a previous incident."

In 2015 there were 1,160,450 firefighters in the USA. 93/1,160,450 = 0.00008014132
In 2015 there were 32,900 full time journalists in the USA. 6/32,900 = 0.00018237082

Looks like journalism is an order of magnitude more dangerous than firefighting.(Well, ~2x as dangerous, I was just counting significant figures.)

[LDAHL]

So for comparison purposes, that tree branch made a very big difference.

I would also have thought there were a lot more journalists working in the US than that. Is that 33,000 just print?

[bae]

I suspect also they are counting deaths incorrectly. Most firefighter deaths are from cardiac events, #2 is driving to the scene or back. I have to think journalists must die while driving, or from too many doughnuts, all the time, and that isn't represented in the tree-branch slaughter numbers.

[iris lilies]

No sooner did I read this thread about the deadly profession of journalism than I saw this headline in my tiny weekend town. hermann’s newspaper office was threatened with a bomb.

2632

Digging deep into it, investigators concluded it was a robo text sent across the country. No worries.